how to handle the stress of being a care giver?

Question

short and simple will take any ideas .ok husband has cancer cant do anything i do it all care for him,care for daughter,care for his dog he needs for his sezuries.i do all the house work ,mechanic work on my truck ,take him to all dr appointments and when he has surgery.we tried home health 2 different ones doctors said i was better off doing it myself.i dont get no kind of help from his family with dr.app.i have to beg to get one of them to pick up kid after school.i am so tired all the time all i wont to do is sleep and i dont know why can someone plz help me

my family cant help my mother has breast cancer

Answer 1

Bottom line... from someone who had a husband who became very ill and needed a bone marrow transplant and had kids, a house, and animals to look after....

You have to look after you!

Look around you... the housework... how much of it needs to be done? How much would you like to do? Can you break it into little itty bitty pieces?

Daughter... how old? Can she take up pieces of what's going on?

Dr Appt's... how many? How about scheduling them so they can take place spaced out or all together... do what works for you... not for everyone else since you're the one doing it.

I don't have an answer for you about the family thing... families do the weirdest crap when people are sick. Are they phoning you or expecting extra stuff from you? If so... say "No."

Have you reached out to any cancer support services in your area? Take a look - they can really help. And look for a support group while you are at it. If you don't have any support groups in your town, then check on the internet... Yahoo groups has some great ones.

You sound like you are pretty close to what we call "Caregiver Burnout"... you MUST take time for you. I know this sounds impossible or silly, but if you don't, then you won't be able to do what you need to later on.

I felt very much like you when my husband was sick. And, I did much the same - I went into robot mode - gotta do this, gotta do that... and I didn't bother to reach out to the places I could and got mad at the people I thought should have helped. If the family won't help... you got to get past their selfishness and reach out to other places.

Best of luck to you... I hear your pain and I know your frustration.

Answer 2

This may seem like a cop out answer, but call your local church. Explane the situation and they will understand. If you can't get a church to help try another one. The most important thing is to remember we are all energy. And negative energy will drain you faster than anything. It will also attract more negative energy. My husband was in your place last year with me. I truly hope you can get a support group behind you. As for your daughter and school, most schools have help that they do not let you in on. I found out too late that our district would have picked up our kids and dropped them off without any problems. Too bad the school neglected to tell me what the district was willing to do. And start deligating. Ok maybe home healthcare people arent as good as you, but many times they will fold the laundry while you care for him. I am not sure how old the kid is, but have him/her walk the dog and brush it. I used to like those self feeders that the dog can feed himself with. I just used to add a new bag every month. Try freecycle to see if anyone in your area has one they can give you. Freecycle can be a great place to get things you may need but can't afford right now. It's in the Yahoo Groups. I have met a lot of people trading in freecycle. Maybe you can get some help there. As for his family they are probley enjoying watching you sweat so stop making them happy. They will want to help if they thing you do not want then too.

Answer 3

I am very good at handling stress. Not only am I a Mom,but a Mom of child with Autism,divorced single Mom,work outside of the home on a full time basis. With both my jobs in and out of the home I have to have the skill of multitasking and I do it rather well. Boy does this sound like my life as you described above to a T. My job gets crazy at work and sometimes I have that fellow co-worker who makes more work and there are times there are setbacks and it can and will mess up how things are down so I need to rethink a different approach to how things will get done then. I rarely have time to breathe when doing all of this and then some. Good question I like it.

Answer 4

I went through the same thing with my father, only I was 17, and stuck at home taking care of him and my little brother and the house. The one thing that made it do-able was that I got to get out of the house a couple hours each day for school. You need to make sure you take time for yourself, because taking care of someone who is that sick is really really hard. Do you and your husband have any friends who might be willing to help out? If not, what about your side of the family? Or someone from a local church? I know its going to feel wierd having someone else around or even asking for help, but it'll do you good in the long run. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of everyone else. Take time to go out with your friends or go shopping or do something you enjoy. Best of luck to you.

Answer 5

Stop and take a deep breath and release.
Okay, being a care giver can take a lot of yourself. Self control, slow down and take care of things by priority first, one at a time.
Don't overwhelm yourself with worry and put the pressure aside and don't think about it. IF you fail yourself, you gonna fail everything else. Get a hold of yourself and just go at it.
Good luck and we hope the best for you all.

