Caregivers are our silent saints
By Mel Walsh
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12:01 a.m. PT Apr 11, 2008
There are some saints you don't pray to. Instead, you pray about them and for them. The saints I have in mind are the family members who care for the ill, frail, infirm and brain-impaired. These caregivers are the silent saints of our culture. In California alone, there are 1.8 million householders caring for someone 50 or older, mostly parents or spouses.
If you haven't been there, it's hard to imagine what these caregivers contribute and what they endure in the name of love. For them, love isn't some ethereal feeling, it's cleaning up after Dad when he's peed on the floor. It's dealing with Mom when she doesn't know who you are. It's getting the meals, doing the laundry, giving the meds, keeping the environment safe, preventing falls, being on night watch, wondering how to feed a person who can't swallow, learning how to understand someone with a stroke-induced speech loss, figuring out how to lift a husband out of bed without ending up bedridden yourself, and last - and it's always last -learning how to take care of yourself so there will be enough of you left to take care of someone else.
Bald tax facts
And what these caregivers provide does effect you, even if you can't imagine how. Here's how: the care they gave at home is what keeps their loved ones out of nursing facilities where sixty-eight percent of patients are on Medicaid, a government-financed program, a program funded by your taxes. So if you haven't yet applauded home caregivers for humanitarian reasons, you should thank them for providing tax-free services to people-in-need, many of whom would otherwise be getting publicly-funded care.
And what's more, caregivers render these services often at great expense to themselves, either not being able to work outside the house, or having to work restricted hours, or losing time on the job to responsibilities at home. And you can imagine what those diminished work options mean to their own eventual Social Security benefits.
Local Help for the Sainted
There is some help for local caregivers - never enough, of course, a lack made worse by the recent closing of the Lutz Center. One upcoming opportunity, however, is a series of classes for caregivers called: Yes, I Can!
Free to all family caregivers, the classes are on Mondays, April 14 though May 19, with a final class on Thursday May 29. The time is 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the place Sierra Nevada Home Care, 1020 McCourtney Road, Grass Valley. For reservations call (800) 635-0220.
Organized by medical social worker and family caregiver, Evelyn Donaldson, all the essential subjects are covered: caring for the caregiver, communication and behaviors, body mechanics, incontinence, legal and financial planning, nutrition and speech and community resources---where to go for help.
Other help
There's excellent help on the Internet at www.caregiver.org, home of the Family Caregiver Alliance. They have an entire section devoted to caregiving tips and offer audio classes in the subject complete with downloadable workbooks. There's also an online discussion group.
So those are still more reasons for a caregiver to become computer literate if she or he has not yet learned to do the digital dance: all the practical help and camaraderie available online from Family Caregiver Alliance.
Words to the wise
Other local sources of aid can be located by calling our wonderful, all-knowing Helpline. They not only offer resources for caregivers, they offer help to all ages and almost all problems except where to get free Botox injections and if that is your only problem, I want to change places with you. Contact Helpline on the net by googling: Grass Valley Helpline. Their email is helpline@nccn.net and their phone is 530-273-2273.
Last, the next caregiver you meet, genuflect. Crown her with laurels. Better yet, bring her supper, a bottle of wine and maybe offer a few hours of respite. She deserves nothing less.
Mel Walsh is a gerontologist and certifiable geezer. Her book of advice for older women, Hot Granny, is available at The Book Seller in Grass Valley and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
