The Walk of Life

My apologies folks for the long absence since mid-November! Firstly I was terribly busy with visiting foreign relatives like my niece Joy and her family. Jay was back from NZ for his best friend wedding and since Jay and his cousin from the US whom he had not met for about 13 years, there was much to catch-up on!

There were the usual food trips to Joy's past favourites plus local short trips around! The most wonderful thing was our trip to Genting where Joy's kids went for all the rides and me and my brother-in-law tried our luck at the Casino and each of us won over a thousand bucks in just an hour!!!! It help to pay for all the trips and food!

Well, we have an auntie in her late 60's and all these years she was on medication to keep her mind clear! Of late she just refused to take her medication and now she is a problem to everyone! The responsibility was upon me (by popular votes in the family) to take Evie in and supervise her medication until she re-gain her composure!!! Wow! It was difficult for me to turn down since in reality none has the time to do that! In many ways neither do I have the luxury of time but at least I don't have a 9 to 5 job and most of the time I stay at home. Guess they think a full-time home care-giver is quite free! :)!

Anyway, I accepted the task and to my horror, the trip to the hospital to get her doctor check-up Evie, prescribed her the medication etc was such a harrowing experience. It was like handling a kid of 5 who wanted to run away from his first day at school!!!! Evie really did not want to go to the hospital and each and every opportunity she tried to run away from the hospital! I had to go round to hunt her down and once I caught her trying to thumb a lift from strangers!!! In addition to that I had to convince/argue with her numerous times why it was necessary for her to see the doctor!

In her current mental condition, I have to ignore most of her requests as well as remarks. Even when staying with us I had to suffer the incessant droning when Evie related to me her sad stories whole day long! Most of the stories were the bad ones and I guess that's why she became like this! When someone does not want to let go of the negative things in the past it drives you nuts!!! I pray and hope Evie gets back to her stable self soon or else it would be my turn to go bananas!!!!! It seems that according to the doctor, the medicine will take effect after a week!!!! Today is a week but there is still no signs of recovery!!!!! I am praying for a miracle too!

I remembered one incident many years ago, when a working widow asked her younger sister, who lived with her to resigned from her job to take care of the grand mother who was disabled. Of course the widow promised to pay her the equivalent of what she’s earning. The younger sister refused to accept that responsibility saying that she has her own life and career to think about.

I too pondered on this when the role of a full-time care-giver’s job dropped onto my lap suddenly. Even though I am retired, there are many things I would love to do and a life I planned to live! So, am I to throw away that retirement plan because of somebody else’s disability? Even though that somebody is your own spouse. Is my own life not just as important as theirs are? Why am I expected to sacrifice myself for somebody else? Yes it is a huge sacrifice for I am not talking about giving up thirty minutes of your time once or thrice a week. Or putting off a vacation from this year to next. I am talking about a drastic change in your own life. This new stressful life isn’t even my choice, it’s somebody else’s life. Moreover it’s one that doesn’t suit me at all let alone being equipped for it.

Wow! Is having such thoughts showed that I am a selfish person? Perhaps, because basically we are all sinful by nature and being selfish is one of the fallen traits of human kind. I guess only in a business environment that looking after capital I is considered a virtue or smart thing to do. Well, if one has the financial means, one can pay for someone to do the dirty job so to say or maybe just turned their backs on the problem and walked away.

This reminded me of another story where a spouse walked away from being the caregiver to pursue her own life! Mind you the husband is a living vegetable and there is not the slightest chance of him ever recovering Except for a miracle from God and it also meant that she’s expected to care for him as long as he lives. Would you leave if you were in such a situation and what if you were in your early 30’s? Tough call this one.

Not for a minute did I realized that I am walking down a well-trodden path without consciously knowing it. It’s just the kind of life of an average caregiver! Caregivers don’t get much attention or publicity in what they do. Most of the time, very few asked them about the tremendous stress as well as the many challenges they faced on a daily basis. Most of the sympathies and enquiries were focused on the disabled person.

Have you noticed that when someone pushes a wheelchair through a crowd, it’s the wheelchair that attracts the glances and no one notices the person pushing the wheelchair? He or she is invisible! Very few in the crowd spare the caregiver a thought. Is that so terrible? Well, before I became a caregiver I too did not noticed the person pushing the wheelchair!