Answer 6

check in your area as they have something for seniors that is called PLOWS. It's called Plows counsel and aging. They have somebody who comes in the home twice a week and checks on seniors. They also have meal on wheels where you can get them there meals delivered to the home daily. the people from plows also help clean the home and tidy up. I did this when I was a caregiver to my dad and it worked out really nice. being a caregiver can drain a person as it did it too me. that's why you need to get some help as it's very difficult to deal with and even you need a break.

Answer 7

Do you belong to a church? They may be able to help by providing parish members to sit with your husband while you run errands. Even consider hiring a home care aide. This is different than home health. You hire someone to come to your home and care for your husband while you get a couple hours of you time. Good luck! It takes a special person to endure all of this.

Answer 8

you are wonderful for this...it is a hard job i know....try in home health care try private people do not hire an agency but contact hospice to reccomend private in home caregivers.....screen them have your husband pick and it will work great.....agencies usually suck and cost too much. Hospice is not good if your husband is not able to walk by himself or has problems with mobility because if he were to fall the hospice volunteers are not supposed to help the patient they are strictly instructed to call 911 and wait for help, i know this happened to my client and he was hurt by it because of the amount of time it took for someone to arrive .... If this is not an option hire a maid to come in and clean or a grocery service to deliver your grocery's or organise a way to have your children picked up.... good luck to ya and your family

Answer 9

Find a support group to help you. Then call Hospice. They have volunteers to help with taking him to appointments, relieving you so you can go out for a couple of hours, bath him, clean up his room ... You may need to talk with a couple of Hospices. The one I volunteer with doesn't charge insurance or medicaid, but most do. Best of luck.

Answer 10

A man goes to a shop, picks up a beautiful cup and says "my god this cup is so beautiful" and suddenly the cup starts talking to the man. The cup starts saying "O man, I am beautiful right now, but what was the state of my being before the pot-maker made me a beautiful pot?

Before I was sheer mud and the pot-maker pulled me out of the mud from the mother earth and I felt why that pot-maker is so cruel, he has separated me from mother earth. I felt a tremendous pain. And the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me and churned me, when I was churned I felt so giddy, so painful, so stressful, I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me into a oven and heated me up, I felt completely burnt. There was tremendous pain and I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait."

Then he poured hot paint on me and I felt the fume and the pain, I again asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then again he put me into an oven and heated it to make me more strong, I felt life is so painful hence pleaded the pot-maker and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." And after that the pot-maker took me to the mirror and said, "Now look at yourself". And surprisingly I found myself so beautiful.

When god gives us lot of trouble, it appears god is very cruel but we need patience and we have to wait. When bad things happen to good people, they become better and not bitter.

So all difficulties are part of a cosmic design to make us really beautiful. We need patience, we need understanding, we need the commitment to go through in a very calm and wise way. So all difficulties are not to tumble us but to humble us.

With this understanding, let us not be against difficulty. Understand difficulty is a part of a purifying process. A purifying process at present which we cannot understand and hence we need faith and we need trust.

Let us understand how to handle stress with this background. You can be affected by stress from two angles. There is an internal stress and there is an external stress. Nobody can avoid stress; one has to only manage stress. Managing stress can be internal and also external.

The internal stress is; your thoughts can create stress, your values can create stress, and your beliefs can create stress, meaning thereby your stress is coming from your mind more from the outer world. Many people suffer not from heart attack - they suffer from thought-attack.

For example, when somebody says you are an idiot, we get so hurt, we get so victimised. My boss has called me an idiot and I am feeling tremendous pain. Now where does this stress come from? If my boss has called me an idiot, I have to ask myself "am I an idiot"?

If I am an idiot nothing to be upset about; and if I am not an idiot, then also nothing to be upset about! It is the perception of the boss. But why do we suffer from that stress? I suffer not because my boss has called me an idiot but because of the thought-attack.

I may say the boss has called me an idiot; therefore I am suffering? It is true that the words are unpleasant. But what hurts is the interpretation of the unpleasant word. The thought in me interprets. That is pain and therefore it becomes pain. Much of our stress is our mind interpreting it as pain. So we suffer from thought-attack more than heart attack.