Sometimes being a #caregiver feels like I’m on a merry-go-round that goes faster and faster while I try and keep my balance. Life as mom’s caregiver has changed since she moved into Assisted Living, but the merry-go-round ride continues. https://advocateformomanddad.com/stop-the-merry-go-round/…
The quote above is from a tweet by Debra Hallisey, author of the blog, “Advocate for Mom and Dad.” It caught my attention because I was in the middle of drafting the following blog post that deals with a similar experience.
Typically, people who haven’t been caregivers of a loved one with dementia can’t imagine everything that is involved, but they do know or usually assume that it can be stressful. Thus, very early in our journey with Alzheimer’s, people began to ask me if I had “help” with Kate. For 6 years after her diagnosis, my answer was “no,” but I had thought about it long before then.
I was influenced by the experience with my dad who cared for my mom with dementia. My brother and I repeatedly tried to get him to bring in help, but he was very resistant. As Mom’s dementia progressed, I could see the toll it took on him.
I was determined not to let the same thing happen to me. We have long-term care insurance, and I planned to take advantage of it. The big question was when. The answer came in 2017 when I began to feel less comfortable leaving Kate alone. I had a regular Rotary meeting on Monday, and I was going to the YMCA on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. I also needed time for a variety of other routine chores. I arranged for help before it was necessary. At that time, the caregivers’ responsibilities were minimal. I didn’t think of them as caregivers but as sitters or companions. All they had to do was be with Kate.
Looking back, I believe engaging in help was a wise move. That’s been especially important since Kate’s experience with COVID-19 just before Thanksgiving in 2020. That coincided with her continued decline related to her Alzheimer’s. Suddenly, I really needed help. I arranged in-home care for 7-8 hours a day, 7 days a week starting the day she came home from the hospital. The caregivers were, and still are, doing things I wouldn’t be able to manage by myself.
While caregivers have minimized the stress that goes along with Alzheimer’s, in-home care hasn’t eliminated stress altogether. In fact, my stress now is greater than at any other time since Kate’s diagnosis. That is something I didn’t anticipate, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. It turns out that even with paid caregivers, family caregivers continue to play an essential role as managers of their loved one’s care. Quite often, that isn’t easy. Let me explain.
To begin with, working with my insurance company and a home-care agency required more time than I expected. It was rare for me to get through to the insurance company on one call. After completing the appropriate forms, Kate had to go through an assessment interview to ensure that she was eligible under the terms of our policy. That was repeated twice a year for the first few years and is now an annual requirement.
Simultaneously, I had to select an agency. The social worker with Kate’s primary care physician helped me sort through that. Then, I had to initiate the paperwork to get the agency approved by the insurance company. That didn’t happen immediately.
Finally, it was time to select our caregivers. We went through several before settling on two, one for Monday and the other for Wednesday and Friday. Although I was uneasy about leaving her, I see now that I had a very good situation. That was because Kate didn’t need much care. It was also before the pandemic made it more difficult to find and retain caregivers.
I wanted caregivers who had the skills appropriate to Kate’s needs, someone that Kate liked, and who would stay with us for an extended period of time. During the first four years of in-home care, I was fortunate to have one caregiver who was with us the entire time. She has since taken another job. I hated to lose her because she was the caregiver with whom Kate was most comfortable. I don’t believe that was because she had been with us far longer than anyone else. She just had a personality that Kate and I both found appealing.
During the pandemic and after Kate had gotten COVID, I had to deal with an additional agency because our original one was unable to provide the necessary caregivers. Since then, we must have had more than ten different people who worked for varying lengths of time.
Adding another agency introduced a different problem. When I first met with the owner of the agency, we talked about the process of getting them approved by our insurance company. He said something that made me believe their agency would do all the paperwork. That sounded great to me, but it turned out that each of us misunderstood the other. Thus, they worked for us for several months without getting approved. I only knew because I wasn’t getting reimbursed. When I explained the situation to the agency, they said they would take care of it, but it didn’t happen. To make a long story short, I ultimately terminated the agency. Then I spent a month or more working with our insurance company to get our reimbursement. The good news is that I finally got it, but it took a lot more effort on my part than I think it should have.
The retirement community where we live now has its own home care agency. That has simplified things, especially managing the finances. They send our insurance company a summary of services at the end of each month. Two months later, I receive our reimbursement. Although the financial aspect of caregiving is working smoothly, there is still one other aspect of caregiving that presents a problem. That involves the caregivers themselves.
I’ll save that for another post, but my point remains the same: Family caregivers are always needed to manage and coordinate the services of paid professionals we engage for tasks that we can’t do ourselves. That management responsibility can also be stressful, even when professional services are delivered in facilities like assisted living, memory care, or skilled nursing.
