When A Speaker Needs Care

For many years, my life has revolved around caring for someone in our family. I have shared that we have a son with cerebral palsy who will soon be celebrating another year of being cared for.

Family members who need care are often right under our nose and in our homes. . . including our spouses.

Life can change rapidly when a spouse becomes ill. That happened to my husband in January that has resulted in the need to focus on caring for him primarily and do the things that we both used to do together. . . now alone.

He has been a speaker all of his life and very active in helping develop programs that have built leaders and change makers, especially in the church. He was a minister full-time 57 years and then the past ten years we helped small churches on a weekly basis.

In January, he woke me to say he needed to go to ER because he could not walk.

That was just the beginning of months of treatments and many other illnesses.

In the past few months of hospitals, rehabs, full-time care in a speciality care, and back and forth involved in getting surgeries and testing and . . . and. . .many other unexpected experiences, our lives have been turned upside down.

As a speaker, author and coach for caregivers, I have experienced many situations that required making huge changes in our lives. One . . . moving us from our home of 27 years to an apartment close to the doctors and hospitals who were caring for him.

Such wonderful people have appeared to support us and the obvious changes in our lives. We could not have done it all without those special people.

It is wonderful to see doctors who care enough to walk us through the challenges we are going through. The doctors at Oklahoma Heart Hospital in OKC and the who staff are truly amazing.

Since January it seems we have had eleven doctors involved in his care (maybe more).

It is hard to see someone we depend on become dependent on us. . .

But it happens every day.

When it does, friends and relatives remind us of how important self-care is needed to survive and thrive during challenges that can drain us.

So many wonderful people appear to be involved in our lives to help lift burdens.

The hardest needs a caregiver experiences is taking time to say, "I need care. . . time out. . .rest" . . . or set boundaries of what they can and cannot do.

Since I have written and spoken about caregiving for many years, I find it a challenge to practice those principles myself. . . that are needed to survive!

For years I have found 67%-70% of caregivers pass away before the person they care for.

It is a principle that a caregiver needs to keep in mind to stop . . .rest. . .meditate . . .exercise. . . spend some time on oneself.

Even when the patient is aware of needing care, there are times that the caregiver has to remind them that their own needs are important.

It is not that the patient does not care, they are simply focused on their own needs they can no longer manage themselves.

Take it from those you see are in this situation to offer your services or understanding when they have to decline extra events because their loads have increased more than 100%.

Make sure you take the time to rest and remain vigilant while caring for the caregiver.

Thanks for taking time to read this and find you are not alone when you begin to care for your family!

Cheryl Ginnings

cherylginnings01@gmail.com

"It Takes Courage to be a Caregiver" available on Amazon

More than ½ million of Cheryl's reads on Quora.com.