Everybody Who's Caring for Aging Parents or Sick Relative Deserves a Break from Reality
Being a caregiver and having to take care of a loved one that maybe once used to take care of you is one of the most difficult things in life. It is hard and very lonely as often even if you get support from your family and friends it only brings a very short lived relife. You are usualy able to pop out to the doctors, do some shopping or deal with other similar errands. But what you really need as a caregiver is a total get away from it all even for a short period of time break. Here is a very interesting article dealing with this type of situation from a perspective of a daughter - a caregiver to her mother with dementia.
The day after my mom was diagnosed with dementia I left the home my parents and I share for Mexico. This wasn't a vacation; I'm a travel journalist. Travel is my work, if almost always work I love. I was headed to Cabo San Lucas, to an exclusive resort off the Pacific coast, Pueblo Bonita Pacifica Golf and Spa. A more beautiful spot I don't think there is to process this kind of news, though it wasn't a surprise. Not a surprise at all. When my brother died three years ago, my mother's mind had begun taking turns down fanciful paths with views far more lovely than the one reality offers. She started to have spells during which she believed that her son was actually two people, one the grown man who had died of an overdose, one a child, a "little guy," who crawls into bed and sleeps with her at night. These delusions, occasional at first, soon grew more intense, prolonged and frequent. Eventually she started believing that we're living in a different house than the one my parents had bought back when my brother and I were young. When her doctor told her gently, as sat I watching, that she "has some dementia issues," I simply nodded, went home and gave my father the diagnosis we both knew was coming. And then I finished packing. I wasn't in shock, but I suppose I was numb. Numb keeps me going. Numb is why I don't break down when my mom asks me, as she sometimes does now, "Where is my daughter? Where is Jill?" When she gets furious and starts yelling at me after I tell her we're not going to see her gram, a woman who has been dead for four decades. Numb keeps me going. It's why I don't break down when my mom asks me, 'Where is my daughter? Where is Jill?' You can read the rest of this article here at womansday.com Read more: thecaregiverspace.org Read the full article