Your Second Caregiver Responsibility: Take Care of Yourself!

As director of memory care programs at Charles E. Smith Life Communities, I assist in developing stimulating programming for residents living with memory care issues. Recently, I was chatting with the family member of one of these residents and suddenly refocused the conversation to the gentleman’s own wellbeing by asking, “So what are you doing for yourself today?”

He scratched his head and had difficulty coming up with a quick answer. Why? Well, he had never considered himself in the equation of care. Finally he replied that he was not coming back that evening and in fact had just decided to decrease his visits to mornings only.

We started to discuss his typical day. Every morning and afternoon he attends synagogue services. He then tries to arrive at our residence around 9 a.m. to be with his wife; he stays to have lunch with her and finally leaves around 1 p.m. Back at his home, he attends to personal affairs. That’s it. As far as doing anything for himself that might be fun, interesting, stimulating, or nourishing to body and soul—all in an effort to relieve stress and prevent caregiver burnout, he has nothing on the schedule.

If this describes your life as a caregiver, there’s abundant practical advice out there to help you help yourself. To start the ball rolling, go to the Mayo Clinic website to read “Caregiver stress: Tips for taking care of yourself.” http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caregiver-stress/MY01231.

Tips for Caregivers

In this day and age, people turn to the Internet to research anything which interests or concerns them, from politics to history… to, yes, medical information. So, on that note, I want to draw your attention to an especially helpful website devoted to Alzheimer’s disease – presented by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers and titled “Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral Center.”

As I was exploring the different links, I checked out the “News & Highlights” section – which has so much great info – and learned that tip sheets for Alzheimer’s caregivers are now available for viewing and downloading onto mobile devices.

Users of tablets, smartphones, and e-readers with an e-book app can now view and download select tip sheets for their mobile devices from the ADEAR website at http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/topics/caregiving. Go to “Caregiving Tip Sheets and Resource Lists” to see the topics and available formats.

Read the article in full at http://1.usa.gov/1cy4gzq. I guarantee you’ll pick up some useful ideas.