Family visit 2023 03 06

 

"She has plenty of help..." 

My cousin was visiting from out of town. He wanted to bring Mom's sister and husband, Aunt and Uncle, in for a visit. Aunt is 97 and extremely frail and has significantly advanced dementia. Uncle is 100, he looks after Aunt. Mom is a 92 year old mentally disabled (paranoid schizophrenia) frail elder with end stage COPD, disabling arthritis, and dementia.

These elders need caregiving for everything: moving from one spot to another, managing coats, hats and canes, sitting down, talking to each other, serving drinks, and a simple lunch, going to the bathroom, getting coats on, getting from the house to the car, and getting safely buckled into the car.

This image captures a moment from the visit - the cousins have arranged themselves around an island and are visiting amongst themselves. They are not aware of the elders and what the elders need.

When I entered the suite, after completing an unavoidable phone meeting, I found the elders sitting quietly waiting for lunch. No one had thought to serve them the lunch that was sitting out on the counter. The elders could not get up to the counter and serve themselves. 

The elders lunch had been planned for 11:30 am to make sure there was no disruption to their schedule. I got there at 12:10 pm and realized there was no one leading lunch service for the elders. There was nothing to do but get the lunch service organized - that included helping each elder to get comfortably seated for eating, dishing up their food, and making sure they were able to feed themselves.

In this scene, the elders are now seated and eating their lunch. The cousins, none of whom are family caregivers, had not thought to come and socialize with the elders or to eat with them. They weren't thinking about what the elders needed. They were not in touch with the elders and could not anticipate what the elders needed. 

I have been a family caregiver since my Mom's precipitous health decline due to an undetected ulcer in 2016. At that time I became Mom's Power of Attorney, her Representative for all health-related decisions, and took over management of her finances. My family caregiving took another big leap when Mom moved in with me Nov 1, 2021.

What strikes me about this scene is how we don't know what we don't know about family caregiving until we take on the role and responsibility. It is through the trials and tribulations of performing family caregiving work that we learn we don't know what we don't know and now we have to figure it out. Until that time, we think we know but we don't actually know based on real life experience.