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9 Signs of Caregiver Stress

Date: December 10, 2018
Author: Erynn
Categories: Stories & Tips
9 Signs of Caregiver Stress

Being a caregiver is hard. It’s emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting. There are a lot of ways stress can sneak up on you. If you or someone you know is a caregiver, look for these 9 signs of caregiver stress.

9 Signs of Caregiver Stress

9 Signs of Caregiver Stress

 

It can be particularly hard if you are caring for someone who has cognitive impairments. You’ll find yourself repeating yourself often, getting frustrated, and wanting to snap. It’s hard to remind yourself that they aren’t doing this on purpose.

No matter what type of caregiving you do, it’s good to be aware of these signs.

1. Exhaustion

If you are always feeling tired, even after sleeping, then you have a problem. Another part of exhaustion is not being able to do basic daily tasks. If you find that getting up in the morning, making a meal, or showering takes too much energy, you could be suffering from exhaustion.

2. Change in Sleeping and Eating Patterns

Sleeping and eating are key functions that your body needs to survive. Stress can cause a change in your eating and sleeping patterns. If you notice that you are either sleeping or eating too much or not enough, that’s an obvious sign of stress.

3. Anger or Irritation

When you’re stressed out, your fuse gets shorter. If you notice you’re snapping more lately or even fully losing your temper, it could be due stress. Especially if it’s at your loved ones. This is because you are so run down and stretched thin that every little things seems to be an annoyance.

4. Anxiety

It’s easy to cross the line from worry into anxiety. If you start to obsess over every little concern or worry, then you are now in the anxiety arena. No worry should make you feel like you are stuck in place with no options. That’s the difference between worry and anxiety.

5. Depression

If you are feeling overwhelmingly sad, hopeless, and are crying all the time, then you may be suffering from depression. This can get bad enough that it interferes with your daily life.

6. Lack of Concentration

There’s a problem if you aren’t able to focus on anything and have a hard time finishing tasks. Things become overwhelming very quickly and you start to forget things.

7. Social Withdrawal

This when you don’t go out with friends and family anymore. You’d rather stay home and be alone. You eventually isolate yourself to the point of not leaving your house for days on end.

8. Denial

This is when you refuse to believe that your loved one is reaching the end of their life. You think things will be better, as if it’s getting over the Flu.

You may not even believe there’s a problem. This can cause you to not take the proper steps to care for your loved ones.

9. Health Problems

Stress wears your body out and makes it easier for you to get sick. If you can’t remember the last time you felt good, you should go to the doctor.

Read more here.

Take My Hand

Date: March 16, 2017
Author: Judy
Categories: Stories, Stories & Tips
Take My Hand

Ten years ago, when he was a senior in high school, my son, Danny called me at work to say he was going to Montana for college.

Take My Hand

Take My Hand

 

He’d been accepted to Montana State University. Although this wasn’t completely shocking to hear this kind of news in January of my child’s senior year of high school, there was an element of surprise in this case, because I didn’t know he had applied to any colleges at all.

I may sound like an out-of-touch, un-involved mother, this was n’t, and still isn’t, the case. I had encouraged and cajoled Danny for years. From toilet training, to soccer fields, to senior projects, I cheered him on in a continuous manner. I did my share of the expected threatening, rewarding, crying, and celebrating with, and for, Danny. I was there for him.

My parents were there for me too. In so many ways I had a classic, middle class upbringing common to the 1960s and 70s of the television shows. My mother stayed home until it was understood I wanted to go to college and then she took a job as a secretary to supplement my father’s income.

She drove  my sisters and I everywhere we needed to go, sacrificed new clothes for herself so occasionally my sisters and I could have what was in style. We were on a swim team and even went to gymnastics camp for a couple of summers. Like many in my generation, growing up we played outside until the street lights came on and then went in to dinner at 6 pm. We sat together at the table and said grace, and on weekends we had sleepovers.

My husband and I went to visit Danny in Montana in 2007.

 

It was with Danny that I had my first hot chai latte at a local Bozeman café. It was October and there was a dusting of snow on the local mountain, Bridger Bowl, but not enough to prevent us from doing a little bouldering. Danny talked about a great climb he had with some friends and he wanted to share it with us.

I’m fit and active and third in the line of the three of us, scrambling up a number of huge boulders. Finding the right foot hold and the next place to pull myself up, I felt good and a little excited until I was just shy of the top and I realized I was stuck.

