Supporting Caregivers, Part 2, with Daphne Davis

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by Pinnacle Senior Placements LLC and Answers for Elders radio. 

– And welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio and we are here again with Daphne Davis from Pinnacle Senior Placements. And Daphne, you know we had a great conversation about my experience as a caregiver and certainly that was that’s my heart, how I started Answers for Elders. But since then, in the 12 years that I’ve been doing this work, I learned some really important tips of the trade per se to be a caregiver, and I know you have your top five tips, that I would like to cover the next two segments, and you sent them to me. I think the first one you sent me was to pass the baton gracefully. And what does that mean? 

– Sometimes there comes a place where you feel some burnout as a caregiver or you start feeling like your motivation to be a caregiver is waning or your you feel like your life has taken a back seat. Maybe your own children that you haven’t been able to be as involved with them, or or you and your husband feel like you’re, you know, passing in the doorway as one’s leaving and one’s coming. When you start feeling those things, that’s like awesome time to either reach out to another family member, HMM, or to consider some in home care to come in and help you, to have some added support from the outside. But that also comes with some feelings of your own personal invested style. Sure, the things that you like to have done a particular way, or you’ve learned that mom and dad like this versus this, and so sometimes allowing for another caregiver or a sibling to step in and can be a little painful and it kind of like makes the hair on the back of your next fan and it’s like well, I wouldn’t say that to dad or you know, they don’t have more patients with mom. She’s just not fast at this. And so when that time comes, and and I encourage all of you, please reach out for support before you’re burned out, before you feel your emotions bubbling up, before you feel resentment, before you feel weariness, before you dread going over to mom and dad’s or the phone is ringing and you’re like it’s my comparence again. Ask for help before those feelings come, but when they do, spend some time writing down the things of the routine of the day. If you’re, you know, a full time caregiver and you’re there and I’m going to call full time, you’re there maybe four hours a day. Maybe you split it up. You live close by, you help in the morning, you help with dinner time. Maybe it’s every other day. Whatever the routine is for the caregiving right out the what you do now, because we do want it to be graceful for your parents. We want their quality of life to continue to be high and for them not to have a lot of confusion if there’s any cognition challenges, but let that continue. So right down even the littlest of things. Dad Likes his oatmeal a little extra running with some extra milk in it. I mean something like that. or every afternoon mom and I have time that we are can talk because Dad’s taking a nap at three o’clock. Or, you know, dad’s best time is right after lunch and we can actually walk down the front walkway and go check the mailbox and come back you’ve got good energy at that time. Yeah, those kinds of things. Share with the next caregiver. Share with point and no know that their style it’s going to be a little bit different. Let’s assume it’s a family member that you’re handling with a toon off to each one of you in the family has your role, each one of you have your perspectives and you have a unique relationship with your family members. Honor Your unique relationship and the sibling who’s coming in to give some support, because they’re both valid and they’re both real, and so it’s things sound a little bit different. I mean my sister and I would be very different in our style. I’m more chatty than she is. I’m going to be a little more open ended questions, and so I listen to her and they’re sitting there just kind of looking at each other. I’m like talk to him, but that’s matter of personality and to different dynamic with them as a result, to exactly so allow for all of those changes. The bottom line is is that we want the person receiving the care. Let’s against assume your parents to feel honored, supported at a level that they’re not anxious wow, supported at a level that they feel purposeful. Still allow them to take time to get dressed. It doesn’t matter if it takes twenty minutes to put on a blouse, doesn’t matter. Let them do it. Yeah, and let the next person know. I mean my personality might be a little more get it done and move on to the next event. I had to learn to slow down. I had learned to be it is okay if dad wants to make his own sandwich and he has to open up the refrigerator four times because they didn’t get everything out of there at the first time around, big deal. Allow different styles to come in. So the passing of that baton can be challenging. If you personalize the style, if you if you take ownership, that your way is the only way of providing care, and that’s not that’s not the truth. Right. This is what’s the bottom line. Parents to have dignity, purpose, support, lack of anxiety. So you know, we now we’ve been touching on your second you know, one of your second rules, which is allowing for different styles, and I think that’s really a key point that I want to bring out, because everybody does do things differently and certainly your parent has a different dynamic with all of your siblings and that’s a whole other piece of it as well, and certainly you know to remember that, and I allow you, know, the family to interact in the way you know with your parents that they’ve always done, which is interesting. You know in sometimes that that’s hard because you’re seeing that parent every day and and you’re hearing the thoughts that that parent might have about your sibling. But then when your