How often do we see someone in a wheelchair or in a hospital or nursing home and not even notice or acknowledge the caregiver close by? On a recent Twitter Chat, the topic of discussion was loneliness among seniors and family caregivers. The conversation lit up with comments from professional as well as family caregivers and their responses were often times heart breaking:
As you place your hand on the doorknob to enter a room do you ever stop to think about what you might encounter on the other side of that door? What will you find or experience as you step over the threshold? Anytime we are about to walk into a room what waits for us on the other side of the door may be an expected scene or perhaps something so surprising and unanticipated that it may change our life or the life of someone else! As caregivers, regardless of whether we are caring for someone in our home, a nursing home, hospital or hospice, we probably experience these moments of not knowing what to expect each and every time we walk through the door to extend care for our patient or loved one. Learning ways to cope with what often times is unexpected is an important aspect of caregiving.
“…When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone. Did you hear me – I’m living alone! I’m living alone!” Words from a precocious eight year old Macaulay Culkin in the popular 1990 movie Home Alone may somehow resonate with an 80 or 90 year old wanting to live independently and not in a nursing home or residential facility. Growing up – do you remember how you could hardly wait to become independent of your parents – to move out to a place you could call your very own? Just because a person gets older does not mean they are ready to give up the idea of independence; unfortunately, independence does become more difficult to maintain as life progresses.
A study by the U.S. Administration on Aging, A Profile of Older Americans: 2011, reported the following:
In 1993, almost half of people diagnosed with diabetes were older than 65, making type 2 diabetes a common occurrence in elderly patients.
Elderly patients pose unique cases, as self-management of diabetes comes with greater difficulties once age impairs cognitive functions and inhibits the ability to safely make changes in exercise and diet. Additionally, identifying and responding to hypoglycemia, which medication may cause, becomes more difficult with age.
Boom...Boom…Boom! Each day the Boom…Boom…Boom of the encroaching onslaught of what we have so aptly named the "Boomer Generation" gets louder and louder. We have tried everything to drown out the approaching sound by making 60 the new 40, with Botox injections, face lifts, knee and hip replacements, erectile enhancements and so much more, but the sound doesn’t go away. It’s there in every creviced wrinkle and excruciating knee pain every morning as we get up to face the day, only to remind us how little we have prepared for this time in our lives.
“It’s time for hospice” – difficult words for families to hear. As a family caregiver, you may have given some thought to the day when you would have to make that decision for an aging parent or other loved one – but you’re never quite prepared – not yet, why now? The thought of hospice often brings about the impression that it’s a way of just “letting them die.” Accepting the inevitable death of a loved one is an emotional hardship that no one is ever really prepared to face. Although this is sometimes hard to face, the goal of hospice care is to provide palliative care for terminally ill individuals while allowing them as well as their families to focus on their personal and spiritual needs as they prepare for the end of life.
Making a decision about placing a loved one under hospice care is difficult enough, finding the appropriate one and one that accommodates the family’s needs is yet another consideration.
Caregivers come in all ages, shapes and sizes, but what they don’t come with is a universally accepted one-word Spanish translation for the word “caregiver.” Strange? Not really. In the Latino culture caring for someone, particularly an aging parent or spouse is a responsibility not taken lightly and one steeped in tradition with words filled with promises and commitments to the elders. It is not unusual to learn that words such as coping or stress for a caregiver are not used since it would imply a burden, instead of the kind of duty that is carried out obediently and respectfully.
Visiting a nursing home in an attempt to deliver Christmas cheer along with some fruit and warm socks to those who did not often get visitors was an annual tradition for me and my four young daughters. But, one that my daughters did not always find rewarding. Instead, they complained that it “smelled funny” or that the elders’ attempts to touch their young, fresh faces made them uncomfortable. But for the most part, many of the residents sat silently, looking vacantly, perhaps into a past that only they could enter. Undeterred and with a promise of ice cream cones after the visit, we continued this tradition for many years.
