Caregivers at LTS: Debbie

 “Where’s the nurse?” demanded a young and visibly stressed doctor.

Debbie was in a hospital room with her mother and two other nurses. Her mother had developed the flu and pneumonia simultaneously, and they were at the ER for the second time.

“No, where’s the nurse? The family member who is a nurse,” he insisted.

The nurses looked at each other, confused. Debbie was the nurse he was referring to, but she remained silent.

“I didn’t answer. I wanted to be called a family member and not a nurse,” she explained. “I am a nurse, but I’m also a daughter. Treat me as a daughter. I can’t visit my parents as a daughter. I have to always visit them as a nurse."

This struggle between being a daughter versus a nurse has been a source of great frustration. Being a caregiver is incredibly stressful, and being a nurse as well as a caregiver creates an additional stress. With her experience in nursing and working with caregivers, she was the perfect person to care for her parents. She knew about all of the resources. She knew about medical procedures. She knew what to expect as a caregiver. But, her role as her parent’s nurse quickly overshadowed her role as a daughter - a role she sometimes wishes she could get back. 

“It puts a lot of stress on me. I want to be there for the remainder of their lives having a cup of coffee, watching a movie, just sitting and not talking about making medical decisions,” she explained.

She became a full-time caregiver for two parents almost simultaneously. In November of 2010, her father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He immediately began chemotherapy treatments, and Debbie was there to drive him to appointments, monitor the side effects of the chemotherapy, and be the nurse. In the middle of all of this, Debbie also became a full-time caregiver for her mother.

Only three months after her father’s diagnosis, in January of 2011, her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had been complaining of shoulder pain, and her doctor discovered a mass in her lungs. She had to undergo immediate surgery to remove the cancer.

 “I had to find the right surgeon for her, set up the appointments, and advocate for her,” she explained. “All of this was happening simultaneously."

In addition to being a full-time caregiver for two parents, Debbie was working and taking care of her own family. She has a husband, two daughters in college and a son in elementary school.  She was devoting all of her time between work, her family, and her parents.

“During that course, I had to take a family leave. I couldn’t give 100%... and I feel, as an R.N., that I need to give 110% to my family.”

She also made the difficult decision to place her father in a nursing home so she could focus on her mother’s procedure. She knew that her father’s care needs would be addressed in a nursing home, and that combined with her father’s development of aspiration pneumonia, confirmed her decision.

“It was a lot of guilt and conflict because I couldn’t really take care of him in my home. I had to help my mother recover, take care of my son, support my daughters in college and work to pay their tuitions. So, it truly is a sandwich generation situation. And again, it was just me.”

With her father’s needs tended to, her mother underwent the procedure to remove the cancer. While there, she suffered from a weeklong ICU psychosis. Eventually, she was placed into a rehabilitation facility and was able to be move home with in-home help. Following that, with the help of Debbie’s mother and in home care, they were able to move her father back as well.

“We finally got him home. It’s been back and forth, and the hard part of all of this too, I mean it’s all hard, but the ironic part is they both got sick at the same time.”

This past April, Debbie’s father was admitted to the hospital with the flu and pneumonia. Shortly after, her mother was also admitted.

“When it hits, it really hits,” she said laughing.

During all of this, Debbie has strived to find some sort of balance. She took the advice that she gives so many caregivers on a daily basis: she sought outside help. She went to see a family therapist, which helped her put everything back into perspective and reach a balance. She recently starting golfing again, a hobby that she really enjoys. And, she received a tremendous amount of support from her colleagues at Long Term Solutions.

“Working really saved my life. We have our own LTS caregiver support group. We’re all about the same age. We all have parents aging who are in crisis, and we kind of pull for each other at this point."

Right now, her parents are both out of the hospital. Her father is still working with physicians to develop a treatment plan for with cancer, and Debbie can see that her mother is suffering an incredible amount of stress. However, this past week, Debbie didn’t go with them to her father’s oncologist appointment.

“I was going to go, but I’m trying to step back, and let them do it. I have to let them make their own decisions about what they want to do. Before I would have been, ‘I need to be there. You’re their daughter and you’re a nurse, and you didn’t go to that appointment?’ I have to get away from feeling the guilt.” 

Instead, Debbie went to work and made plans to go golfing that night.