FAMILY CAREGIVING DOESN’T HAVE
TO BE THIS HARD
Family caregiving is a new phenomenon, a result of the amazing discoveries made in healthcare in the past 100 years or so. In 1900 the average age of death was 47. People died from infectious diseases. Penicillin came along in mid century and suddenly we had a way to combat infections. Pneumonia was not quite the killer it used to be. Wounds incurred on the battlefield weren’t quite the killers they used to be.
We developed surgical tools and procedures that allow doctors to remove blockages from arteries, tumors from brains and replace a damaged kidney with a new one. We have multivitamin pills to make up for the vitamins we do not get in our diet and we have drugs to lower our cholesterol and manage our depression. We have done all these amazing things and, in the process, have created caregiving families.
As we well know family caregiving is hard. It will always be hard because at its core it is about watching someone you love lose their abilities, not be able to fully realize their potential, be in pain, or have a shortened life. The grief that goes hand in hand with being a family caregiver is something we all need to learn how to live with.
But that does NOT mean we should suffer:
- Lack of respect from healthcare professionals who demand a lot of us but don’t provide us with the attention and information needed to fulfill our caregiving roles.
- Financial repercussions of caregiving that can literally crush a family’s ability to live a decent life.
- Negative health consequences
- Discrimination at work
- Inadequate community support services such as transportation
Caregiving is hard and it always will be, but it doesn’t have to be quite as hard as it currently is.
As a family caregiver do you ever feel like screaming out …
Hello! Does anybody know I’m out here? Hello! Do you care that I haven’t slept through the night in two years, but am still expected to remember to give my husband a dozen pills a day?
Unfortunately the answer to these questions is “no”. People who aren’t family caregivers don’t have a clue. But they should because what is happening to you today will most likely happen to them tomorrow!
So what can we do to get America and Americans to take notice, to recognize we have created a “brave new world” but have not equipped the populace with the tools they need to live in it, or the vehicles to get around in it, or the healthcare services to underpin their wellbeing? Since the initial passage of the National Family Caregiver Support Program in 2000 there have been many pieces of family-caregiver focused legislation proposed. NFCA and other organizations concerned with the well-being of family caregivers work to help legislators craft bills that really will make a positive difference in caregivers’ lives and the lives of their loved ones and we work to make modifications in the ones we don’t agree with.
Family caregivers need to fight for their civil rights and the accompanying education, services, financial assistance and responsive healthcare system needed to overcome the problems our families confront. It is important that family caregivers recognize that what happens on Capitol Hill and in State Houses across the country actually affects what happens in their bedrooms and bathrooms on a daily basis. It will not be easy to make America a more caregiver-friendly country, but we have to start somewhere or else it will never get easier for us and/or those who come after us.
Here are ideas of what you can do.
We need to take a lesson from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and all the others who stood with him and that is if we remain quiet, if we hide, we cannot overcome, but if we speak out, if we band together change is possible – it won’t come fast or easy, but it will come.
|