sibling shows up, it’s like, Oh that everything’s forgiven and everything’s wonderful, you know, and you’re just going like earl. But there’s Times that you need to just realize that the whole point, the whole dynamic of the family, especially if your parent is a matriarch or patriarch of the family and everybody revolves around them. There’s this whole other piece that you realize that doesn’t necessarily change. There’s some constants in there, you know, as you’re passing that baton. Also, sometimes it might be that you’re not giving up all of the the caregiving responsibilities, but you’re dividing caregiving responsibility. That’s true. You know. I’m working with a number of families that are couple situations right now and the children are trying to excuse me, are trying to figure out how how to have a division of responsibilities and how to let the other people do the things as they’re going to do them. And now you’re intimately involved in the daily routines and the things that have to happen. And obvious one is somebody takes over medication, let’s say, and someone takes over grocery shopping or menu planning for somebody else says no, I’ll make sure this is always been continent supplies in the house. You know, there’s lots of ways to divide up that responsibility of caregiving, but it’s working together, allowing for each other strength, having value for what they’re doing, however they’re doing it. Now I always refer to when I’m talking to families, I refer to we’ll have two or three points on your litmus test. That does it check off the things that we want to do. In doing that activity, in ordering the continent supplies, is that meeting our criteria of why we’re even doing care and that keeps everybody on the same page. It takes the emotion out of it and makes it perfunctory and it’s the Gisticul and what you’re saying, which is really interesting, is that someone has an established role, not only do they feel a sense of purpose in this, but you, as the primary caregiver, don’t feel overwhelmed to have to do everything. If you, as a family, can work to all work together, that’s amazing. Okay, it’s awesome. It’s awesome and I want to but a lot of situations. So, you know, I really want to move into we have a few minutes and I might even be overlapping a little bit, but let’s talk about finances. Finances is a real the key thing. I know for me, you know, I thought my mother had had plenty of money to live the rest of her life. Well, when her assisted living fees happened, you know, you you know, we were up paying ninety five hundred dollars a month by the time that she you know, and and because she had so many needs and requirements, and that’s when it rolls in, it it runs out really quickly, and so, you know, I always tell families don’t think that you know that their money is going to outlast them in this. They’ve got millions of millions and millions of dollars, because one thing could happen. My mother had, you know, several different issues, I’ll stemming from COOPD. So obviously you know vascular issues, all kinds of things like that. But what I learned really quick was to track finances separate and I noticed that that’s one of your key chips. It is a little overview and then we’re going to get into it in our next segment. Yeah, really important to have everyone be on the same page that no one’s going to pay for things themselves. If there is an expense that someone wants to absorb and take, submit a bill. So at least we know that this is the cost of care. Know that, because there’s ramifications down the road, for if they’re reading to convert to Medicaid, how has money’s all been spent? Again, we don’t want to benefits and US. The whole other thing with your parent is a veteran m yeah, there’s a lot of things that go into qualifying for different programs. So coming up as a family to having a system of how do we keep track of our expenses in terms of care and for things, and they can be a little things like you know, I was at the store and are sticking up some clothing for myself and I remember that dad needed new tshirts. Have it written down. I mean I would recommend to having that reimbursed. I would recommend to having maybe that somebody’s job that they are there the accountant, but, you know, the bookkeeper of everything. So we can move into that a little bit more. But it is important to pay attention to those things. Well, I think to what I learned to do with my mom, which was really helpful, is in her bank, we just opened up a separate little flush fund account for me because my mom had, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t want to even have responsibility for. But I had what I called my caregiver account and she we put five hundred dollars a month in that account. It was just automatic on the first of every month and that was a little debit card. So of my mother needed grocer is, is she needed anything, that was on that separate account that I did and I was the only one. But here was the beauty of it. If family members wanted to see what was going on with the expenses, they could look at it online because I gave it the pass code to, you know, my siblings and so the great thing about that is is it’s all tracks separately. I’m not mixing my money in between of anything. If I needed more money on situations, you know, where we needed more than five hundred dollars, we you know, we’ve transferred it over, but everything was kept some you know, some separate and simple. And if I went to the grocery store I had to buy half and half or whatever it was, I just rang it up separate. Those are things that I think I really helpful, especially if you never know what’s going to go down the path, and I think it’s also important, you know, just for your siblings to understand that. So anyway, we’re running over every time, but I’m just wanting to let you know that definitely everyone will be right back right after this. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom.