Who Takes Care of the Caretaker-Part Two

This will be part of a series about taking care of yourself as caretaker by taking care of your body, mind and spirit. In the first post (view that here) I talked about taking care of your body with exercise to keep you healthy and relieve stress.  Stress is the number one enemy of the caretaker and will lead you on a path with all kinds of issues that will take you down physically or mentally if you don’t learn to manage it. Remember, you can’t take care of anyone if you are sick yourself.  This post overlaps both caring for the body and mind with rest.

Rest is necessary to the body and mind and keeps us functioning at our best.  I’m not going to talk about sleep, because I’m hoping that goes without saying. So what do I mean by rest if I don’t mean sleep?  I mean respite. I mean getting away. I mean relaxing and letting go of your responsibilities for a time. 

When I first brought dad home I felt this overwhelming sense of responsibility. It was my job to keep him safe now, what if I screwed up and something happened on my watch?? My siblings entrusted his care to me and I felt the weight of that and took it seriously. Maybe too seriously, you know? Stuff happens! But I was responsible for an adult, a parent whom I respected, loved and wanted the best for, but also one who could no longer make rational decisions. An aging parent who understood--and at the same time, sadly, didn’t understand. A parent who was desperately clinging to the tiny shreds of independence he still had. I know how hard all this was on me, but it was painful to watch how hard it was on him. I still had a duty, though, whether he liked it-or understood it! It was all for his own good, but that didn’t make things any easier.

That first year was the roughest. I remember the battles I had with him about walking the dog, among other things. I knew that walking was good for him, but he had gotten lost several times after he moved here and still he was determined to walk! Once, dressed in long pants and a sweatshirt, he left without my knowledge on a hot (I mean really hot and humid) July afternoon.  After driving around frantically looking for him, I was ready to call the police. I finally found him in another neighborhood in a state of dehydration, barely able to walk. I put him in the car, rushed him home and cooled him off.  “What were you thinking??” I asked--which looking back was a really stupid question. As I undressed him, cooled him with a cold cloth and gave him water-he replied that he believed Whiskers (his dog) would lead him home!!  This is only one example of the way his thinking is faulty and the battles we fought on several fronts because he doesn’t understand there is anything wrong.  I knew he was fighting for any independence he could still have, and all I wanted was for him to accept his fate and make it easy for me! He viewed me as the “warden” which he called me often (the Nazi, sheriff, shall I go on?) and was just pissed off at his me --his captor. I was frustrated and angry that he couldn’t see how hard this was for me and cut me a break!  These were not easy times. It was exhausting to say the least. (One of the wisest things anyone ever told me about dealing with Alzheimer’s was “you can’t reason with someone who can’t reason.” That changed everything for me. That’s a whole other post!)

I tell you all this to explain that this was all new to me.  I had no idea what I was doing or how to do it.  Or how hard it would be.   It is hard to care for someone whose mind is spotty and to learn to treat them with dignity, respect and honor while still keeping them safe. I didn’t do it well very often I’m afraid.  I seriously underestimated his dementia because he’s always been sharp and was pretty good at fooling us (and others who didn't spend enough time with him to figure it out) into believing he knew what he was doing. I know better now, which helps, but there was a very long learning curve for all of us.  And it really wore me out.  (dad-not so much-I swear arguing and outwitting me kept him going every day!) But any type of caretaking is going to take a toll. And that’s where rest comes in. 

My biggest mistake from the very beginning was trying to do it all myself.  I really underestimated the stress involved and what it would do to me-OR HOW MUCH A BRIEF REST WOULD HELP KEEP THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE.  I have support from family and both brothers have taken dad for a week so we could go on vacation (thanks Bro’s!) and my sister takes him one day a week to lunch and a movie sometimes or to dinner, which is more that some folks get. (Thanks Sis!) But live in caretaking is 24/7, 365 and I needed more "rest" --but didn't know it. I finally got so burnt out I felt that if I didn’t get some time off I would have to find a home for him.  None of us wanted to do that.  Just getting him out of his house and into mine was traumatic-Lord help us when we tried to do that!! And there were other stress factors that played into things as well. It’s not like life stops and says “hey, you’ve got enough on your plate-you’re going to get a break here”. Nope, when it rains it pours. And it did.

In the effort to keep these short enough to read without a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair--I’m going to wind it up here and share the "rest" next week. What I will say now is that caretaking in any form is stressful and you need a break at times to keep you healthy so you can care for others. You are probably at a time in your life when other stuff is happening too.  You may be and adult child in the “sandwich” phase of life where you have teens still at home and aging parents to care for.  You may be empty nesters thinking this should be a time of rest for you, but instead you find yourself parenting your parents. You may be experiencing the health issues that happen after 50 and are battling to stay healthy and care for unhealthy parents.  You may be a spouse who never saw this coming and who grieves the life you once had and wonder how you can manage to care for your spouse at your advanced age. Maybe you are caring for someone who has cancer or an ill child. Your loved one may be at home with you, or in a home.  They may have their mind and not their health, or their health and not their mind. Or they may have neither. From all the caretakers I talk to and all the stories I hear, the particulars don’t matter. Every situation is different except for the common thread of stress. While some may think I’ve had it rough, I can point you to others who’ve had it worse. Or better. That’s not the point. The point is that we need to take care of ourselves so that we can give our parent/spouse /loved one the best we have to give. Isn’t that why we are doing this?  To provide the best possible care for our loved one. To do that you need to take care of yourself!!  Next week I will share the solutions I found but in the meantime, if you are feeling overwhelmed or depleted, ask yourself “when was the last time I had any time away?” Only you can answer how much is enough, but from my small surveys, most people are not getting enough respite. I know it's hard to do, but I think it’s the most important thing I’ve done for myself as a caretaker.

If you took the time to read this, I hope it helps you or someone you know. Until next time, if you are a caretaker, are you getting any "rest"?