Daily Challenges

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March 20, 2009

Caregivers: What did we do to deserve this?

Posted by PeterT under Daily Challenges, Meaningful Caregiving | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Are you as tired as I am of hearing “nowhere does it say that life is fair?”  As painful as it is to admit it, those words are true.  The harsh truth of it is, bad things happen to people, both the good and the bad.  Good things happen to the bad as well as the good people. 

Those of us who are dealing with a devastating illness that holds no promise of improving, can get pretty angry and very bitter.  When we do, we begin the search for someone or something to blame.  If we can find a genetic source, we blame those who provided the gene pool from which our Loved One came.  We can search the Internet and the journals and all the information we can locate to see if there is some environmental factor.  Then we look for whoever may have put the toxin in the environment. 

Sometimes we search for something we or our Loved One has done, some lifestyle cause.  If we  happen to believe in God, when all else fails, we blame God.  Oddly, if we do not believe in God, we use the terrible, unfair, devastating disease to prove that God doesn’t exist.  When we are at a complete loss to explain why whatever it is has come into our lives, we often cease to be rational at all.  It is God’s fault and we will punish God by not believing in God.  If we do not or have never had a religious dimension to our life, we are just angry at the meaninglessness that is intruding into our short stay on this planet. 

What I will say next sounds silly, stupid, shallow, and without any value in helping us cope.  Stuff happens!  You have seen the bumper sticker with more crude language.  Stuff happens!  Whether you happen to have a theology or no theology, faith in something or in nothing, stuff happens. 

If you are convinced there is nothing that exists other than what we can see, measure, or extrapolate from what we can see or measure, then having Parkinson’s or ALS or Diabetes or MS or Lewy Body Dementia or Alzheimers, or Huntington’s or whatever comes is just a fluke of nature, with no meaning. 

If you believe in God, however you define or confine that God, finally, the same is so.  Any God powerful enough, of such  magnitude as to be able to bring a universe of immeasurable size into being, containing powerful forces that could snuff us out in a millisecond – however personal that God may be to you, there is no way to begin to have the perspective of such a God to actually find an explanation that fits into our little minds. 

We cannot answer the question why!  It is a waste of precious time and energy.  We can find our way to the most intelligent human on earth, the most sophisticated computer, the most trusted theologian, the wisest guru, and we will not find the answer to the question, “Why, why me, why us?”

Here is what we can do.  We can look and listen, think and read, talk and ponder all the dynamics of what we are experienceing and do two things: One, learn something.  Don’t waste the pain, the struggle.   Learn something from it.  Two, use every ounce of creativity and information available to do things that use absolutely to the fullest everything you and your Loved One are still able to do — while you can do it.  Put those two things together, and you just might make some discoveries that add to the quality of your life. 

Battle the truth of your situation as if it should not be true, cannot be true, must not be true, and bitterness, cynicism will fill your days and  your relationships; the capacity to find joy and meaning in life will disappear. 

After the hospital stay precepitated by Mary Ann’s congestive heart failure, and the heart attacks and angioplasty and stent, followed by another stay for heart problems, followed by the life threatening pneumonia, followed by the stroke, followed by the Dementia, all emerging after years of battling the Parkinson’s, it dawned on me, that I never really felt that it was unfair that so many things came, one after another.  Fair is not a reasonable expectation.  Just because one thing happened to us, did not mean that we were any more or less likely to experience any other problem (except those of course that are a direct consequence of some current debility). 

No one is punishing us.  We are no better or worse than anyone else.  Things happen.  For us, when they happen, they become opportunities to learn, create solutions, develop mechanisms for finding meaning and fulfillment in what is so.  It is just so.  We can’t explain it or understand it or change it.  We can, however, choose to live in spite of it. 

I wonder what battles you have fought trying to come to terms with what is going on in your life as you deal with what has come your way.   Who do you blame?  At whom do  you scream when you are at your wit’s end?  Where do you turn to try to make sense of what your are going through?

 

March 19, 2009

Caregivers: Is It Okay to Whine or not?