I couldn’t see a way up or down. I don’t like being defeated but I froze thinking about my next move. It was not clear. Stuck and nervous, my heart began to beat faster. I could not make it on my own and began to think about a graceful way out.

Then a hand reached down. A strong hand and a voice I knew, but did not know. My son, Danny, reached down and said “Here Mom, here, take my hand.”

This was not my little boy. Though I watched it happen one year at a time, in my mind’s eye he grew up overnight. I took his hand and he pulled me up, and I realized my boy was stronger than me. The boy I had carried and cared for, could, in one motion, pull me to the top of that rock. Emotionally it still surprises me but intellectually it makes sense. Our children grow up.

In 2013, a year after my mother’s stroke and the onset of vascular dementia, my parents moved from Florida to New Hampshire.

 

Just 15 minutes from me, I was very involved in their lives. First shopping trips and ice cream outings, then going to all doctor visits so that vital questions were asked and answers remembered.

On 12 different occasions I sat in the emergency room for 7 hours, followed by daily visits to the hospital and rehabilitation. I cheered for increased independence and steps to returning home, eventually, even choosing the right hospice company. These were things we did together.

I encouraged and supported, explained and re-explained. I celebrated a men’s night out for my father and the art projects and spelling bee championships for my mother. My husband took over finances so that my father could sleep at night. Over and over we heard how they did not want to be a burden but how grateful they were for assistance.

I imagine these many moments of having a daughter reach out to say “Here Mom, here Dad, take my hand” caught them by complete  surprise like moment I stood on the top of that boulder, looking at my son.

Knowing how to extend the hand and how to take hold is instrumental in giving and receiving care. A hand too early is unnecessary and rejected, a hand too late may result in falling or turning back without getting to the top. Too little effort in pulling and one may get pulled down, too much and we risk taking away independence and creating a learned helplessness or “excess disability.”

I heard that our children will care for us in the manner we care for our parents. Not long ago, Danny called from California and asked what I was doing. I was sitting in my car at 8:50 pm, outside of a pharmacy, waiting for an on-call doctor at the hospital to fax a prescription for my mother. There was only 10 minutes for this to happen or I ‘d have to wait until morning for medication that was critical to my mother’s immediate health. I joked that Danny should take notes because I expected the same level of care if, and when I need help.

Then comes that image of a hand reaching down.

In Home Health Care Exeter NH

Date: July 31, 2015
Author: Pat
Categories: Stories & Tips

 

Announcing Elaina

In Home Health Care Exeter NH

Elaina

In Home Health Care Exeter NH is proud to announce Elaina.

Hometown:  I was born in Dover NH and currently live in Exeter NH.

Memorable Moment as a Caregiver:  I cared for a non-verbal 74 year old woman who didn’t like to be touched. However, when she saw my son and I hugging all the time, she finally approached me for a hug! I have always taken care of others my whole life.

Did you Know?:  I love to do arts and crafts.

In Home Health Care Exeter NH Senior Services for Seniors by Seniors.

We all need a little help from time to time.

We know it’s hard to ask for help. But, getting senior services from a loving, caring, compassionate senior who really understands what life is about is the best of both worlds.

Our senior helpers can assist with all the things you need – hygiene assistance, housekeeping, cooking, shopping, mowing the lawn, getting you to the doctor, or even just changing a light bulb — and they provide at home senior care with love. That’s why we say it’s just like getting a little help from your friends.™

We personally match you with elder care companions who will fit your personality and needs. And, we work the way it works best for you. Our senior home care services are available for you every day, any hour of the week and even overnight.

What we have discovered is that the people who use our in home senior care services come to love the people who provide our elder care. It’s about getting the help and so much more – it’s about adding joy and companionship back into life. We hear over and over again from those who receive our senior in home care services that: we change people’s lives.™

We exclusively hire senior caregivers

When you search for senior care, you want to find someone who is truly going to care from their heart. Our elder care helpers get paid, but they are not providing senior care for the income. Many of our home helpers were looking for volunteer opportunities when they found Seniors Helping Seniors. Most of our home care seniors provided senior home care for their own parents and saw them through all of the stages of later life, including Alzheimer’s care, incontinence, wandering, elderly transportation, etc. They learned elder care first hand, in their parent’s home, in their own homes, at the assisted living center, at the memory care unit, and at the hospital, at the hospice center and then back home for the last several months of life. They understand the need for respite care, because they used respite services themselves. And they understand the emotion involved in choosing to hire senior home care, knowing they couldn’t provide all the home elder care themselves.

Senior Care

Senior Care for Seniors by Seniors!

