Caregivers Stress Meter

Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis

Plenty is written these days about caregiving and caregivers.  The topic covers a vast number of situations that include all ages.  For Seniors, it becomes almost a given at some point.  My focus today is not on the one receiving care, but the one providing care.  I have the privilege of meeting couples every day who have been married for 50-plus years.  Their interactions are like a well-oiled machine.  As they promised each other, “The two have become one.”  As one individual experiences some loss of function, the spouse steps up to compensate.  One partner has arthritic hands and can’t button his shirt; the other has minimal close-up vision and can’t see the buttons; together, they can button both shirts!!! It is a beautiful phenomenon to behold.  Together they function without a hitch.

There is a dangerous flip side to that coin.  The caregiving burden can become so significant that one partner begins to jeopardize his/her health to sustain the other.  There are sobering statistics that indicate there is a 60% higher risk of premature death of the caregiver.  It is sad to think of all the implications that result.  The commitment of couples to care for one another can be misplaced when it puts both individuals in jeopardy.  Feelings of guilt or shirking one’s duty become an emotional trap.  The stress of caregiving is not primarily physical; it is the mental and emotional drain.  It would be helpful if the caregiver stress meter beeped a loud and clear caution, but it is usually family and friends who see the indicators first. It is time for a heart-to-heart conversation with family and other support people. Often just thinking through the disastrous possibilities is enough to recognize it’s time for help from the outside.