Caring Currents

Image by _heather_r_ used under the creative commons attribution no derivs license.

For many of us who are in the thick of caring for aging parents, spouses, or other family members, it's enough just to get through the week. Looking ahead and making future plans can be daunting. We just don't know what the picture will look like a month from now, let alone a year from now, or three years from now.

A recent post in the New York Times' New Old Age blog tackled the difficult subject of how hard it is for older folks and their families to look forward to the decline and frailty that almost inevitablys come with aging - unless sudden death intervenes.

Writer Paula Span pointed out that while many older people can talk about their wills or their funerals, they jump over the intervening years and the difficult subject of how the family should deal with their needs as their health and strength decline. Yet this is an important reality for us to try to face; most people are not, in fact, going to die suddenly of cancer or heart disease but will spend a number of years in an increasingly frail state of health as they move toward the end of their lives...  Read more

Image by BaylorBear78 used under the creative commons attribution share alike license.

How did you greet the news that a massive, reliable [study] (http://www.caring.com/news/ginkgo-wont-slow-decline-of-aging-brain) discounts ginkgo biloba as a way to prevent cognitive decline or slow Alzheimer's-like memory impairment? Were you disappointed that yet another hopeful Alzheimer's "cure" has proven to be so much ado about nothing?

Hope is a powerful drug -- not only for those beset by disease, but for those who care for them. Losing hope, that buoying belief in the possibility of something better, makes an already-stressed caregiver's road so much the rougher.

That's why hope is worth holding onto, even while caring for someone with a disease like Alzheimer's, where the decline is progressive and the ultimate prognosis is terminal.

Consider -- please! -- these four ways hope can help an Alzheimer's caregiver this new year:

• 1...  Read more

This holiday season, I'm hearing the same story from friend after friend who's been visiting aging parents. Sometimes it's mom, sometimes it's dad, sometimes it's a retired spouse, but the general outline is always the same: Health problems, dementia, hearing loss, the loss of a spouse -- for various reasons an older family member has become depressed and is becoming more and more isolated. Their friendships and interests are fewer and fewer, their time hanging more and more heavily on their hands. Suddenly it's all up to the adult child or spouse who's providing care: Include mom or dad or hubby in your social plans or they'll sit home alone.

"I can't leave the house without my mom getting really upset, asking where I'm going and when I'll be back," says Karen, who's mother moved in with her a few years ago. "I end up feeling so guilty it doesn't seem worth it, so I don't see my friends...  Read more

Recently I went with two friends to a local talk given by a cancer support group called "Cancer Changes Everything." What the talks focused on was sexuality when one person in a couple has cancer.

The teacher had a gift for putting people at ease, and gradually this group of middle-aged and older people, more than half of whom were cancer patients, the other half spouses and partners, opened up about changes they've experienced in their sex lives since the cancer diagnosis.

Here are some of the things I heard:

From a 50-something man with colon cancer: "The stress of dealing with cancer treatment has completely zapped my sexual energy. I have zero libido; it feels like sex has just disappeared from my consciousness. And I'm a man; that's not supposed to happen."

From a woman in her late 60's with breast cancer: "I didn't have breast reconstructive surgery; it was much less common 15 years ago when I had my surgery...  Read more

Have you ever stood in line at the grocery store behind a cranky older person who was complaining to everyone in sight and engaging the cashier in a series of unpleasant exchanges? If so, you witnessed a phenomenon that a team of psychologists and sociologists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, and UC San Diego just documented in an important study.

Using data from the Framingham Heart Study, a huge research effort that's been following a group of more than 5,000 people for 60 years, the researchers found that as they get older, lonely people tend to spread their loneliness among others, often by pushing people away. Instead of engaging with and supporting one another, lonely people gradually, over time, isolate more and more from the rest of society.

“We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they bebecome lonely,” said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, who led the team...  Read more

Image by makelessnoise used under the creative commons attribution license.

A new study published this week in the journal Cancer has doctors, patients, and families talking -- and asking hard questions -- about what happens in a couple when it's the wife, rather than the husband, who becomes ill.

Here's what researchers found when they followed 515 patients with cancer or multiple sclerosis over a period of five years.

• A woman is six times more likely to end up separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or MS than a man who becomes ill with the same disease.

• In couples in which the woman fell ill, the divorce rate was more than 20 percent.

• In couples in which the man got sick, the divorce rate was just 2.9 percent.

• The older a woman was at the time she got sick, the more likely she was to end up alone.

• However, the longer a couple had been married, the less likely they were to end up divorced.

The researchers at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Huntsman Medical Center, and Stanford University were studying a phenomenon that has already been documented in numerous other studies...  Read more

Even though my father just died, I'm not going to repeat the relationship-building advice that caregivers hear so often: to tell your sick or aging mother, father, husband, wife, grandparent, other relative, or friend, now, while you can, and at every opportunity --- hurry, hurry, hurry! --- how much you love them.

Because if you're a caregiver, they know. Say the words because you can't help saying them, not because you feel you're supposed to.

Full disclosure: This is coming from someone infamous in her family for loathing to say, "I love you." I'm not averse to the sentiment –- far from it! –- only to the thinning of its meaning when the words are tossed off too casually, too robotically, too often, as has become the modern norm. (Pet peeve: The perfunctory "Byebyeloveyou!" at the end of every phone call.)

When I hear, or say, "I love you," I want the words to be fully intentional...  Read more

What could be more elementally human than recognizing people -- the loved ones who feature in all your family memories, the friends you wave to on the street, the special face you wake up to every morning? I can't imagine what it must it feel like when Alzheimer's or another dementia turns those once-familiar faces into blanks.

But I well know about being on the receiving end of a blank stare. I've experienced the strange sensation of not being recognized by your own parent.

Intellectually, you understand the day might come. You know it's not unusual that recognizing people will become a challenge for someone with later-stage dementia. But the first time you're called by another name, it jolts. The gulf between you seems to widen.

The first time Dad introduced me as his "sister," my heart sank. It was a confirmation of what I'd long suspected, that he only vaguely got who I was. He seems to register me as family (as opposed to a total stranger), but can't quite place me...  Read more

Image by Mykl Roventine used under the creative commons attribution license.

Compassion fatigue -- a.k.a. caregiver burnout -- is what happens when a well-intentioned caregiver crosses a hard-to-see line from One-Who-Helps to One-Who-Needs-Help. And it can happen to anyone. It happens precisely because you care so much.

Are you at risk of caring "too much"? Here are ten warning signs:

1. You use words like "always" and "never" with regard to caregiving.

Beware falling into absolutes: "I promised Mom we'd never put her in a nursing home." "I'm sorry I can't go to lunch because I always feed Sam by myself."

Being overly rigid can put you at risk for burnout.

2. Your friends seem to have stopped calling.

You may be feeling isolated or annoyed that your old circle no longer seems to check up on you and how you're faring...  Read more

Image by bravenewtraveler used under the creative commons attribution license.

Stress and isolation are risks for all caregivers, but those who are caring for a spouse can be especially vulnerable. Factors unique to being a spousal caregiver raise the odds that someone in this situation will miss out on helpful resources –- and in turn raise his or her own risk for depression, disease, and even death.

(Though research shows that risks vary by age, gender, and the spouse's condition, they exist whether the spouse is caring for a husband or wife with dementia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, or other illnesses and disabilities.)

Obviously not everything about caring for a husband or wife who's ill is grim. But the grim parts can be as dangerous as they are often overlooked.

If you're a spousal caregiver, please consider the following factors that point to a need for giving in to more help, not less...  Read more