Our senior helpers know senior care–but more than that–they know how to give of their heart. Geriatric care is not a job for our seniors–it is a way to give. To give something a younger person cannot: a lifetime of experience in understanding others. Our senior helpers know what you are going through as a daughter or son. They know what your parent is going through, and they want to spend their retirement years being a joy to others. For them it is a way of giving and receiving.

Do you need Senior Care? Answer these questions to find out.

Do you have low motivation, a lack of energy, and/or physical problems?

Is your family worried about you falling?

Do you have difficulty keeping up with the daily chores around your home? House cleaning? Cooking? Changing linens?

Could you use assistance getting to the doctor? Or to the store?

Would you welcome help on the outside of your home such as gardening, shoveling, maintenance?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions, it is worth talking to someone from Seniors Helping Seniors in-home services. Just ask for a free evaluation.

 Call us: 603-801-1936 (or) Email us: judy@shs-nh.com

 

It was personal experience with their own parents that led friends and business partners, Judy and Randy Loubier and Ben and Nancy Paquin to start Seniors Helping Seniors senior care services, serving the Seacoast and Southern New Hampshire. “My mother was living in Florida and underwent surgery to remove half of her right lung. Three weeks after her recovery she suffered a stroke,” shared Judy. “I was on the airplane heading home from Florida praying, ‘God, how am I going to care for my aging parents?’ That is when I opened the airplane magazine and saw an advertisement for Seniors Helping Seniors services. It felt like my prayers had been answered in more ways than one.”

Senior Services

Seniors Helping Seniors Serving the Seacoast & Southern New Hampshire

 

“Between the four of us we have been through almost every major situation you can face in caring for a parent,” said Ben. He recounted the times that he and his business partners have provided or found senior care for their parents: from close and long distance, set up hospice, used assisted living, long-term care, set up their parents’ homes to meet their special needs and made their own home a senior care home. “All through those experiences,” he added, “we wanted to support our parents in their independence and dignity and to optimize their quality of life.”

Through it all, they experienced the full range of emotions from fear and guilt, to concern and joy, he added. “We were the adult child, the caregiver, the senior, the son or daughter and the decision-maker.” These experiences, together with a common bond in faith and careers in helping others, brought the partners close together and resulted in a commitment to starting Seniors Helping Seniors of Seacoast and Southern New Hampshire.

“We truly believe that the best caregivers are those with a lifetime of their own tragedy, struggles and joys,” said Randy. “The best person to care for a senior is a senior. When we share our vulnerabilities, our aches and pains, our disappointments in not being able to do the same things as when we were young, we need genuine empathy not just a sympathetic nod. Likewise when we share stories of our youth, former careers and grandchildren, we want to talk with someone who understands, because they, too, have their own lifetime of victories and defeats.”

“We chose to start Seniors Helping Seniors of Seacoast & Southern New Hampshire senior care because of the emphasis on finding loving, caring, compassionate providers. Anything less is not what we want for our parents, and not what we want for ourselves,” he added.

As the name implies, Seniors Helping Seniors exclusively hires seniors as senior caregivers to provide care for elderly clients. Some have extensive backgrounds in Alzheimer’s care and dementia care, a common reason to ask for senior care. Their background often doesn’t come from a textbook or a classroom—it comes from direct senior care to their own parents, friends and volunteer experiences. Seniors are uniquely qualified to care for Alzheimer’s and dementia clients—they have a lifetime of practicing patience, and they have no other pressing concerns to run away to after “work.” For our senior caregivers, this isn’t a job (they do get paid) but they are there because they truly want to give of their heart.

Seniors Helping Seniors offers non-medical home care for senior clients, including but not limited to:

Provide Senior Care

Senior Care

Hygiene Assistance, Cooking, Light housekeeping, Companionship, Personal grooming and dressing, Shopping, Doctor visits, Transportation, Yard work, Mobility assistance, House maintenance and small repairs, Overnight stays (24-hour care), Long-distance check-ins, Respite care, Alzheimer/Dementia care

Seniors Helping Seniors is a senior care company licensed through the Department of Health and Human Services with the State of NH.

They can be reached at 603-801-1936, judy@shs-nh.com, or www.seniorshelpingseniorsnh.com.

Also, if you are in need of other types of senior services (eg: Elder Care Attorney) in or near Exeter, try our Resource Guide.

Caring for an Aging Family Member and Trying to Work Too?

Date: June 17, 2013
Author: Judy
Categories: Stories, Stories & Tips

If you are one of the millions of working caregivers in the US then you can likely relate to the following scenario.

