Before I began taking care of my mother (mild stroke, mild vasuclar dementia, severe arthritis, multiple falls) my health was near perfect - one cold ever five or six years and that's about it. I'd run half marathons, practice yoga, strength train at the gym, but this year as caregiving has intensified they have all gone by the wayside. No time, no energy, and also depression because this could go on for another ten years or more and there is no good end. (I am already thinking about how my daughter will never be allowed to be a caregiver).
I have a sitter for mom when I'm at work and one afternoon a week a sitter so I could go to the gym, but usually I need the time for chores or errands. Placing her is not an option because she hates it (she was in a nursing home for rehab and I'll admit it was a nice break for me) and it would bankrupt us (I'm trying to get my daughter to school with no debt) and here we can at least reverse mortgage the house when the time comes.
So specifically about my health - last year my blood pressure was perfect. Now I am on two medications. In the past year I've injured my shoulder trying to lift her (now I tell her that if she fall, she stays on the floor until the firemen arrive). In the past six moths I've had two colds, thrush, strep throat, an ear infection. I think my immune system is shot from caregiver stress.
Some people compare caring for elders to caring for children. It is not the same at all. My mother would be in second grade now if she were a child. Even if she had told me that she didn't want to go to school, I would say you're going. Period. But we feel like we can't take a week away from our parent because they don't want to go to respite or let someone come in the house. Is that crazy or what? It seems to me that we give all rights and respects to the oldest and expect the caregiver to give up their own. If I had talked to my mother as a child like she talks to me, she would have slapped me across the room.
People are going to have to change their thinking when it comes to caregiving. The caregiver needs to be the boss. The parent needs help, but everything cannot be on the parent's own terms. The caregiver should not have to give up their own homes, their jobs, their own families, their dignity, their money, and their hope to accommodate someone who refuses to give an inch.
I know a lot of people will argue with me about the years spent raising us and how we owe them. I somehow seriously doubt that children drain the lives of their parents the way that elders can drain their senior-citizen children. Gosh, it feels good to be honest. There has to be a better way than spending 10-20 years at this lonely and thankless task.
Another thing, why is it that our parent(s) won't listen to us but would listen to a paid professional caregiver? What makes it so different? Could it be the uniform the caregiver wears that brings a sense of authority?
Here are some things that can help:
Alzheimers Association alz.org
Your local Area Agency on Aging (might have a different name but they exist in all states)
Support groups (see above)
Don't drink the tap water without filtering it first
Organic fresh foods. If you must use packaged make sure it's organic ("natural" means nothing)
Urgent care clinics exist. They can be very helpful
Religious groups sometimes have volunteers for companionship and transportation
Meals on Wheels
Advocate, advocate, advocate. For your loved one and for yourself.
Start at the top. Good luck.
More funding needs to go into regular nursing-home facilities. The waiting list is so long and the rules so stringent. I am appalled at requirements like "needs to have a stroke, or heart-attack" to get admittance without a battle with the bureaucracy. Once persons are in their 90's the nursing home beds should be readily available -- and the variable be a family petitioning to keep the elder at home. Also, I think that a re-structure of how doctors do appointments is needed. Allow a caregiver to get their medical appointment done in tandem with the elder's appointment, no matter what insurance carrier they have. Also, require more "home visit" general practitioners too, to visit the elder and caregiver for checkups. That would be a good incentive for medical student scholarships. If the student agrees to fill the "needed medical position" and do this for at least a decade then we can begin a structure of having enough doctors/nurses to do the jobs that are needed. I wish a program like this would start right now, this very year, for once have enough doctors to assist in care for persons over the age of 50.
You all have a life too, and if you've spent more than 3 years caring for the elder at home without respite, then you need to step forward and make yourselves heard to your legislators. I honor and respect you all and still living it myself so very glad for this site to share thoughts.
I was so angry by the end of that eight days that I was hardly speaking to her. (And then months later she told me that I did not stay with her that long; that it was only one or two days and that she didn't need anyone with her.) In retrospect, it was a good experience for me, because I have learned that I cannot become her personal care attendant. My health would suffer greatly.
I've read on this forum how people attribute cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression, skin ailments, high pressure to the stress of caregiving. And I fully believe it!
My mother has three darling sons, and when the time comes that I've had enough, I have told them that I am walking away. She will be their problem to deal with, even if they are states away. I have a one-story house, and she will NOT move in with me. No way, now how.
I know this to be true, as I raised four terrific kids to adulthood and while they are doing great and thriving in their 30's, the senior parent (my FIL, not my own, as that too would have been so much different) that I am caring for in my home, is declining on The Daily! He is a rude, demanding, and obnoxious NARCISSIST!
Whereas we love our children unconditionally because they are an extension of ourselves, the seniors we care for to some degree, often become so demanding and overbearing, that we soon grow to resent them and the love that we might have once had for them changes or diminishes to a certain degree.
And while we are usually younger and healthy when we have our children, to then take on the task of full time care an elderly person while you yourselves are entering middle age, or your own senior years, sucks the life out of you, and these are also the years when our own health is declining in the natural course of life, and then it compounds our own decline. Its So not fair!
Even more resentful, is when you take care (for years on end), of a Senior parent who has never ever, even for One Day, Ever cared for their own parents, yet expect you to honor their life's every desire, until they die, leaving you No time to enjoy your own retirement
What's that all about?