Great Gift Idea #2

Do something nice for someone you know who spends all or part of their day caring for someone else. Caregiving can be a rewarding experience but it can also be lonely, frustrating and exhausting as well. Give a caregiver the gift of your time for respite, your shoulder to lean on and your compassion for encouragement. They'll be the most appreciated gifts you give this year I promise. A massage and/or a mani-pedi always works too...

A Great Gift Idea

One of the most thoughtful and generous gifts you can give is the gift of your time to the older adults in your life. 'Tis the Season for gift giving and rather than spending time and money shopping for material things why not make it a priority to have a nice long visit with someone who would appreciate your company far more than anything you could buy for them. If you can't visit in person you might call or write them a heartfelt note letting them know how they have been a blessing in your life. If you don't have an older person in your circle of friends and family to visit locally you can check with the chaplain or social worker in your community's nursing home to find someone who truly needs the gift of your time and attention. You may just find that it's the most meaningful gift you receive this year as well.

Not quite a winner just yet

Well, my cornbread casserole turned out well enough but I wasn't happy enough with it to publish a recipe just yet. I'll fiddle with it a bit and get back to you. My temporary full-time job has ended but I may be called back sooner than I thought so we'll see what happens there. In the mean time regular blogging will commence again now that I have a little more time on my hands. 1.5 jobs plus a house full 'o people had me coming, going, and meeting myself again in the middle there for a while. Check back again soon for some blogilicious tidbits about caregiving and low-sodium cooking!

Thanksgiving Dillema

Mama and I are invited to have Thanksgiving at my daughter-in-law's parent's house this year. That means I need to just take along a couple of Mama-friendly side dishes and she can have a bite or two of whatever else she likes in addition to her turkey. (I always end up cooking a turkey even if I don't have Thanksgiving at my house. I love, love, love real turkey sandwiches and enjoy getting creative with the leftovers). Anyhow, I bought some fresh cranberries to make cranberry sauce and I want to make a yummy cornbread casserole. My dilemma is that every recipe I find for it calls for Jiffy mix which of course, I can't use due to the high sodium content. So I'll be experimenting with my own "mix" to use in the recipe. I'm pretty sure I can pull it off and I'll bet the folks won't even realize that the salt is missing. When I get it figured out I'll post it for anyone who's interested.

The Trouble With Families

Family dynamics are, shall we say, interesting. They seem to become even more interesting when Mom or Dad goes to a nursing home for rehab after a surgery or illness. Everyone wants what is best for Mom or Dad. The trouble starts when the spouse, children, grandchildren, neighbors, friends and so on all feel like they have to be in on the action of every aspect of Mom or Dad's care plan. It usually looks something like this: either the spouse or the child who has most of the caregiving responsibilities (we'll call him Bob) is in contact with the nursing staff, social worker/discharge planner, physical therapist, occupational therapist, physician, etc. Then daughter Polly shows up and has to speak to all the same staff members, getting the same information that Bob got. Later on daughter-in-law Millicent calls so that brother Morris can stay informed and she speaks to all the same staff members, getting the same information that Bob and Polly got. Except that Millicent thinks that Dad needs more or less medication, different therapies and that Mom isn't capable of making good decisions any longer regarding Dad's care. Keep in mind, now that both Mom and Dad are still quite alert and oriented and have the right to make their own decisions be they good or bad.

Anyhow, you get the picture. Most of the folks above are lovely people who mean well and only want the best for their loved one. What they don't realize is that by not agreeing to have one family member act as spokesperson and liason between the staff and the rest of the family they are actually sucking up valuable time that is needed to provide actual care and therapy for not only their loved one but for everyone else in the facility as well. I'm thinking that this ought to be a requirement on admission - choose one person to be the communicator and let the rest of the family argue amongst themselves if they have differences of opinion. Most folks have chosen the person(s) they want to handle their business affairs and make their medical decisions if necessary. I think they ought to add family communicator to the list as well. Then they can tell Bob, Polly, Millicent, Morris and all the rest what's going on with Mom or Dad and the staff can provide the care that will help Mom or Dad get back on their feet. I'm just sayin'.

