Hundreds (thousands?) of studies, articles and references to the toll constant caregiving can take on the caregiver’s physical and mental health have popped up over the last years. When I first started writing about this topic, I had to dig to find references. Now they are every place. Still, the subject needs to be kept in front of caregivers and those who love them.
Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, reported on caregiving making people sick in a story titled, well, “Can caring make you sick?” Cohen’s article serves as an excellent reminder. Cohen focuses on the mother of an injured teen, since her interviewee is Dixie Fremont-Smith Coskie, author of the book, “Unthinkable.”
Coskie’s son, Paul, was seriously injured in a bicycle accident. At the time, Coskie had six more children at home, yet she and her husband drove an hour each way, for several months, to see their hospitalized son while he lay in a coma. After Paul went home from the hospital, he still needed feeding and bathing. Paul eventually recovered from his injuries, only to be diagnosed with Leukemia. Between the two events, Coskie had an eighth child.
Coskie’s book is more likely aimed at caregiving in general (I have not yet read it), but Cohen excerpts some tips from Coskie’s work that most any caregiver can relate to.
I chuckled over one paragraph of the CNN article: “It’s not entirely clear why caregiving can make you sick, but researchers believe depression and chronically high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, both of which often accompany caregiving, take a toll on the body’s immune and cardiovascular systems.”
Many of us who have put multiple years into caregiving will instinctively know why caregiving can make the caregiver ill. But we aren’t researchers, so it’s good that studies can quantify what we already know. If we don’t take care of ourselves to some degree, we will become ill.
We need to be repeatedly reminded of this, because often we don’t even realize we are neglecting ourselves. That’s the catch. So, researchers do help us by pointing out the scientific facts.
Coksie’s statement on guilt struck a note with me:”‘”How could I possibly think about taking a walk on a beach to escape for a moment when my son could not even walk?’” she says. “‘To feel joy or pleasure or any type of happiness while my son lay incapacitated on a hospital bed just did not feel right.’” The quote brought me back to my dad, after his horrible outcome from brain surgery.
In, Unthinkable, Coskie explains how she and her family are approaching their son’s new illness with more planning and understanding. She emphasizes controlling diet, getting rid of guilt, resisting “hopeless helpless” thinking and the obsessive thought process that can go with caregiving, learning to accept help from others, and she says, with elders, sometimes you just can’t argue. You surrender. You have to let go.
Cohen’s article is a potent reminder that caregivers need to be aware of the toll caregiving can take on their body and mind. Coskie’s Unthinkable sounds fascinating. She’s got to be someone with an amazing attitude just to have survived.
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