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 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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