This Week, Make Time for You

(Editor’s Note: On Wednesdays, we share a journaling tip as part of our series, Journaling 101. This is our eleventh tip.) The aches of caregiving can seem to permeate your body: Your heart aches, your head aches, you bones ache. Even worse, your heart and spirit seem to be filled with pain. Just as you bathe your body’s aches and pains, consider how you can bathe your...

Finding the Right Words to Ask for the Help You Need

You want help. You’ve been waiting for your siblings, your kids, your in-laws, your friends, anyone! to offer their help. Unfortunately, you’ll wait forever if you’re waiting for others to offer help. So, how do you ask? Tell family and friends specifically how they can help. Often, other family members want to help, but just don’t understand how. Some ideas: –Ask your brother to...

Caulk

Caulk? Image via WikipediaCaulk? Yep. Caulk. As a family caregiver, you may find yourself trapped with the thought: I can do this on my own. I can. Good intentions can be like good foundations. Sometimes, they need a little reinforcement. Cracks happen. And, that’s where the caulk comes in handy. You will have cracks in your caregiving experience. That’s normal. You may find it difficult to bathe your...

Managing Family Disputes During a Decision

Janet and Sue are sisters, but certainly not friends. They went their separate ways as young adults, exchanging the courtesy holiday and birthday cards over the years. Now, thirty years later, they spend hour after hour with each other as their mother recovers in the hospital from a stroke. Some moments are good—they laugh at how overbearing their parents were during their teen-aged years—but some are really...

Resources to Ensure Good Nursing Home Care

Worried about a family member in a nursing home? Or, just worried that a nursing home is in the future for a family member and you’d like to take precautions to find the best one now? Our communities offer assistance for nursing home residents and families concerned about quality care. If you have a concern, you can contact: –A long-term care ombudsman. Each state has a long-term care ombudsman, an...

This Week, Give Thought to Your Breaks

(Editor’s Note: On Wednesdays, we share a journaling tip as part of our series, Journaling 101. This is our tenth tip.) You’d like to make the most of the time you have for yourself (even if only five minutes in the day), but somehow it seems that the time gets away from you–and you feel like you’ve lost it. This week, jot down ideas of how you’d like...

One Step at a Time

My husband, Wayne, is sleeping in the chair again, so I will try to write a few thoughts. Our IA son and his family left back for home a week ago Tuesday. We had a great time when they were here, but then it was and has been back to reality. Wed. Wayne had an appointment that I needed to take him too. When we go anywhere it is always a bit of a struggle maneuvering the wheelchair in and out of the trunk...

POA and a Good Attorney: A Family Caregiver’s Best Friends

It didn’t take long to complete, although it may have taken awhile to convince your care recipient of its necessity. But, today, that simple piece of paper is worth a million bucks (or close to it). Robert Freedman can’t emphasize enough the importance of a durable power of attorney for finances and for health care. “It’s not expensive to get,” he says, “and it’s the first...

National Eldercare Workforce Alliance Call-In Day: Tuesday, June 23

Image by wallyg via Flickr By 2030, one in five Americans will be age 65 or older, 75% of whom will have one or more chronic conditions.  Many older adults and those with chronic diseases do not receive the care they need because of an inadequately trained healthcare workforce, clinician and faculty shortages, and poor working conditions for direct-care workers. The Eldercare Workforce Alliance works to...

Hitting the Highway: Traveling with Your Care Recipient

Image via Wikipedia Planning for the unexpected I always remember great advice I once heard for family caregivers: Use respite services regularly, even when you don’t need them, so when you do need them, you are comfortable and confident in the staff and service provider. Meaning, test out the services that you will use when you need them before you need them. Iron out the glitches (and there will be...

Resource Review: The Aging with Grace Caregiver Survival Kit

By Susan James I have been given the opportunity to do a review on the PDF form of The Aging with Grace Caregiver Survival Kit. First, I think this is a great way for folks to use this tool kit. Why? The ability to print additional pages of sections or to reprint sections updated more frequently than others rather than if you were to go out and purchase a book and have to constantly erase (if your using pencil) or...

