Mimi Pockross in this week's Caregiver.com newsletter nails it in her article, "Ten Commandments for Caregiving." Read it here.
As I read her ten commandments, I kept nodding. At some points I nodded out of exhaustion. Oh my goodness, caregiving takes so much out of a person! At other points I nodded out of agreement with the wisdom of her points. But bottom line: Decide up-front to spend the time doing what she recommends and you will save yourself a lot of exhaustion time.
Commandment Number Five is Educate Yourself. Number Eight is Do Your Homework. So many resources exist now that did not exist when I began my caregiving journey. I am forever grateful that I read the books I did, because that knowledge was invaluable in arranging for what Mom and Dad needed. Homework time spent paid off. You'd be amazed (and distressed) to learn how many hospital personnel do not have disease-specific training. They are well-trained in keeping your loved one alive, but don't count on them to know specifics about how not to traumatize a person with Alzheimer's, for example. You WILL find yourself in the position of training them. So, be prepared.
Commandment Number Six, Learn Every Bureaucracy, also resonated with me. Invariably, you will need to know what hospital nurses can and can't do. Who supervises them, in case you need to speak with that person? Who is this hospital's patient ombudsman? And of course, since your mom's meds are managed by the nursing facility's nurse manager, you assume if you need to give a list of her medications to someone, you'd go through the nurse manager. Nope. Medical Records does that. I wasted three months barking up the wrong tree because I didn't know this. In addition, learn what constitutes elder abuse and how to report it. If you hire in-home help, know the supervisor!
All Ten Commandments for Caregiving in this article are worth a look. Thank you, Mimi Pockross!