Posted by PeterT under Daily Challenges, Help from Others | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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One of the issues in the matter of keeping friends is, how much we should whine to people about what we are going through.  People don’t understand unless they have done it.  They just don’t understand.  People get tired of hearing about what we and our Loved Ones are going through.  It is hard to understand what it is like for every need of someone else, from the  tiniest need to the most serious need to have total priority every moment, waking or sleeping.  Their tiniest need trumps our biggest need.  After all, she has Parkinson’s.  She didn’t choose to have it.  It just happened.  She can’t pull the covers over her or turn over in bed or get the last of the Cheerios to her mouth without them sliding out of the bowl on to the table.  It is not her fault.  It is just so.  Her needs trump my needs, the needs of the very one on whom she depends for her daily survival.  The truth is, no amount of explaining or whining can give someone the full weight of something they have not experienced. 

You know the story.  Some of the people you have counted as friends come with words of sympathy when the diagnosis is made.  Some hang in there for weeks and months and even years.  Some surprise you with their willingness to help.  There are those who will offer to do things you would not have thought to ask for until they offered.  And then sometimes, after a while, they just seem to tire of it — take for granted that the two of you will manage.

As I write this, I have to admit that we are spoiled — really spoiled.  In the past seven or so years, when we have struggled the most, as many as sixty-five Volunteers have helped us.  Very many of them came in shifts, two or three hours at a time to be with Mary Ann at our house, to talk with her, help her get around, get food for her, assist her with her personal needs, read to her, take her out for a stroll in her transfer chair. 

Yes, Volunteers have dwindled over the years as they have gotten older, their own families have come to need them, and/or Mary Ann’s needs have exceeded their ability to care for her.  When I retired last July, a few decided to continue to spend time with Mary Ann, even though I no longer need to be gone from the house sixty some hours a week to serve them and their families. 

Those Volunteers have come to be friends, especially Mary Ann’s friends.  There is no need to whine to them.  They are in our home and very much aware of the demands on a full time Caregiver.  We have been and continue to be spoiled. 

The question is, how much should I say to others when they ask how we are doing?  What do you say, those of you who are doing Caregiving?  People care, but when they ask, often they don’t really want to know.  They don’t want to hear it again.  What do you say to them?

The trouble is, those of us who are full time Caregivers have pretty much one thing to talk about.  To sit down and actually read a book, or even an article more than a few paragraphs long is virtually impossible when the needs come every few minutes, when taking eyes off that Loved One can result in some sort of crisis happening before it can be averted.  There is little chance to pay attention to anything else.  A Rodgers and Hart song, “Johnny One Note” describes us whining Caregivers.  It is no wonder friends sometimes begin to drift away. 

What can we do about it?  It seems to me that there is a simple truth that offers the key to keeping others in our lives.  Care about them.  We need to ask them how they are doing and mean it.  We need not to trivialize their problems, even though ours may seem to make theirs seem to be of no importance.  Their problems are important to them, as important as our problems are to us.  We can become so immersed in our seemingly impossible situation, that we can see nothing else. 

It seems to me that we actually have a unique set of skills taught us by the most difficult situations we have faced.  We actually can understand what many others don’t.  We can be exactly the friend others need.  Yes, sometimes we are shocked at how petty some of the problems others see as so important are in comparison to ours, which far exceed theirs in that great metric in the sky — at least in our eyes. 

One of the great gifts available to us are groups, support groups, on-line groups.  (Find them by Googling the name of the disease in  your household, adding the words “support groups.”)  There we can whine to our hearts’ content.  There we can find people who understand exactly what we are going through.  Whine there, not to every acquaintance who dares to say, “how are you?”  It is no wonder we sometimes lose friends.  We want them to prove that they are friend to us by listening, understanding, sympathizing, offering to help, but we are unwilling to be friend to them. 

What sort of friends do  you have?  How do they help you?  What do  you say to them when they ask you how you are, how your Loved One is doing?  In what ways are you friend to them? 

Is it okay to whine or not?  What do you think?

 

March 18, 2009

Keeping Friends while Caregiving/Receiving

Posted by PeterT under Daily Challenges, Meaningful Caregiving | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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We just returned from an evening with friends of some thirty-five years.  As always it was a wonderful evening of good  food (Irish, of course), great conversation, and reminiscing. The eight of us, four couples have lived in the same town only fifteen of those years. We now live about an hour away from them.  the distance does not seem to separate us in any other way than geographically. 