The Road Less Travelled: The Inpatient Geriatric-Psychiatric Option

By Jason Young, MS (Editor’s Note: On a regular basis we invite family caregivers and health care professionals to pen a guest blog. Today, Jason Young, one of our product reviewers, shares his insights to help take away the stigma of using a geriatric psychiatric unit to help your care recipient.) Making the decision to admit a care recipient to a geriatric psychiatric unit can be extremely difficult and...

Taking On Shame: How Healing Makes Us Whole

Image via Wikipedia Arrive everywhere loved. –Mariah, wife of Ron Gladis, one of our 2009 Caregiver of the Year award winners You probably have heard the expression: “You have to feel it to heal it.” That, often, is easier said than done. To feel our shame, we must feel safe. We might find that safety in a support group, in our journal or with a therapist or counselor (or all three). Whatever...

my mom’s passing

On Sunday evening, around 8:45 pm, I was holding her hand, telling her how much everyone loved her, saying the Lord’s prayer as she took her last breaths. She was in her (our) home, and she had received medication to relieve pain and anxiety. She had a heart attack, after a long stay in the ICU with a COPD exacerbation. I will write more as I can.

Start

You may feel the end, the end of caregiving, will be difficult. You may dread the death (of your care recipient and of your role) because of the finality. Because it ultimately, sadly, is about death, it’s really, joyfully, about life. It’s about living a good life. And, the good life you live after the death keeps your care recipient alive. Your caregiving makes it so. It starts you and continues your...

When Shame Shows Up in Caregiving

(Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a three-part series on shame and its role in your caregiving experience. In our second part, we take a look at how shame enters a caregiving situation.) When I think of how shame can come to a caregiving role, I think of Jeannette, a woman I helped care for about 10 years ago. Because I haven’t had the personal experience of caregiving, I’ve taken on hired caregiving...

This Week, Give Thanks for Your Gifts

(Editor’s Note: On Wednesdays, we share a journaling tip as part of our series, Journaling 101. This is our ninth tip.) You share your gifts with the world every day: Your kindness, your generosity, your problem-solving ability, your crisis management skills. You may wonder: What am I getting in return? You receive just as many gifts as you give. The gifts you receive may be subtle and...

Why?

Image by Kounelli via Flickr Why? Why me? Why my family? Why now? When fate waves her hand and your life changes—and not, seemingly, for the better—it’s natural to question fate’s decisions to wave her hand in your direction. Why us? Consider this response to fate’s hand instead: Okay, it’s us. How are we going to move forward? The question, Why us?, cements you to one place. The question, How...

Treasured Moments

Our oldest son and his wife and our two IA granddaughters were in our area since Thursday. They went home again this morning. Together with our son and his wife who live near us and our local grandkids we had a wonderful few days together! It was a wonderful time to interact with our sons and their wives and our grandkids. We could enjoy the presence of six of our seven grandkids this past weekend. The other...

The Genesis of Shame

Image by -Ola via Flickr (Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a three-part series on shame and its role in your caregiving experience. In our first part, we look at the origins of shame.) For you, it may have started with a comment or remark or a look. “Typically children are shamed when they wet their bed, get a bad grade on a test, are picked last for a team, or have an awkward physical...

The Pressure-Cooker of Holidays: The Pressure to Make It Perfect

Image via Wikipedia You want it to be nice, unforgettable, special, as close to perfect as possible. Surely, there can’t be that many more left for both of you to enjoy. But, the pressure to make it perfect can ruin any well-intentioned holiday, be it Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Christmas. And, the pressure intensifies because of those thoughts in the back of your head: How many more Father’s...

the caregiving olympics

Hi everyone– I think I’ve just been entered into the Caregiving Olympics. Not as the speed skater or some other super onerous endurance event, but maybe more like curling? Curling is more lightweight, more bizarre. Dunno. My mom is now in Hospice. In my home. With me as the primary caregiver. !!! I have been so angry–about this whole thing. Feeling like a slave, or a roach in a roach motel. I am...