A Matter of Attitude

Yes, it has been a while. Thanks for asking. I've been enjoying my new job, trying to do justice to the part-time one and then there's life. Busy times but I'm grateful to have them. Not sure what's next, the person I'm covering for is due back from her maternity leave on December 7th. I've started looking to see what's out there and hope it's better this time around. I figure there were things to learn and experiences to have and I'm kind of excited to see what God's got planned for me next.

In the meantime I've been observing life in the nursing home/rehab center world. There are stories there, as I'm sure there are in all of them, that could fill volume after volume with stories of love, pain, bravery, fortitude, hilarity, sadness and escapades of d erring do. We lose a lot by letting those stories go untold or forgotten. And there are personalities - oh, are there personalities. I stepped in to one of my resident's rooms yesterday to see how things were going. She is what we like to call "pleasantly confused" and her language is a bit on the salty side but I enjoy talking to her very much. I asked how her day was going and she replied, "Not worth a damn!" with a little laugh. I was not just a little bit annoyed by the young physical therapist who entered after me and proceeded to lecture her on using her "nice words so we don't offend anyone." Jeez Louise. She may be elderly, pleasantly confused, salty-tongued and mischievous but she's still a grown woman who deserves the dignity to be treated as an adult, not a 4 year old. But I digress. The point is that it is the ones who can laugh even when their day isn't going that great, who get up and go to therapy or out in the dining room even when they don't feel like it, who can see the silver lining even in a day filled with dark ugly clouds, they are the ones who are still engaged with life. They generally fare better in their progress but even when they don't they have a positive impact on everyone around them. I have seen even the grumpiest of nurses, aides or other residents thaw out and even chuckle when persistently engaged by a merry soul. And the biggest impact is made by those who have little or no reason to be merry but yet they persist in their cheery ways. I like hanging out with them and I want to be just like them when I grow up.

Gobsmacked!

Going back to work at a full time job while keeping the part-time job and other fun and interesting life activities (!) has had me going for the past couple of weeks but I'm beginning to find my sea legs again and get my bearings about me. For the record, I LOVE my new job working with older folks at the nursing home. I'm on one of the rehab units and mostly work with folks who have had surgeries or other hospital stays and need to get some strength and mobility back so they can go home. I see them when they come in, assess their psycho/social needs, work with their families and then arrange for them to have all the goods and services they need in place when they go home. It's fast paced and fraught with all manner of surprises and other variables but I am really beginning to enjoy it now that I'm getting the hang of it just a little bit.

So I told you all of that to tell you this; I grew up in a neighborhood just across the river from a very wealthy and prominent old money neighborhood. I went to school with the kids from that neighborhood and am still good friends with a lot of them today. I have seen lots of the movers and shakers out in the community all of my life and I must admit for a lot of my life I admired them for their successes and their standing in society (I've pretty much grown out of that and am quite content with my life overall these days even though I'm not what you would call successful in a worldly sense). Today, I was walking down a hall and I saw a woman I recognized by face if not by name who had been one of the society ladies I had seen in the paper at balls and fund raisers and in Publix in her tennis skirt chatting with friends in the produce section. But here she was, small and anxious in a reclining rolling chair, unable to communicate and seemingly unable to understand and it hit me like a ton of bricks. All the things we chase after and argue about and hold dear to our hearts all of our lives and for what? In the end what have we got left that we can hold on to? Our status, our accomplishments, our acquisitions.... none of it matters much by that point. And it can all disappear in a heartbeat. All I can do is to pray that she and all the folks I get to interact with are able to become more and more grounded on the spiritual side even as they begin to lose their groundedness on the physical side. And I pray that the transition brings with it peace and joyful expectation. And my prayer for myself is that I will remember getting gobsmacked with that realization and continue to loosen my grip on those things that I'll just be leaving behind anyhow. You can't reach out to take hold of the new stuff if you won't let go of the old.