We have stayed friends throughout Mary Ann’s progression from the Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis to the Parkinson’s Disease Dementia that is now emerging. Many who have shared experiences have revealed that friends have sometimes simply left, as the disease has progressed. 

Tonight, bathroom needs, disruptive hot flashes, challenges in eating were all part of the evening’s events.  Those challenges were simply taken in stride as part of what it means to be together as friends.  One of the group, Marlene, has been dealing with a slowly progressing version of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) for around seven years now.  She is completely wheelchair bound.  Her husband Charlie and I have much in common to talk about — he, however, is a much better cook that I.  Chronic illness with no reasonable expectation at the moment of anything other than decline, has not diminished the strength of the friendship that binds the eight of us.  It has seemed to draw us even closer together.

Our experience with this group is not necesarrily the norm.  Some, maybe some of you, have had other experiences with the impact your Loved One’s Disease has had on friendships.  I have lots of thoughts about keeping and losing friends, doing things that can build lasting friendships — even when unpleasant symptoms seem to keep friends away.  Let’s start with your thoughts! 

What have been your experiences, good or bad, with friends sticking with you or slowly disappearing from your lives as your Loved One’s disease has progressed?

 

March 16, 2009

Caregivers in Waste Management

Posted by PeterT under Daily Challenges, Practical Tools for Coping | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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In the Caregiving business, it becomes evident very quickly, that our lives (all of us for that matter) revolve around activities of our alimentary canal — input and output.  It is how we survive.  There is input that brings with it the raw material from which is mined fuel for burning in cells of one sort or another so that we can simply stay alive — be who we are, do whatever it is we do.  Then there is what is left after the fuel has been mined.  In Picher, Oklahoma, there are toxic Chat Piles, a Superfund site destined for cleanup.  The output must be dealt with.  It is called Waste Management. 

For humans the management of input and output is primary parent activity.  Those tiny people after they pop out have clear goals in life: eat, sleep, fill their pants and cry (or coo) to manipulate the big people in their homes to manage their input and output needs. 

As adults, we often collaborate on the input.  Someone or both provide the resources for purchasing the food to be prepared for consumption.  There are any number of options for getting the food ready, maybe one does the grilling outside and the other deals with the range and oven.   For the most part, we do our own personal waste management. 

When Chronic illness joins the family, not only does full responsibility for input become the responsibility of the Caregiver, but sometimes output, waste management, becomes the full responsibility of the Caregiver. 

At the risk of becoming indelicate (there is nothing delicate about waste management), I now am in charge of output in our household.  Understand that “in charge” does not connote control of when, where and how much, just dealing with it when it does come. 

There are certain rules provided on the training CD.  One is that there will be multiple expulsions of wheat colored liquid during the night.  Those events demand help from the one in charge of waste management, so that what is expelled ends up in the bedside commode (Medicare will provide that tool).  By the way, the color is important.  Too much color (dark amber) suggests dehydration and the need for more liquid input.  Red means it is time to call the doctor. 

The rules say that at least one of those trips to the commode will happen during  the Caregiver’s deepest sleep, that deep sleep we are told must not be interrupted if we are to stay healthy and functional.   Some nights there are two or three trips, other nights many more.  It is no wonder that sometimes Caregivers are not always sharp and bubbly and upbeat about how things are going.  Anyone who tells a full time Caregiver to buck up and stop whining, other people have it worse, any such person may be harmed physically — at the worst it would be categorized as justifiable homicide. 

My task is simpler than those who care for male Loved Ones.  It is far easier to contain liquid waste that drops into the commode than that for which aim is more of a challenge. 

Then there is the management of solid waste.  Those who have Parkinson’s or some other chronic illnesses may no longer have the dexterity to reach the place most in need of being reached when dealing with output.  That is where the one in charge of Waste Management springs into action.  (That just sounded silly, but please bear with me.  I am trying to say all this in a way that doesn’t gross anyone out or embarrass the ones who to their horror are in need of such help).

