Caring for Your Caregiver

 


He holds down the fort. He picks up my pieces when I drop them everywhere. But he has needs too. Who takes care of the caregiver?

I think the most important thing is to recognize these needs from the get go. Don't wait until things get bad and then have to fix a situation. Know that we are all human and we all need to be fed physically, emotionally and spiritually. Figure out what does that for your caregiver, work with them, don't just assume. 

For my husband we have identified different levels of nourishment. Regular, weekly feeding actually comes to him through service. This might be in the form of serving at our local homeless shelter or on their outreach team or for our church. Usually it's some combination thereof. And we're not talking an hour or two on a Saturday afternoon, he needs to serve about 10-15 hours a week to feel filled up. 

In addition, he needs periodic breaks away from it all. He does this in the form of solo hikes out in the woods, usually on the mountain as far into the wilderness and away from people as possible. He'll go for as little as one night or as long as a week or more. Sometimes he'll bring someone with him, but if he does it serves a different purpose and doesn't recharge him in the same way. Really, he needs to get alone with God and his thoughts and not have to worry about anyone but himself for a bit. 

Finally, I had to learn that my husband needs someone to talk to that he can just process with. For too long, when he told me about something that he was struggling with or that was bothering him, I would try to help or fix it. This just made it worse. I needed to learn to just listen. I had to stop owning his problems or feeling responsible. It made him feel worse when I said I was sorry, because then he felt like he'd burdened me. I needed to learn to say, "I hear you," and, "That must be hard." I learned to help him process by asking, "How did that make you feel?" or, "What would you like to see done about that?" I needed to validate his feelings and help him feel heard. I needed to stop making it about me, because it wasn't.

So, a big part of taking care of my caretaker is just giving him permission, supporting him in doing what he needs to do to be healthy. It's easy to feel selfish when you're doing things to take care of yourself, even if those things are awesome like serving at a homeless mission. I need to keep reminding him that it's ok for him to take the time he needs to do those things. I'll be ok. I'll miss him, but I want him to do those things because it's who he is, it's what he needs, it makes him even better.

Here's the thing: Who takes care of my caretaker? He does. I do. We do. It's a team effort. That's one of the beauties of our relationship these days, we're a team. We work together both for my caretaking and for his. I am his caretaker and he is mine. Almost sounds like Song of Songs, doesn't it?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Next Crazy Thing

Image
Buckle in! This is a processing post so it is likely to be long and wordy and emotional and probably flawed in many ways. I thank you for your patience and anyone who makes it to the end gets bonus points in my book 😏.  Let's start with the info. I've been having progressively more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting migraines. Since my eye surgery in May, I've also been experiencing a great deal of nausea, almost daily. Sometimes meds help (with either), sometimes they don't. In addition, since the eye surgery, my double vision has intensified. My depth perception is shot, I'm regularly missing things I grab for, mistaking curbs for cracks in the sidewalk, bumping into walls or counters. Those are the three things that neurosurgery told us to watch for with regards to the shunt functioning properly: headaches, nausea, and vision changes. Now the vision changes were probably because of the surgery and the nausea was probably  because of the migraines, but th
Read more

At least it's not bad news

Image
  Radical tumor removal is not always possible because of the critical brainstem or diencephalic locations of some tumors. Tumor progression and eventual death are likely in such patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery for pilocytic astrocytomas part 1: outcomes in adult patients Kano et. al.  So my posts are usually preceded by a scripture verse, often an encouraging one. Today I needed to give you an insight into what I've been experiencing. From the time I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, about a year and a half ago, I was reassured that it was a "WHO grade 1 benign" tumor. I, mistakenly, took this to mean that it wasn't a big deal. Even when I was told in June that it had grown "slightly," I thought that meant they'd zap it with radiation and that'd be the end of it. Guess what, I was wrong. When my June MRI revealed growth, I was referred to the Tumor Center for treatment. Fearing a long, drawn-out process, I was relieved when they scheduled all my
Read more

When "Wait and See" Wouldn't Sound so Bad

Image
    Ten days after I received the call letting me know that they found something on the MRI I was sitting in the office of a Neurosurgeon.  I have no doubt that God orchestrated the circumstances that had brought me there, including a friend who is also dealing with a brain tumor recommending this clinic. But how could any of this be real? Only a couple of people knew what was going on, but there wasn't much to know before this appointment. All we had were a few key phrases on the MRI Study Result and our dear friend, Dr. Google.  I went into the appointment with the impression that the doctor would either recommend watching and waiting, doing another MRI in six months and seeing if anything changed, or taking it out right away.  In previous encounters where the option was to wait or do something I have vastly preferred doing something, but this time it was different. I had read about the potential complications of surgery and I was scared.  Not to mention, needing to act right awa
Read more