Caregivers Talk About Challenges and Self Care

CAREGIVERS TALK ABOUT CHALLENGES AND SELF CARE

Caregiving is an act of love and compassion, but it comes with challenges. Sometimes caregiving requires families to change their living arrangements. In other cases, family members change their professional lives to meet their loved one’s needs. In every caregiving situation, it is essential that the individuals providing care give themselves permission to take breaks and de-stress.

COMBINED LIVING ARRANGEMENTS

There can be positives and negatives for family caregivers who maintain their own separate living spaces. While it is a totally separate space to get away to, it can also mean more time spent on the road driving to see and care for the loved one, including late nights or early mornings. Some families don’t have the option of having separate living arrangements such as the Kolb family in rural La Grange, Kentucky.

Mary and Jim Kolb built their walkout house to be wheelchair accessible when their daughter, Mallory, experienced an anoxic brain injury at the age of 7. However, they also tried to be forward-thinking about their design plan. “[I said] Let’s just build [the basement] like a house so the elders could live there as needed,” Mary says. In addition to multiple bedrooms downstairs, there is a family room, a full kitchen, a laundry area, and bathrooms. Now in her mid-30s, Mallory lives in the basement area, but soon after her childhood injury, her paternal grandparents lived with the Kolb family to help lend a hand with her care as well as tend to the needs of her sisters, Emily and Jessie, while Mary and her husband worked. After Mary’s mother broke her hip and couldn’t live alone anymore, Mary moved her into the downstairs part of the house. She says non-family caregivers who would help with Mallory were also very helpful in the care of her mom.

A background in occupational therapy has helped Mary manage some aspects of caregiving, but she says, “It takes a lot of communication and planning. Emotionally, it’s always a challenge.” Over the years, she found that endurance horseback riding has provided her both a physical and emotional release for her stress. She gets away for several days with fellow equestrians, camps, and rides her horse to renew herself.

DISTANCE AND DISTRACTION

Natasha Reece has been acting as a caregiver for her grandfather, Jerry Whelan, who has frontotemporal dementia, since November 2020 after his wife, Alma, was admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. The family looked into hiring outside help, but the costs were quite high. It made sense for Natasha, who had been in the social work field, to become his caretaker, although she says that early on, she actually acted as a caretaker to both of her grandparents since it took Alma months to recover.

In addition to cleaning, cooking, and running errands, Natasha was the official coordinator for her family. She had a notebook with instructions for her extended family to read for the times when she wasn’t there. Now that her grandmother is healthier, Natasha primarily coordinates activities to keep her grandfather’s dementia from getting worse, as well as to alleviate stress on her grandmother.

While not every day is great, “I’m getting to spend time with my grandparents. I don’t know a lot of other 28-year-olds that get to do that,” she says. She is big into meditation so she tries to turn to those techniques whenever she begins to feel overwhelmed, but says, “There have been times when I’m like, ‘I’m going to do laundry.’” Just getting a few minutes away to the basement can provide a little nugget of mental refreshment.

When she needs a break from her caregiving duties, Natasha Reece spends time in nature which offers a great space to meditate and gather her thoughts.

Photo by Erika Doll

Like a lot of caregivers, Natasha has learned the art of distraction to help ease tensions for both herself and her grandparents. “I’ll try to pull him away and do something. I find Papaw chores,” she says. This keeps him active and gives everyone a chance to calm down. “Right now I need to clean out my car, and I’m saving that chore for when I really need to bring Papaw outside,” she says.

Being easy-going helps Natasha keep her stress in check when caregiving for her grandfather. “I don’t need to bring him into my reality; I can meet him. If he starts talking about somebody that’s been dead for 10 years as if he just talked to him on the phone today, I don’t care. I’m not going to try to correct him,” she says. Such a conversation would be stressful for them both and wouldn’t do any good.

By Carrie Vittitoe