This brings to mind a rather interesting question. Why do you serve as a caregiver? Is it by choice? In many cases, I think not. Was it forced upon you? I find it hard to believe that anyone held a gun to your head as you agreed to take on the care of another individual. Yet so many of you would be quick to assert that there was no one else available to do the job you're doing. What about alternative choices like hiring someone else to do the job? Possible but you could have missed out something important!

After about a year serving as a caregiver, I did pondered or had a monologue with the above question. Why did I do it? As though a voice spoke into my heart and told me why I was given this task and responsibility of a caregiver. I just knew that the answer came from God! Only the Lord could have created the circumstances that made it feasible for me to assume the responsibility of holding the life of another in my hands. How very special can this make you feel, knowing that the Creator of this universe sets you apart from others in your family to expand the depth of your love, stretching your patience and at the same time empowering you to handle the irregularities of a caregiver's daily schedule.

In closing, I like to say that care-giving is like being in love as someone said. When it happens to you, it sort of changes your entire life inside out and the emotions experienced are so overpowering that you think you must be the only person in the whole wide world ever to feel this way.

Related Posts:-

• Don't Cry At My Funeral


• The ABC's Of Caregiving


• From Caregiving To Mentoring


• Why And When

Not too sure how many care-givers see themselves as Mentors? I have to confess that I did not see that initially until I read an article “Mentoring Stroke Survivors”. Most care-givers, including myself, consider our role as someone who give care. Initially out of necessity, a care-giver will do everything for the stroke survivor. This is natural since most stroke survivors are either totally paralyzed or half-side paralyzed in the early few weeks to a few months after the stroke.

As the stroke survivor slowly recovers, the care-giver must not compromise the survivor’s return to independence. It is learning how to release and let the survivor do things for himself. This is the difficult part and especially so if the care-giver is someone close to the survivor like a spouse or children. At this juncture, the care-giver changes into the role of a mentor should occur. This is the stage where the survivor gets bored and depressed because of the enormous amount of idle time he/she has! Coping with this is stressful and very often survivors feel lost and really need someone to guide and show them how to cope with this idle time.

As mentor the care-giver must take note of the following important points :-

• Help survivor to make decisions and not decide for them.

• Suggests things to the survivor what he/she “might” do with the time.

• No pressure would ever be applied.

• Guide the survivor to establish a routine and sets goals.

• Always remember that Motivation, Encouragement and Love are the keys to success.

Ever since I started to implement the mentoring process, rock becomes less depressed, improves faster and slowly she becomes more independent. I am no expert in this but whatever I learnt from other people’s experience I share here so that other care-givers may benefit from it.

Only today, that I can relax and feel much better. Rock is really fine, definitely no broken bones or dislocation. The bruises look vicious with deep dark blue and purple on her arm. Her pain is very much subsided and she can walk better. She can be quite stubborn and I just could not get her to see a doctor for a check-up since she complained so much about the pain on her hip joint. I guess she knows better and today what a relief I have.

I was so very busy having to do every little bit of things since I insisted that rock have a CRIB meaning complete rest in bed except for a couple of times she gets off the bed and do some walking to loosen the tight spots. Normally she helps out with the washing of plates, vegetables and supervise my cooking! I noticed that what I cook by myself, she eats very little! If she does the supervision she eats more! That much to say about my cooking skills! Well I accept that since my cooking is really under-par compared to hers.

We would like to thank all our well-wishers and concerned bloggers with their emails and comments! I am sorry that I could not respond any earlier partly because of my stress level plus when I get online, my connection was so slow that I had no patience to wait just for the page to load. Maintenance work again I guess but they never inform you! Looks like everything is back to normal today! What a relief! Thanks to my blogger friends for your kind thoughts!

One of the greatest challenge to caregivers is the element of surprise especially in regards to stroke when it happens to your spouse or family member. Not many people are prepared unless it is a second or third stroke. In my case, I was totally caught unprepared and my understanding of stroke then was very very basic. Suddenly you are a caregiver to your spouse! A rather daunting task simply thrust upon you. In my previous post Stroke - Help, I mentioned about the resources where one can get information on stroke and care-giving.

Today I want to recommend some books on care-giving and the recovery process where people who had gone through as a stroke survivor or a home caregiver sharing their invaluable real life experiences on how they handle the challenges. How I wish I had such understanding and instead of fumbling my way around in my new job. I am sure with some knowledge and understanding, it helps our task to be less stressful and be a better, compassionate care-giver.