Caregiver, don’t reach your breaking point!
In the article, Knowing When You Need Help With Caregiving, I wrote, “We caregivers are a stubborn lot. This helps us… when times are tough. But when we keep trying to the detriment of our own well-being, what good are we?”
Why do we keep going even as those danger signs take us to the edge? Short tempered? Sleepless? Hopeless? Click to read the article for the five symptoms.
What are our options?
For starters, we need our fellow caregivers’ wisdom. Whether we meet online or in person, a support group allows us to learn what to expect from those who are more experienced.
My support group gave me options to help with my father’s care while he lived with us.
One option is adult day services, where your loved one can engage in activities during the day while you work, run errands, or take a break.
In-home care gives you the opportunity to take a few hours or even the day off for a caregiver respite. Having a different caregiver may even offer your loved one a change of pace.
For those times when you need a longer break, such as an extended weekend or more, consider placing your family member in a home with a few other residents or in residential care. Unfortunately, my father was a wanderer and residential care homes are not licensed to provide enough security to prevent my father from leaving. Of course, caregivers try to keep watch 24/7, but that’s a lot to ask for if your loved one wanders a lot as my father did.
When the time came, my husband and I were so exhausted we feared we were getting dementia, as we struggled with bouts of disorientation and forgetfulness. We realized we had to either place my father or find a home for us. When caregivers grow so overwhelmed, they can’t keep up, they start showing signs of caregiver dementia. (Fortunately, it’s reversible!)
Our community didn’t yet have assisted living and the closest care centers were at least an hour’s drive. I wanted my father close enough to visit him often.
After recommendations from fellow support group members and visiting their loved ones, we chose skilled nursing care for my father.
Don’t reach your breaking point.
A nurse and caregiver for her mom had reached the end of her rope. Fortunately, she had a sense of humor, when she warned her mom about getting on her nerves. “Mom you’ve been stepping on my nerves.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“And now you’ve stepped on my last nerve.”
“No, I haven’t.”
SIGH
Don’t keep pushing until you reach your breaking point. Get help beforehand. Alternate in-home care with adult day services. Use residential care from time to time. Start now to get help in place so when a crisis occurs, you’re ready and your loved one is familiar with these other caregiving options.
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Recent issue of The Caregiver’s Voice Monthly Newsletter – Volume 7: Issue 10
Commonly Misdiagnosed Form of Dementia
For additional reading: Top Mistakes New Caregivers Make – U.S. News HEALTH.
I don’t think that this has anything to do with this blog. Simply, I just felt that I needed to vent and this is the first place I found where I could leave a message to no one in particular.
I am my 99 year old mother’s caretaker. I love her dearly, but the reality of taking care of her needs is taking a large toll on me. I have 5 siblings. One brother lives with me. He helps by keeping an eye on my mother during the day when I am at work. He does very little around the house, and does not want to get even a part time job. He is basically a good person, very smart in history, politics, and science, but very lazy and has awkward social skills. I often wonder if he has Aspberger Syndrome. My sister lives within the same community that I do. She is 65, works long hours and is very tired when she gets home. Also a good person, but I do not know why she never offers to help with my mother. I have two brothers who live 40 minutes away. They call several times a week. One comes every three weeks or so and does little “fix it” things around the house. One lives out of state and calls every week. He is in charge of finances and always makes sure that my mother has what she needs. We are all very concerned about the brother that lives with me in terms of finances. He has zero savings.
My feelings? Anger! That I have to do all that requires taking care of my mother, preparing meds, bathing, preparing meals, going to the doctors, walking with her every time that she goes to the bathroom, cleaning her room, changing her sheets, changing her clothes, doing her laundry…… Also, Anger that although my live in brother watches my mother during the day and walk her to the bathroom, etc. if there are soiled clothes, they are in a little ball in the hallway waiting for me to come home to clean them. Anger that he has not once in the 7 years that he has lived here offered to cook a meal. He has papers all over the dining room table, and his room is a mess because the boxes that he brought when he moved are still unpacked. I am angry that my sister has not once offered to come and clean the bedroom, change the sheets, take my mother somewhere without me, come over to watch her for a few hours so I can go to the mall or take in a movie. She, too, is a good person, but has never offered to do any of these things. She has stayed overnight when I have gone out of town for tow or three nights, usually once a year.
