Caregiving for a family member can take a physical and emotional toll. It is important to learn how to split the load to protect caregivers emotional and physical health.
Split the Load, Don’t Explode
SPEAKERS
Katherine Cocks
Katherine Cocks00:00
Hi, this is Kathy and I want to welcome you back to knowledge for caregivers. Today I want to talk about a little bit about caregiving and build a little bit on what I talked about last week. Well, it was actually a couple weeks ago, when I was talking about when someone begins to get dementia, what are some of the things that we need to do to begin to figure out what to do for them. I listed a lot of things in there, you're welcome to go back and listen to that. Today, what I want to talk about is once someone starts to get dementia, how do we deal with that caregiving role. One of the things that sometimes happens is people become so stressed. And we encounter stressed people all the time in our own lives. I remember recently, I went to the grocery store, this lady kind of was blocking the aisle, which I did mind, I was going to wait, let her get her things. And then I would get my things past her. But she was looking at everything, reading the labels taking a very long time. Honestly, I didn't have that kind of time. So I kind of tried to go around her, I thought I was being very polite, just like excuse me and going around or Oh my word. She exploded at me. Just started saying things angrily. And I was like, all I did was go around your cart lady. But I didn't, I just kept my mouth shut. Because I figured in her state of mind, I couldn't reason with her. I grabbed my thing I was trying to go on, she went around me blocked my way again on purpose, tried to get around her exploded again. Finally, I just went to a totally different part of the store to get some things, hoping I would not run into her again.
When people explode, sometimes they're just people that explode all the time. But most of the time when people just get angry at the smallest thing, a lot of other things have built up over time. And that is something I see in caregiving. People are taking care of someone and eventually they're so stressed out, it just takes one little thing. And then they're just mad and angry and taking it out on other people. So my goal is, if you're there, let's walk back from that. If you're not there, we want to prevent you from getting there. So what are some of the things that we can think about with caregiving so that we don't explode? I give an example. I had a client I walked in Mr. Jones. He had taken care of his dementia wife for many, many, many years. And really what happened, she had gotten to the point where she couldn't walk. So somebody had to kind of help her stand transfer, go to the bathroom, get dressed those types of things. And at his age, he's starting to hurt my back. And you know what I saw in him, the love in his eyes for his wife. He wanted to take care of her. He had spent all of these last years not doing anything for himself, just taking care of his wife and he had done a great job. But his body gave out. He knew his body had given out. He couldn't transfer her very well anymore without hurting his back. So he brought in a daughter who could help them a little bit. But he still didn't have all those shifts covered. And then he hired us. But the problem is a lot of people recognize when their body is saying, Hey, you can't lift pull tug on this person any more. But people do not recognize when someone is having emotionally healthy problems. And this person every time we were staffing or had a change, or someone called off or was late, he just lost his temper. And I don't think he was normally that way. But he had burned out and was so stressed because he had not taking care of himself. I had another client, she was bed bound was a quadriplegic, required a lot of care. And the caregivers would complain to me the paid ones. I don't know why he goes off on vacation for two weeks, and leaves his wife and I said because he's learning to take care of himself. He's learning to take care of his mental health problems while he didn't have them because he was taking care of himself. And so he didn't have that temper that exploded at the smallest thing.
Some of the things that I recommend when we're talking about caregiving and to prevent us from getting to that point is first protect the spouse. Many times as adult children there may Be a spouse or a partner who's taking care of their loved ones. And it's great we have someone built in, we don't have to hire, we don't have to take turns, we don't have to move them. But we don't realize that many of these spouses are also 80 years old having health problems, we need to make sure that they're getting to their doctor appointments, the spouse, not the person who needs the care that they are taking a break going and hanging around their church friend, are they going to some of their coffee buddies and having lunch out with people. So we need to make sure that we are coming in and providing them the time to go and take care of themselves. So remember, it's very, very important to protect the spouse.Sometimes we've got children who are caregiving, maybe one lives in town, some live out of town. And that can be difficult because you feel like the one in town sort of gets stuck with everything. But we can split the load, we can split the duties. There are many, many things that out of town caregivers can do. They can manage the checkbook, they can keep a list of doctors and make sure that appointments are made, they can monitor if people have set up cameras in the home, they can monitor the cameras, they can call and provide that emotional support. They can arrange transportation, they can do research, what are some community, places that can provide services or who can we hire, or if we're thinking about a facility, they can start calling and researching and whittling that down so that the person who is in the town can just say, Okay, we've whittled it down to three places, you know, go visit them, they can look at insurance payments, and make sure those are being maybe they can get passwords and access their medical records and keep in touch with the doctors back and forth on some of those things. Nowadays, with online ordering, they can manage the Amazon orders or grocery store orders, or so many other things that people from out of town can do. And sometimes when it's the child that's in town, or the family member that's in town, they forget to ask people go, what can we do to help. I live out of town. I can't help it. I live out of town for my aging relatives. But I do try to find a way to do something to keep involved. And I can't just up and go visit them all the time, because I have jobs and so do my other siblings. We all have jobs, we're all working full time. But I try to look for things that I can do, because I am the long distance child. So remember to work on ways to split the load.
I also recommend sometimes having things like family meetings, get together and go, what's going on? And what are our goals? And what can we do in the future. One of the things about family meetings is it's great to do. But make sure that as you come to agreement, say hey, let's write it all down. Because sometimes people hear different things. That doesn't mean you have to write every little thing down like you promised or something like that. But many children will be if one's the primary caregiver and one doesn't live too far away. Maybe Tuesday night is their night to come and hang out with the parents so that the main caregiver can take a break. I do want to come back to parents, many times those of us that are sort of middle aged, taking care of our aging parents. Our lives are busy, we're launching our own children, we're dealing with our parents, we're the sandwich generation, we're beginning to have some of our own health problems, we need to go to the doctor ourselves for many things.
So it's important that when we go visit our parents, it's not always about their aging process or their deeds or what's going on. Because sometimes we're like, Hey, I've got 30 minutes, I'm gonna run out, we're gonna have this conversation about how we're going to get healthy meals to them. And they want to talk about their day, or they want to talk about your kids or they want to talk about anything else, but that they want to have just a real adult conversation. So try to make sure to have time whether you're calling whether you're zooming, or whether you're going to their house in person to just sit down and let them talk. What's going on. What are you enjoying? Are you watching something on TV? Are you crocheting or knitting something? Is there a book that you've enjoyed reading, make sure to just have those real life conversations that people want to talk about, and then get into. Okay, now we need to know Hey, what's going on in this situation? I like to say split the load so you don't explode. So just think about that. It seems like you are the one that has to get everything done, but you not, because if you try to do everything yourself, you are going to get to that breaking point.
And the last thing that I want to say is on splitting the load. Don't be so stingy with money, you're afraid to hire people. I get it, we have a worker shortage. But hiring somehow, whether it's housekeeping yard work, errands, somebody to sit with them one day, a week, whatever it is, Will many times lower people's stress levels, because then they know that they can go take that time, take care of themselves, or it's not another chore on their list. So remember, our goal is to take care of the loved one, while also taking care of all the caregivers. And so that's why it's really important to figure out how can you split up the duties? How can you split the load so that it doesn't fall all on one person? Thank you for going on this caregiving journey with me. I am passionate to help families navigate this aging journey successfully.