What is family caregiving?
The patchwork of intricacies which goes into the every day tasks
of family caregiving is boundless, creating a multi-dimensional
puzzle.
Family Caregiving consists of:
- A vast array of emotional, financial, nursing, social, and homemaking services and support on a daily or intermittent basis.
- Care for someone who cannot dress, feed, go to the bathroom, or think for themselves.
- Care for a few years or for a lifetime. It means re-evaluating finances, re-evaluating job opportunities and making compromises.
- Learning how to work with doctors and other healthcare professionals so they treat you as an important member of your loved one's healthcare team.
- Worrying about what's wrong with dad. Why he is not remembering things anymore and why is he acting so strangely?
- Learning about wheelchairs, lifts and little gadgets which help you button a shirt.
- Wondering why no one ever asks how you are.
- Dreaming about being alone in your own house.
- Learning about Medicare, Medicaid, social security and other public programs.
- Learning what it means to die with dignity and making sure that your loved one's wishes will be honored.
- The joy you feel when your child with mental retardation or a developmental disability learns a new skill.
- The joy you feel when your spouse says they feel good today.
- The relief you feel when your mother decides it’s time to move out of the big house and into an assisted living complex.
Caregiving is hard work. Caregiving is pain. Caregiving is
loving, giving and sharing. Caregiving is accepting and learning
new things. Caregiving is the ability to go on and on and on.
Caregiving consists of lots of questions and very few answers.
Caregiving is being out of the mainstream.
Caregiving is all these things and a whole lot more.
Reprinted from What is Family Caregiving with permission of the National Family Caregivers Association, Kensington, MD, the nation’s only organization for all family caregivers.
1 800 896 3650
National Family Caregivers
Association.