The rules of solid waste management are these:  it comes when it comes, and often without warning.  Almost without fail, it comes in the middle of a meal.  I suspect I can move that transfer chair (wheel chair with small wheels for indoor use) from zero to thirty-five (the indoor speed limit at our house) in a matter of seconds — pants down and seated measured in fractions of a second.  My motivation?  Need I ask?  As the one in charge of waste management, it is my responsibility no matter where it lands.  By the way, it has come to be so, that performing my   duties does not impact my ability to finish eating the meal.  Sometimes I wish it would — every time I step on those silly scales at the doctors’ offices, the ones calibrated purposely to publicly humiliate anyone who stands on them. 

The rules of solid waste production also include emergency needs during trips out to social gatherings, grocery stores, restaurants, church or synagogue or mosque or society meetings.  It happened again tonight.  Waste Management has gender implications.  For those of us whose Loved One is the other gender, there are very unsettling complexities to fulfilling the role of chief of output. 

I dread it, just dread it.  No matter how understanding people are, a busy women’s restroom with multiple stalls is not a welcoming place for a man.  When she needs to go, she needs to go.  I have learned to seek out one-holers –  men’s and women’s restrooms that have one stool and a door that can be locked behind us.  Most Casey’s General Stores, some Arby’s, often Subway sandwich shops, some Taco Bell’s, some Pizza Huts, many small convenience stores have one-holers.  Of course the greatest invention in the history of humanity is the family bathroom.  Some newer rest areas, airports, Walmarts have them.  Gratefully, there is almost always someone around who can be enlisted to guard the door while we are both in the ladies room.  Then there was the time we entered a large but quiet ladies room, only to discover that while we were in there, a busload of thirty-one Second Graders came and were standing outside, their little legs crossed, while we had a substantial need to deal with on the inside.   

I suspect that other Caregivers share with me a quiet terror that lies in the recesses of our minds all the time, a fear fueled by horrible memories of past experiences with it — the dreaded diarrhea.  How many times have we changed bedding, maybe thrown away a mattress we just couldn’t clean, tossed clothing or sheets because we couldn’t face again the task of trying to get the stains out, scrubbed bathroom floors and walls, cleaned carpeted areas. 

I have to say something now that will probably seem sort of pollyanna in its tone.  I don’t like the job of waste management.  Sometimes it feels as it the smells will never leave my nostrils.  Sometimes it seems as if we cannot have much of a life as long as we are ruled by providing input and manageing output.  For me, it has come to be part of my job.  It is what I do.  It is neither good nor bad.  It just is.  When waste needs to be managed, it gets managed.  We use what we call pads (absorbant paper underwear), baby wipes, chuks (absorbant, plastic lined fold out sheets) for under the bottom sheet on the bed.  We put fitted plastic sheets under the mattress pad.  We have a bedside commode right there so that few steps are needed at night.  There are pads and babywipes in her purse.  We take just the right balance of over the counter Miralax and Senna to keep the activity somewhere between constipation and diarrhea. 

We do it for our babies, we do it for the people we love who can no longer do it for themselves.  It is the way we express the love we declare with our words.  However stupid it sounds to say it, I find Waste Management to be a nobel profession.  It is not for sissies.  When the job has been the most difficult and frustrating and messy, afterward (not usually during) I feel as if I have just been engaged in the game of life, living it to the full, not watching it go by from the sidelines.  I am somebody, doing something that actually makes a difference for someone I love.  By the way, talk about heros — thank a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) who serves in Waste Management at hospitals and nursing homes, next time you see one.   

There!  I did it!  I knew this had to be written.  I just didn’t know how to do it and when to do it.  Caregivers in Waste Management, maybe we could form a Union — however, no striking allowed.

 

March 15, 2009

Role Changes in Caregiving

Posted by PeterT under Daily Challenges | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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I did it again yesterday, “do you want a sandwich, leftover casserole or scrambled eggs.”   Wouldn’t you know, this time, without having to use the “yes or no” question approach, she answered “scrambled eggs.”  Why did I even mention it.  Not only that, she asked if we  had bacon.  To my dismay, we did.  Then there was the raisin bread, toasted, buttered and topped with cinnamon sugar. 

I understand just how ridiculous it is to dread such a simple task — but it all needs to be done at the same time so that it can all be served hot.  Not only that, when it is done, there is at least one pan to be cleaned.  I don’t know about yours, but our automatic dishwasher will just harden cooked-on egg to be eaten with whatever is cooked next in that pan — hand washed — it needs to be hand washed — scrubbed with the little scrubby thing. 