I am tired! And I do not feel I have the luxury to relax. I know that moms of young children go through this. If I want to come home and just have a salad, I cannot because I know that my mother needs a balanced meal. She still eats well, although her taste in foods have changed, so that is a challenge. However, at 99 she weighs 155 lbs and has been that weight for over 25 years. I am thankful for that. I am tired that I cannot sleep well because I feel I am always listed for my name or the clickers clack of the walker when she goes to the bathroom at night.
I feel pain on the base of both thumbs. Not aches, but pain! I think this is from the way that I lift my mother when she wants to get up from her easy chair, even if it is a lift chair. She can no longer get up from it by herself.
I feel anxiety over things that do not get done in the house. I am in a never ending quest to organize and that just does not happen. I can accept that, but I do not allow myself to relax knowing that those things need to be done. I am angry that it does not affect my brother. It is 1:00 in the afternoon and he is sleeping. I do have to say that while I was at Mass this morning and afterward did the grocery shopping, he had gotten mom’s meds and had made her coffee. I wish that he would have offered to help take out the grocery bags from the car.
I know that it will be suggested that I tell people what I need from them, but I don’t do it because I feel that it should be common sense to offer to help with these things. If the offer is not coming in, it must be because they really would rather not help. This makes me more frustrated and angry. The story and the list is longer. Perhaps it has helped me to write down some of my thoughts. Perhaps I need to seek professional help.
I don’t expect any answers. I just needed to vent. As always, this feeling goes away after a day or two.
You already know the answer, Maria. Take it from those of us who have been caregivers and have learned.
If you don’t ask for help now, you may not be around long enough to finish caregiving.
Start by asking for help… and thank you for sharing your experience as it speaks to many others who quietly endure and likely feel just as you do.
You are right. If I don’t ask for help, I may not be around to be of help to my mother. Since this afternoon, I sat down to write some specific ways in which I need help. I need some “me” time outside of the house, if even for two or three hours every other weekend. I need my sister to cook a little more and freeze it so I can have it ready to go for my mother when I am too tired to cook. I will make a list of just 5 things and share it with my siblings to see where things go from there. Now I am going to spend time going through the rest of your website and learning more about you.
Now I understand why when I take my mother to her geriatric doctor, she first asks me how I am doing.
Thank you so much,
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Abby, I totally agree with you. I was in such denial of needing help it took a toll on me. I gained over 60 pounds and just got to a point where I just did not know what to do. Luckily we were both veterans and had help from the VA. Juanita was sent to me and what a help she was. Brenda, Gary Le Blanc and a lady, Bernadette, from Ireland were so much help to me. There were many others that without, I don’t know how I could have made it. Even though I have found happiness in another marriage, oh what I would give to still have and be taking care of my Marie.
Thank you for sharing, Don. I’m glad that you have found happiness, and I find that inspiring!
Wishing you all the best in this phase of your life!
Dear Abby,
Going beyond the popular advice column, you provide humble learning based on YOUR OWN experiences. In doing so, you give us valuable insights.
THANK YOU.
Brenda A.
I find myself advising caregivers to take care of themselves because it is something I didn’t do much of and I should have. And yet, I understand not being able to.
My husband had ALS and lived in denial of what it was doing to his body and the toll it was also taking on me. I alternated between feeling defensive and angry and trying to prove that I could do it all, because that was what he wanted. I guess that on some level I felt like he had a fatal disease and that trumped any concerns I had for myself.
I think I learned and lived the meaning of “You are Braver than you Believe, Stronger than you Seem and Smarter than You Think (Christopher Robin to Pooh).
But, in retrospect, your article is right and I should have forced myself to have the difficult conversations of his needing more care than I could provide. I also wish I had participated in support groups throughout his illness, even through social media like Twitter, which I have only begun to use since I started my blog PixieDustForCaregiving.com, about my caregiving and grieving experience.
It is so important to feel supported by people who genuinely understand and live similar experiences. It is a great resource for feeling connected!