Thrust into Caregiving

Thrust into Care Giving
When you become a caregiver, you usually don't have a say as to the timing. You can't put it off until you've finished organizing your sock drawer, or cleaning out that storage space. Noooo! One day you're tooling along tackling the usual stressors of life, when, bam, your Aunt Nellie falls and breaks a hip, or your uncle Jack starts wearing two hats, two pairs of pants, and swears he must go visit, right now, his best friend, lover, pet, who you know for sure passed away decades ago.
And bam, you're a caregiver. Or your loved one goes in for a routine procedure, and the doctors, instead, find cancer, and bam, you're a caregiver. It doesn't matter that there is an extended family of hundreds, no one else seems able, available, or healthy enough to take on the task. And you simply can't let Aunt Nellie:
A. go to the emergency alone,
B. deal with complicated doctors and medications, when she's frightened and vulnerable, or
C. go home to an empty house with three flights of stairs.
Some people are born with that dominant caregiver gene. They know intuitively, just what to do. They seem sure, organized, and confident. Others can't even watch a movie about care giving without getting a panic attack. But even if you do have the gene, you will still have to be especially careful to take care of your health, stress levels, and sanity, because natural caregives seem to be called on more often than non gene dominant caregivers, to do their thing. The risk of becoming sick or dying yourself is increased. And if you don't have that gene, the odds are, if you have any friends or family at all, you will be a caregiver at some point in your life, and your risk of compromising your immune system and becoming sick, or dying increase. So all of you may want to get out that highlighting pen and pay close attention to the chapters ahead. I'll share with you how I not only survived, but thrived as a fifteen year veteran of care giving.
In my family the caregiver supreme, was my grandmother. If someone was sick, anywhere in the country, grandma was called in. The fact that she was a Master Herbalist and the Shaman of her tribe may have had something to do with this, but we all can't be Shamans, and we'll all probably be caregivers.
I adored my grandmother and spent weekends with her shopping the Asian food market in New York, watching her buy the herbs that we would later clean, boil, push through cheese cloth, or dry, in preparation for the many clients of all nationalities that used her services. My grandmother was a Master Herbalist, part Asian, part Native American, she could cure just about anything with her herbs. As a ten year old, I found this fascinating. By the time I was twelve I knew exactly what to do for a headache, a nose bleed, or cramps. I knew how to treat everything from an open wound to constipation. She taught me which herbs diminished migraines or lowered blood pressure. In retrospect, I believe she saw in me a healer and natural caregiver. She must have been right. Why else have I spent the last fifteen years as a caregiver to my husband? We'll talk more about that later. But for now: What's the first step? First, make sure your charge is safe, and relatively comfortable, checked into a hospital if necessary, then immediately call the nearest organization that has services for in firmed people and caregivers. It may be your local Council on Aging, Veterans Administration, Medicare, or AARP.
Ask them to send you pamphlets of all of their services, and I mean all. Even if you don't need them now you could quite possibly need them later.
Then stay tuned for my next blog: How am I going to do this?