A friend recently said to me: “my life seems to have made a big shift – from caring for my children, to caring for my parents”.
This is another one of those huge life adjustments that we find we have to make from time to time (from child to teenager; teenager to adult; for some, adult to parent, etc.) – often, with little time to make helpful changes. The change from child to carer is a very tricky one, that’s often full of minefields to traverse as parents adjust and children learn how to be “careful” in “caring”!
Like many others, my transition from child to carer was pretty bumpy!! I had a lot to learn! While there had been small things happening for a long time that were pointing to this change, the ultimate transition happened very quickly, when my father broke his hip in his early 80’s. Dad was a pretty remarkable man really. He had a stroke just after he retired at 65, which left him without the use of his right hand and with a significant limp. (Life lesson learnt from this – don’t wait until you retire to do all the things you really want to in life. You never know what may happen to affect this. Dad love playing the flute and was very good at it. With only one hand, playing the flute was impossible and one of the greatest regrets he had with the stroke.)
So, when he broke his hip – he had been acting as carer for my Mum whose memory was getting pretty bad. He was getting her walker out of the boot (one-handed) at the time and was blown over by a strong gust of wind. An ambulance took them both to the local hospital emergency department, where I caught up with them. It was obvious Dad was in a lot of pain and needed surgery.
This was just the start. Surgery; recovery, moving to rehab; adjusting back at home and finally accepting that more help might be needed, ultimately resulting in them moving into care.
I won’t bore you with all of the story, but I will share with you a few of the major things that I’ve learnt as a result of it all in the hope that it might help others. Please share in the comments section the things you have learnt – we all need help!
- See life from their perspective: throughout everything that has happened over the past few years, I’ve found it very helpful to have my sister and brother remind me at times, what the adjustments have meant for Mum and Dad. I have been the main carer throughout this time until recently, with lots of help from the others, and as such have sometimes been too close to what is happening in the here and now to remember where Mum and Dad have come from.
Can you imagine what it is like to be totally in charge of your life (as much as we ever are) and then to find that you need others to help you in even the little things you do. After Dad’s stroke he worked incredibly hard to gain his independence back. This meant he had to learn how to do everything with only one hand. Not an easy thing to do! Things like tying your shoelaces; opening a can of food; driving (with an aide); Dad even kept on changing the oil in the car until he broke his hip!
- At times we need to be their advocate when others aren’t listening: I’ve recently witnessed firsthand the impatience that younger people sometimes have with the elderly – not everyone – some are lovely. But some people get annoyed when older people don’t understand how the system works or need you to repeat something a few times because they can’t hear properly. I find it helpful to remember that, if we’re lucky enough, we’re all going to get older one day soon and I like to treat others as I would like to be treated – with respect and patience.
I get it. Sometimes older people can slow us down, but boy they can teach us a lot about life and the world and how it’s changed.
- Caring for the carer: this is a phrase we hear quite a bit these days – care for the carer! It’s true that we need to otherwise we get tired and run down and ultimately don’t give the care we need to. I love my Mum dearly. She’s in her 90’s now and her memory certainly isn’t getting any better. Thankfully, she still knows who her family is. She’s had hearing aids for years but we’ve learnt that a big part of her “hearing” is lip-reading. So when I take her out to give her a change from her room in the nursing home, I’m talking louder than normal, so she can hear (something I find exhausting!) Along with getting her out to the car in her wheel chair and transferring her into the car etc., – it’s quite a process and I feel like I’m running all over the place. She and I are both exhausted by the time she’s back in her room and I’m heading home.
I feel bad that I don’t get her out more often, but physically I can’t and in the long run, there’s no point feeling guilty about it. If I push myself to do more than I physically can, we’re more likely to have accidents or falls.
These are just a few things that I’ve found that I’ve needed to work through. There is so much more that would be good to look at – I think a book is in order! (Or at least another blog or two).
It’s a strange time of life. Our two kids are still at home finishing uni; my parents are in care and need lots of support and yet I still need to work to make ends meet – thankfully, only part-time these days. My mind feels very full, even frazzled at times. I feel like I’m walking in and out of several different worlds depending on where I am in any day – listening to stories going back seventy+ years; trying to keep up with the modern lingo and habits of the younger generation, while also living in the present with my husband and trying to make sense of the happenings of any given day.
It’s no wonder I feel a bit tired! Time for another coffee……