Caregiver Time Out
Give Yourself a Caregiver Time Out to Increase Energy and Reduce Stress
When my friend Jeanine asked, “How do I get through life like this?”, I said, “Give yourself a caregiver time out.” Jeanine’s husband had a stroke about a year-and-a-half ago. Since then she has focused all of her time and energy on caring for him. She is now beginning to feel like a prisoner in her own home.
I told her about my friend Julia whose husband had cancer. By submitting to one treatment after another, he had outlived his prognosis by more than three years. Julia had nursed him through all of the horrendous side effects, and one day she said, “I am done putting my life on […]
If you are caring for a loved one, whether it’s an aging parent, spouse, sibling or friend who needs help managing medical conditions, treatments and healthcare decisions, I highly recommend reading the book, “Being Mortal”, by Atul Gawande.
In this final installment of getting your “Ducks in a Row” I will be addressing the must-have end-of-life planning documents. There isn’t anything fun about this topic. I don’t like writing about it, and I’m sure you don’t particularly enjoy reading about it. If it was possible for things to just work out at the end of life, none of us would have to deal with any of this.
Learning to “go with the flow” isn’t something that comes naturally to most caregivers. It can actually feel like the first thing we should do every morning is strap on a pair of boxing gloves in order to get prepared for the numerous battles we know we’ll be facing throughout the day.
I frequently write about the importance of self-care and how it is the only way caregivers can avoid becoming physically and emotionally overwhelmed.
I was invited to be a guest on the Caregiver SOS Radio show hosted by Carol Zernail and Ron Aaron. The show is based in San Antonio, Texas and presented by the WellMed Charitable Foundation. Carol and Ron are both engaging and entertaining hosts, and they are extremely knowledgeable about the difficult issues all caregivers face. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Accepting the unacceptable is something most caregivers eventually have to do, especially when you’re caring for someone with a long-term progressive and degenerative disease.
Last night I spoke about coping with the grief of Parkinson’s Disease at a Caregivers’ Conference hosted by the 
Coping with change is something most caregivers have to do almost daily. Your care receiver’s health changes. The things you can still do together change. Your freedom to come and go as you please changes.
It takes some time to adjust to life after caregiving, but as impossible as it seems, life will go on.