This is not man’s work!  Before you get your nose bent out of joint (do noses have joints?), I understand that there really isn’t man’s work and woman’s work (other than the thing with the babies).  There are differences, for which we are all very grateful, but anyone can cook or wash clothes or mow the lawn or clean the house or change the oil on the car (if they can still find the place to put the oil in with all the stuff now to be found under the hood). 

It was not so when I was growing up.  If Dad wanted a cup of coffee and happened to realize it while standing in the kitchen next to the coffee pot, he would ask Mom who was sitting out in the living room to get him a cup.  She would do it!!  She knew just how much cream and sugar to put in.  By the time it was ready, he would be sitting in the living room, waiting to be served. 

He was a good man.  He was not harsh or demanding.  He took care of the car and the plumbing and the household repairs.  He mowed the lawn, planted a beautiful garden of flowers.  He grew vegetables by the acre when we got the land in the country.  It was just clear who did what. 

By the way, Mary Ann would most certainly never have gotten me that cup of coffee.  I shudder to think where it would have ended up if I asked.  She was hardly shy and retiring and certainly no domestic goddess.  But she grew up in the same era in which I grew up.  Our roles were pretty traditional.  I was the boss of the car and the outside stuff, and she was the boss of everything else.  If there is any doubt who was the boss, I rest my case with this piece of evidence: She ruled the remote control.  Enough said?

When Parkinson’s joined our family, things began to change.  By about a half dozen years into our new family configuration, with Mary Ann working almost full time to help get the kids through college, there was not enough stamina for her to go to work each day and come home to domestic chores. 

Roles changed.  I began to include some vacuuming, and clothes washing and bathroom cleaning.  I know full well how silly it sounds to say that as if it is some sort of a noble thing to have done.  Of course we should share duties as spouses, no matter our circumstances.  As time went by, Mary Ann was less able to do any of the household tasks, inside or outside.  I have come to have profound respect for single parents who must work full time to survive, deal with inside maintenance, outside maintenance, all the while filling the needs of little ones who are full of needs all the time.  I am in awe of those who have lost a spouse and must take care of everything while battling that deep and relentless loneliness that so often washes over them. 

As Mary Ann will say whenever the topic of cooking comes up “they won’t let me in the kitchen any more.”  You can guess who “they” is.  You don’t know real fear until you have seen someone whose arms and legs are waving this way and that, uncontrollably, while holding recently sharped Cutco knives.  The Parkinson’s meds produce those movements as side effects after years of taking those meds. 

While it is irrationally fearful to us, many Caregivers struggle to do the tasks our Loved Ones did before the chronic disease.  If  you have never paid the bills, or balanced the checkbook or used online banking, or entered checks in Quicken, it can be terrifying to do so.  If you haven’t learned what ingredients go with what, how long things cook, how to tell when they are done, how much salt or garlic powder or cumin or soy sauce goes with what quantity of rice or vegetables or meat, just throwing a meal together is a formidable task — give me Mount Everest, I’ll climb that, you fix dinner. 

Again, I suppose this sounds silly to those of you who can fix a toilet and cook a meal.  When it is just you, filling all the needs of someone who desparately needs you to do so, and trying to do everything that the two of you used to do, yes, when you are a woman doing man’s work or a man doing woman’s work, when you are doing it all, sometimes the smallest task seems hopelessly impossible.

One solution to the dilemma is to let go of whatever illusions may remain about what tasks belong to whom.  The tasks have no gender.   They are just things that need to be done.  Very ordinary people, just like you and me can learn to do any of them.  We actually can learn to do some of those seemingly impossible jobs.  Some of them don’t need to be done.  We just think they do because they always have been in the past, or others might judge us if we don’t do them.  We can dare to ask for help doing some of them.  We can use some of our limited resources to pay someone else to do them.  Our survival, our sanity, our need for some quality of life is worth it. 

Can you believe this all started over some scrambled eggs, microwaved bacon and a piece of toast?  Tonight I made stir-fried pork, vegetables and rice.  Who knew I could do it???  (Please do not invite me to a Pampered Chef party — unless, of course, it is held in the tool section of Home Depot.)

 

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