Why We Gain Weight As We Age

Susan Katz thought she knew all about caring for old people. Trained as a social worker, she had spent more than 15 years working for home care agencies and for assisted and independent living facilities. So when her own parents began to falter in their mid-80s – her mother had Parkinson’s disease, and her father was debilitated by the aftereffects of prostate cancer treatment – she felt prepared to step in and help.

The reality has proved very different. Ms. Katz and her family are in some ways fortunate: her parents managed to sell their Long Island home, though not before the housing market had nose-dived. They moved into a continuing care retirement community near her home in Middletown, N.J., and hired an excellent home care aide to assist them four hours a day.

Yet Ms. Katz has found the past year and a half an eye-opening experience. Below, in an excerpt condensed from a conversation we had, she relates how her professional experiences in caregiving diverge from her personal ones.

When the Professional Turns Personal
By Susan Katz

Susan Katz at age 6, with her mother and father.

I thought it would be relatively simple. I had all this information about aging and services, so I thought I could lay out a road map for my folks. Planning for their future would be a logical process. That was a fantasy.

My blind spot was, I didn’t recognize that family members are not like clients. Your family is awash in all its emotionality. I wouldn’t be perceived as a professional; I was a daughter. You may think you know the right professional answers, but you can’t make decisions for your parents.

Take the question of moving. In the senior retirement industry, we know there’s so much people can take advantage of, if they make the decision to move in time. The rub is giving up what they hold dear: their house, their memories, their independence. My parents made the decision much later than they should have, and my brother and I sat on the sidelines and realized we were impotent. We didn’t have the means or the skills to move them forward.

My mother’s disease progressed fairly rapidly, and she needed hands-on care. After using an agency for a while, my parents decided to hire someone privately — through Craigslist. Even though I’m in the home care field, I had to take a step back and allow them to take this route. I laid out the risks — without an agency, there’s no workers’ compensation for a private aide if something happens, for instance. But they made an informed decision.

My brother and I truly believe that my mother, and my father, would benefit from increasing their aide’s hours. My mom needs an escort when she needs to use the bathroom, and you can never tell when that might be. And my dad’s life is circumscribed; he’s with my mother 20 hours a day. It’s stressful for a person who’s 84 to be continuously on call.

But he sees his role as being her caregiver. When I try to talk with him about it, it doesn’t end well. With clients, you have a professional solution for a problem. With your family, it doesn’t work that way.

Caring for my mother is such a profound experience; I know I’ve left one place and gone to another. How many of us ever see our parents naked? Or put our hands on them, like they did when we were children? My task has been, how can I reframe this experience so it doesn’t break my heart?

To dress my mother or to help her to the bathroom is so highly personal. I’m very cognizant of not having her feel embarrassed or humiliated. But even though it’s not said aloud, it’s always present: she feels terrible about being so dependent. I say, “For how many years did you do this for me?” Or I’ll make a joke or kiss her on the forehead.

Sometimes she says, “I can do this” – something like putting on a shirt – and I step back. But she’s not able to, so I say, “Is it O.K. if I help you?” I’m a take-charge kind of person, so it’s good training for me to wait and be patient and ask. Nobody teaches you that in social work school.

Being a caregiver has made a difference in my work. I understand better when families talk to me about their frustrations. And I feel a gentleness when I’m with older people. I’m comfortable reaching out to hold their hands; I find myself seeing them differently, seeing the beauty in each of them.

My mother and I have had a close and a conflicted relationship throughout our lives, with times we’ve enjoyed immensely and times we’ve had terrible fights and haven’t talked for months. Now, I’m just trying to hold on to as many wonderful experiences with her as I can, and with my dad, too.

When I leave their place, I think, “I’ll always remember this – how her skin feels, how her hair feels when I brush it.” I’m trying to catalog those memories, for when they’re not here anymore.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions,” recently published by Grand Central Publishing.

source:www.nytimes.com

Author: Paula Span