Caregiving

SandwichINK enjoyed being a part of the EldercareABC Blog Carnival last week. You can find my post with several others of interest, on such topics as “Can Seniors Go On Living at Home?,” “Medication Management,” and “Overcoming Loneliness.”

Very Interesting info – Couples have a lower risk of dementia!

Exercise can improve memory in a person suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Getting creative with your senior care is the key. Here are some great tips to help bring out your creativity.

Grandparents

Here are some excellent tips for grandparents to help their grandkids learn about reading!

For those of you who have autistic grandkids, here are two very helpful and interesting articles:

• Technology and Autism
• Protecting Your Autistic Child

Sandwich Generation:

Tech – For Business and Pleasure

• For all you Sandwich Generation Photoshop Geeks, here’s an interesting collection of Glow and Light Effect Tutorials in Photoshop:
• Remember yesterday’s post about my computer driving me crazy? I really appreciated the cute videos at Sugar Pine Realty!   They gave my senior mom and me a good laugh!

Family Friday at @HomemakerBarbi has an interesting post, Family Vacation Road Trip Planning: Breaks & Stops. Great ideas for a multi-generation vacation with your family.

Family Doctor Mag has some great Twitter health links.

If you or someone you care for is dealing with chronic illness, you’ll be interested to know that Rest Ministries announced the opening of their new bookstore.

WOW! Scientists have developed a mind-controlled wheelchair.

Have you ever thought of retiring overseas?

Caregiving for those with chronic illnesses can be especially difficult. Most of us can handle helping for a short term. But chronic means long-term, on-going. It can mean months, years, or even decades of helping a loved one with health issues that can get worse, and rarely get better.  When I helped my mom and dad as they dealt with his Parkinson’s Disease progressing, they had already been dealing with it for over ten years. We worked together as a team for another five years: helping him, encouraging him, advising him, and finally, nursing him, alongside his hospice nurses, in his final months here on earth.

I recently discovered a brand new blog carnival specifically for those with chronic conditions, Christians With Chronic Illness Blog Carnival. There you can find articles by and about Christians dealing with a wide variety of chronic illnesses.

For those suffering from chronic conditions, I think you will be comforted and encouraged as you read. I know I tend to feel better knowing that others feel like I do and understand what I’m going through. For those who are caregivers to loved ones with chronic illnesses, you will find excellent advice, encouragement, and wisdom in how to help them, minister to them, and even to understand them a bit better.

I enjoyed reading all the articles. One in particular that I especially appreciated was the James 1:5 Journal. The writer shared how her suffering has led to a deeper prayer life in Christ. She writes, “I often hear people say, “Well, I guess the only thing we can do is pray.” WHAT???? The armies of heaven are dispatched when the children of God hit their knees!! Prayer is not the last resort when all of our resources have been exhausted….after all of our best efforts have failed. Prayer is the source of all power.” Isn’t that the absolute truth!!! Be sure to read the rest of the article. It will definitely motivate you to spend some serious time in prayer today!  One of the best things about prayer – you can do it anywhere and anytime! Perfect for caregivers of any kind!

I also really enjoyed an article at Lisa Notes. I’ll have to confess, I liked it for two reasons. One, it was a great devotional about God’s power and provision in times of suffering. The other, not quite so noble sounding, is that it appealed to the Baby Boomer in me. The title, alone, will give away the reason why: “The Cracker Jack of Pain – A Surprise with Every Body.” I still remember loving Cracker Jacks, even though I haven’t had one in years! Both the toys AND the snack. The whole article put a smile on my face which is still there as I type this. 

Read both of these great articles and several more that are just as enjoyable at Christians With Chronic Illness Blog Carnival . And if you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out Caregiving’s Progressive Party as well. Both the carnival and the party are sure to put a smile on your face as well as encourage you mightily.

Research is something I love and do well at. I inherited that love for learning from my mom and have passed it on to all my daughters. Now it comes back as a blessing to me even more, when they discover something useful to share with me, just as my mom and I have done for years. One of those things a daughter shared was an excellent book for families dealing with a loved one who is seriously ill.

“The Complete Bedside Companion” by Rodger McFarlane and Philip Bashe is not light reading. After my daughter told me about it, I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. It arrived today and my first thought was, “Oooh, I can’t wait to sit down and read it.” But as I thumbed through it, I realized it really isn’t that kind of book. Or maybe I should say, it’s that kind of book and so much more! Basically, it is an encyclopedia for people who are going through difficult times with serious medical illnesses, or who may even be on hospice. I wish I’d had it when my dad was so ill, and again to help a friend who recently lost his wife! To give you a hint of what it contains, here are the primary titles from the table of contents:

Part 1: Caring for the Sick

• The Hospital & The Medical Team: Who’s Who and What’s What
• Dealing with the Doctors
• The Everyday Angel’s Cram Course in Essential Nursing Skills
• Matters of the Heart
• Mustering the Troops
• The Caregiver as Consumer Activist
• Care for the Caregivers
• Paying the Bills
• Preparing for the Worst
• Journey’s End
• Aftermath

Part 2: The Everyday’s Angel’s Cram Course in Adult Medicine

• Caring for Someone with Cancer
• Caring for Someone with Cardiovascular Disease
• Caring for Someone with Cerebrovascular Stroke or Traumatic Brain Injury
• Caring for Someone with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis)
• Caring for Someone with Diabetes
• Caring for Someone with AIDS/HIV
• Caring for Someone with Liver Disease
• Caring for Someone with Kidney Disease
• Caring for Someone with a Progressive Neurological Disease

For more specific details of what it contains, you can go to Amazon and look at the Table of Contents. Under each of the above topics, you will find five – ten subtitles! The Complete Bedside Companion: A No-Nonsense Guide to Caring for the Seriously Ill

The book is well written, well documented, and often uses personal stories intermixed with the dryer medical factual information. It’s much more interesting than a Merck Manual, though I love that book as well. It goes into the broad strokes of major diseases and the nitty gritty details of a wide variety of things such as how to clean patients after they’ve gone to the bathroom in the bed, or helping to toilet a loved one who suffers from memory loss, confusion, or intellectual impairment.  It has hints and tips given by caregivers going through the actual experience, giving advice on how to coordinate help from other family members, or suggesting that you change the voicemail message daily with a health update so you don’t have to say the same thing over and over.

The book is copyrighted 1999 and I would imagine some medical practices may have changed. As with any resource, it’s still vital to ask plenty of questions and go with what your doctor recommends. But this gives plenty of information that will probably never go out of date.

I am going to be adding this to my list of MUST-RECOMMEND books for anyone going through major health crises, and I highly recommend it to all who are or think they will be caregivers including those of us in the Sandwich Generation.