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How I Almost Burned Myself Out Over an Elder Care Workshop
Becoming A Caregiver
Thirteen months ago I became Gladys’ caregiver. We moved her from my daughter, Nichole’s home in Philadelphia to my home in Atlanta. During the 2-1/2 years that my daughter took care of Gladys, I traveled to Philly about once a quarter to give Nikki a four day break. Even with that experience, I was not mentally prepared to take care of Gladys.
The house was ready. We moved our offices from the first level of our town home to the third level. We installed a handicap accessible bathroom. And we made the first level Gladys’ living quarters that would also accommodate a walker and wheelchair. That was the easy part. The hard part was all of the things I didn’t know and seemed to have difficulty finding answers.
When I started blogging and reading other caregivers blogs, I found out that I was not alone. There were lots of people out there who had suddenly become caregivers for parents or some other family member. Those people also had lots of questions about elder care, Medicare and Medicaid. So, earlier this year, I decided to host a workshop.
Planning, Blogging, Tweeting and A Start-up
I have been planning meetings, conferences and workshops for over 30 years so I knew that I was able to plan a caregivers’ workshop. In my mind, the most difficult task would be finding qualified speakers. How naive! What I didn’t take into consideration was several other things that turned out to be very stressful:
- I was in the midst of setting up an on-line store for caregivers
- I have three blogs that I try to keep up
- I have two Twitter accounts that need regular updating
The bottom line is that I didn’t have time to do all of these things in addition to taking care of Gladys and working part-time 3 days a week.
More Hindrances = More Stress
- Gladys recently began having night time incontinence issues that keep me up at night
- Right after I started planning the workshop, tenants moved out of my rental property
- Marketing an event without a name recognition or an established brand is difficult
- The person who was helping me market the event lost her job and couldn’t focus on the event
- Two of my speakers pulled out three weeks before the workshop
- Only two people were registered two weeks before the workshop
Options
Obviously, not taking care of Gladys was not an option. However, I did hire someone to come over once a week to give her bathroom and bedroom a good cleaning. Seems like a small thing, but it’s a big help. Repairs had to be made on the rental property as well as advertising the house, showing the house and screening applicants. I need the income from the property so not taking care of those things was not an option.
Blogging had to be put on hold. If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that for the past 3-4 months, blog posts have been erratic at best. I hope I haven’t lost readers but I had to make some difficult choices. My other two blogs, Your Ministry Helper and Nothing In Particular suffered as well. I was really concerned about them because they are both less than a year old and don’t have much traffic.
Twitter also took a back seat. I tried to log in once or twice a day and make a few tweets about elder care or the workshop but did not put a lot of effort into it. This was risky as well because my twitter account has only been active since April.
As I look over this post, I think I must have been crazy to undertake new ventures, but I did.
What happened with the workshop and why was I determined to have it? As Paul Harvey would say, you’ll get the rest of the story in the next post.
See you in a few days!
Caregiver’s Rest Day
Today I decided to take a rest day while my husband, Fred, took care of Gladys. Every caregiver should take one. After Thursday and Friday of last week, I really needed a stress free day. On Thursday I found out that the City of Philadelphia had put a lien on our house there because a tenant left owing a $729.00 water bill. It took two days to take care of the water bill. The City of Philadelphia is not the easiest entity to deal with, especially long distance.
I’m usually awake by 5:30 AM and get up about 6:15 AM. Today Fred served me breakfast in bed, while I watched the Today Show. After my second cup of coffee, I fell asleep again. I finally got up about 11:30 AM and decided to ignore my To Do List. I haven’t slept that late in years.
Today is Valerie Day
I chose to do something that I had not done since Gladys arrived – I started reading a novel. I have a stack of unread novels and decided on Echo Park by Michael Connelly. Along with Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn, Michael Connelly is one of my favorite authors.
Today, there were no books on caregiving, dementia or blogging. No doctor’s appointments, prescriptions to pick up or cleaning chores. No gift baskets to make or e-bay sales to mail. No cell phone. Today was Valerie day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was surprised at how tired I was and how much I just needed some down time.
Caregiver Burnout – Don’t Let It Happen to You!
Yesterday I wrote about how my family shares caregiving responsibilities. Caregiver statistics show that it is important for caregivers to have and accept help from friends and family members so they don’t burnout. Some caregivers are fortunate enough to have family and friends who help with caregiving responsibilities, but there are many caregivers who want, need and are begging for help. Burnout for these exhausted caregivers is right around the corner.
