THOUGHTS ON CAREGIVING
In the United States 3 or 4 million persons are at work each day helping elderly friends or relatives with daily life activities. They have become known in the country as caregivers. The nature of the task seems to be most suited to women, although a good many men are also involved in this work. Many have planned to become caregivers; others find themselves precipitately cast in the role.
Those within the latter group are suddenly faced with a multiplicity of demanding tasks. Physical fatigue may be overwhelming for them. Emotional stress is constant. Friends and neighbours are sympathetic, but the needs and concerns experienced by caregivers may be difficult for others to understand.
Having gained first-hand experience with the life and problems of a caregiver, I feel able to share some of the insight afforded me in caring for my elderly parents. It was a difficult time, a demanding time, a time in which to learn and to grow. It was a time for me that could be defined, as one caregiver has expressed it, as perhaps the most important period of my entire life.
Did I rise nobly to the caregiver task? I never felt very noble! In the first stages of the new situation my response was to PROTEST! ‘This is not what
