Caring for Others

Caring for a loved one who is seriously ill can be a very demanding job, especially when it comes on top of everything else you are normally trying to do in your own life. More and more of us are finding ourselves in this position, as our population ages, as hospitals make greater efforts to discharge people as quickly as possible, and as home health agencies and hospices encourage people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible throughout a serious illness.

As with the needs of the person who is ill, the needs of every caregiver are unique. Here, too, however, several concerns are quite common. One is the need for basic knowledge and skills related to the routine tasks of care giving at home: for example, how to move someone; how to help someone bathe, or use the toilet; how to give medications, or how to prepare food. Or there may be a need for direct physical assistance in carrying out some or all of these tasks.

Caregivers need to know whom to call in an emergency—having a clear line to expert help, even if it is rarely or never used is tremendously reassuring and may be the difference between being able to care for someone with love and attention, and finding the task too overwhelming.

Even with the best support available, as a caregiver you need time for yourself and respite from the physical and emotional demands of care. And then there is the need for social and emotional support for yourself, as well as encouragement to look after your own physical health.

One person, writing in a medical journal about her experience of caring for her husband who had been severely disabled in an accident, referred to her situation as “the loneliness of the long-term caregiver.” She wrote, “I feel abandoned by a health care system that commits resources and rewards to rescuing the injured and ill but then consigns such patients and their families to the black hole of chronic ‘custodial care.’ Family caregivers must be supported, because the health care system cannot exist without them…Exhausted caregivers become care recipients, leading to as further, often preventable, drain on resources. Does my managed-care company realize, for instance, that during the past year it paid more for my stress-related medical problems than for my husband’s medical care? …Hello? Is anyone listening?”

Some of the resources on this website are devoted to caregivers like you, with the intention of helping you preserve your own health—in body, mind, and spirit—as you carry out this very important work.