My advice for other caregivers
No matter how trying things may be, we need to remember that we are the healthy ones. I would like to illustrate this with a small story. Having five or six sleep interruptions every night for almost a year, running my own consulting business from the house, having to take international trips, earning the money to support this thing called life, I got run down — sometimes getting irritated without meaning to be that way. One morning, during breakfast, Ingrid asked me to do a small repair. I gave an irritated reply, to which she responded very kindly, “Honey, just put yourself for five minutes into this body of mine, and you won’t feel that way anymore.” I felt so ashamed. Not knowing my limits, I had run myself down and would advise all caregivers: “Know when you need to take a break and transfer responsibility to someone else, be it for an hour or a day. You need to take a break yourself!”

Another piece of advice: as you know from Ingrid’s story by now, get a second opinion on everything. I asked the right questions and got the wrong answers; a second opinion might have provided the right answers.

In retrospect, I would also call in Hospice. Ingrid was visited every evening by a nurse, who took her vital signs and blood samples, hooked up the daily IV, etc. I now know that Hospice would have provided more pain medication. But Ingrid was such an eternal optimist — and so was I. We believed we were going to prove to the world that there were still miracles to be performed. A week before her death she said to a friend, “Don’t think for one moment that I am giving up.” I always feared that I would damage that optimism — essentially “sentence her” — if I called in Hospice. Knowing what I know now, I would handle this aspect differently.

Ingrid very clearly expressed her desires about what should happen if she passed on before me. She wanted to be cremated within a day, with no funeral and no wake, but rather, an uplifting memorial service at our church. She wanted her ashes to be scattered near our favorite summer walking place — a jetty by the ocean. I only once asked her to consider that maybe I would like a place to go visit her. Her answer was simple: “Bury me in your heart and you can visit me anywhere you are in this world”. I followed her wishes and am glad I did.

source article: colon cancer alliance                                          credit: C.Nyendwa

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