(CloCkwiSe from top left) Alyson
Johnson-Sawyer, Karen Austin, Mary Donnelly and Cannan Hyde
who CareS For tHe CAregiver?
Surviving trying times Story by
Lea McLellan lmclellan@mountainx.com
photoS by
Alicia Funderburk AliciaFunderburk.com
20
maRcH 26 - aPRiL 2, 2014
mountainx.com
karen austin still had her own children to look after when she began caring for her mother, who’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. That was seven years ago. Soon after her mother passed away, her father began showing signs of memory loss. By 2010, it was clear that he, too, needed full-time care. “I was coming over in the morning and staying with him until I tucked him in at night,” says Austin, “and that morphed into a situation where I’ve been living with him and taking care of him 24/7 for the past two years.” By that time, Austin’s youngest child had graduated from high school, and she felt she could take on the role of full-time caregiver. “I went from working full time to working part time to not having a job at all, because I couldn’t manage even a part-time job taking care of my parents,” she explains. “So my lifestyle went from going to work and being out in the world to slowly sort of collapsing in on itself. ... Dad now is in what they call the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s. So you can’t really have a conversation. Interpersonal