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By Carol April 28th, 2010
When I look back through my journals of the past two years, I am surprised at the inner changes I have experienced since that life altering phone call from my dad. Once he arrived in Denver, one of the first things that happened with me is that I was stripped of my fantasy of being able to bring my father back to a more engaged and happier life, a more active life, and to my mind a better life.
As long as I held tight to that fantasy, I found myself feeling inadequate, out of control, guilty, angry, and exhausted every day. My journals remind me that I was also physically tripping over my own feet all the time. I even took a couple of hard falls during those months. Splat. The first …
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By Bill April 24th, 2010
I have some experience with caregiving done badly and the emotional fallout for survivors. In my view, a huge problem for caregivers of elderly parents and other ill family members is a fragmented patient care system that has no one tracking the patient’s condition on a regular basis. In my father’s case there seemed to be little communication between specialists and none with me. There was no formal rehabilitation plan and little apparent concern for my father’s future welfare.
My sense is that he was seen as old, dying, and thus of little concern. I did not see him that way at all as he led a rich life until the heart attack, and I wanted him to resume that life as much as possible. What I did not do was take charge of …
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By Bill April 21st, 2010
My father died in the early 1980’s when I was in my 40’s. The hospital in my home town called that he had been admitted with a heart attack. At age 78, he had been healthy and fairly active until the heart attack. I suspect he had high blood pressure, but he never mentioned any problems other than his arthritic foot, the legacy of a football injury. The heart attack sounded serious, as he had called the ambulance himself, something he would try to avoid at all cost.
I was in a position to drop everything and arrived the next day. He was still hospitalized but did not seem to be very ill. I asked him about what the doctors had said, and he replied that after a couple more days in the hospital …
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By Judi April 15th, 2010
Our mother died last September. She was such a frail looking little lady but her frail looks didn’t tell the whole truth; she really was incredibly tough. And she enjoyed life. So when she came down with a fever on Saturday night I believed that she would shake it and recover like she always had in the past.
By Sunday night it was obvious that she wasn’t responding to any attempts to treat the pneumonia or to bring down her temperature. The staff at the nursing home recommended calling in Hospice. I knew what Hospice meant in terms of her future. They are the ones you turn to when the end is near, when there is no hope.
I still wasn’t ready to accept that, or to let her go. I delayed calling Hospice …
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By Bill April 13th, 2010
When I was fifteen, my mother started dying of cancer. The entire process took over a year: surgery, radiation, wasting, and a slow and agonizing death. We never, as a family, discussed what was going on . My role in the family had always been to make everyone feel better, but I failed at this one. Our mode was to stay in complete denial and act as if everything was normal.
I would come home from school and talk to Mom for a while, reviewing my day, but she never said anything about what was going on with her. I guess it is no surprise that I started drinking around that time. My father never acknowledged what was happening. He did most of the household chores and spent time with Mom with the door shut, …
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