Imagine getting up in the morning at 5:00 am and hopping in the shower, running to get the coffee going and then to wake up a sleeping 15 year old who has to catch the bus to school. While he showers you knock on the extra bedroom door and wake up your 85 year old mother. She has Dementia, Diabetes, and a heart condition. You help her out of bed, into any clean clothes you can get your hands on, and into the kitchen to begin taking her daily regimen of medications. Your son can’t find his homework so you attempt to help him recall where he was sitting when he presumably completed it last night. Oh-a printer problem, you quickly fix that connection with a reset and he grabs the homework and a few dollars because he is out of lunch money at school, and runs out to get the bus. Your mother is ready for her breakfast so a piece of toast with jelly is what you can manage while you hop into something suitable for the office and take a look at the clock. It is 7 am, you help your mother into the rest room, then set another cup of coffee by her chair in the TV room. You turn on Good Morning America, give her a kiss and tell her you will call her at lunch to remind her to eat. A sandwich is on the counter (don’t’ ask how you had time for that).

At work you do not discuss your home challenges with anyone but you feel ready to fall apart. The co-worker in the cubicle next to you is on maternity leave. Everyone had a baby shower for her and is filling in for her responsibilities while she is home adjusting to life with a new baby. You want to cry but hold it together. Exhaustion is too long a word for your brain to come up with—you are pooped.

According to the National Alliance of Caregivers, 43.5 million of adult family caregivers care for someone 50+ years of age and 14.9 million care for someone who has Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. The average age of caregiver is 48.0 years; about 51% of caregivers are between the ages of 18 and 49. Forty-one percent of caregivers have children, too. Part of the “sandwich generation,” many women will spend more years caring for a parent than they do raising a child. (National Alliance for Care giving and AARP, 1997) http://www.theseniorsource.org/pages/StatInfo_CAREGIVER.html

Caregiver depression is real. Sure, for those of us who are parents we can harken back to the early days of care giving. But even on those days where we “hit the wall of fatigue” because we have been up 3 nights in a row with a sick child, in our minds we know this ends. Our children grow up. They grow out of the house. They grow independent. And we have joy in our role of helping them accomplish that independence.

But what happens when the reverse is true. Like in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where Brad Pitt’s character is born old and his life moves backwards. In the eyes of a child, aren’t our parents very old when we meet them? I mean, thinking back to your first days of awareness of your parents as your parents. Didn’t they seem old? Yes, they get older but eventually if we become caregivers doesn’t it seem like there is a childish quality that emerges? A dependence that we often don’t see coming and for which we have not planned.

We think about our parents at night and during the day. We wonder if they will fall, wander, or be happy today. Will they take their medications, will they eat enough and drink enough. Have they gained more than 5 pounds this week, indicating congestive heart failure? How could I forget to take their blood sugar before giving them that cup of coffee? At home we can find we are increasingly in demand. Let me tell you, a two hour toilet schedule eats up a lot of your day.

Unlike going to work and sharing pictures of your children, most caregivers keep the worry and fatigue to themselves. A sense of isolation increases and depression can be the result. Symptoms of caregiver depression are:

• Feelings of hopelessness, agitation and/or restlessness

• Loss of interest in activities

• Irritability or frustration over small things

•Either  Insomnia or Excessive sleeping

• Changes in appetite

•Sense of  Fatigue, decreased energy

• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, blaming yourself when things don’t go right

• Frequent thoughts of death, dying or suicide

• Unexplained physical problems like back pain or headaches

What can you do to prevent caregiver depression? Ask for help! Reassess your commitments. Take time for other relationships and for yourself, (and this will likely mean asking for help). Stay positive. A recent study found that it is not the care giving itself that will lead to illness for the caregiver but the stress of care giving. In fact, in those caregivers who found healthy ways to manage the stress and who report satisfaction through care giving, little impact to health and wellness was noted.

Truly, there is a blessing in being a caregiver. An opportunity to slow down and really know someone. Because things take longer, the pace is slower. Less, and yet more is accomplished. More stories are told, more memories are shared. A sense of making a difference in a true manner emerges.

Not surprisingly, many of those caregivers that we have hired at Seniors Helping Seniors In Home Care of New Hampshire are the very people who cared for an aging parent and found deep satisfaction and fulfillment. They come to us missing that role in their lives and with an understanding and caring that knows no bounds. They relieve the stress for a family caregiver, and acknowledge the blessing of giving as a senior care provider.