Caregiver Training Blog

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.

During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when people talked about family dynamics it would probably have conjured up images of “Father Knows Best” or  “Leave it to Beaver” where everyone got along or any problems they had were magically resolved within the 30-minute time slot. Not so today! Family dynamics are so very complicated that it probably has some folks thinking a trip to the nostalgic days of the syrupy sitcoms wouldn’t be so bad!

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1998, actor Michael J. Fox perhaps best captured the dramatic impact it can have when he said, "Parkinson's forced me to make a fundamental life decision: adopt a siege mentality—or embark upon a life journey."  Mr. Fox is probably one of the best-known advocates for finding a cure for this debilitating disease and has brought national attention and raised the kind of awareness that sometimes only a celebrity can create. There are some startling statistics from the Parkinson’s disease Foundation: