Most of you all know that I have been taking care of my MOM now for almost 14 years. Due to her medication regimen, alcohol has been a 'no-no'. However, to not be so totally heartless and cruel to this once famously 'tee-totaler', non-alcoholic beverages like Sharps and O'Doul's and Sparkling Ciders for New Years Eve celebrations and the like have kept her quite happy!

As my Fabulous @ Fifty year continues this year, I've been blessed with genes, obviously from my Mom's side, to not really look my age...whatever 50 is supposed to look like...or whatever any age is SUPPOSED to look like...(but I digress)

....but a recent jaunt to the local ...uh..BIG-MARTY, with Mom in tow left me/us empty handed as it pertains to me getting her one of her favorite adult libations.

She's listening to her favorite talk show host out in the car, not interested in having me push her around to day so that she can see the people in the store during our weekly activity to ....uh...BIG-MARTY....and I'm flip-flopping around as fast as I can to get what's on the list so I can get back out to her as fast as I can. She has , on three occasions tried to follow me into the store after promising me that she stay out for five minutes; fortunately - or unfortunately ( depending on how you look at it) - she hasn't cognitively put two-and-two together when it comes to pushing the button on the seat belt to unlatch herself. One day while I did a quick trip into the Dollar Store, upon returning to the car found my lovely Louise Mommy with the passenger side door open, legs dangling out, and her hanging onto the upper strap waiting for me to come and untangle her. I've learned not to fuss cuz is not a fussing matter; to just be calm, get her fixed back up and ask her , gently - but very sarcastically - "...and just where were you trying to go?" It's always one place or another, usually she says she was going to walk home - to Chicago - but that's another story for another time.

BIG-MARTY begins to check me out, eggs, toothpaste, Tylenol, mouth wash - and then comes to a dead stop when they get to the O'Doul's. The 'child' and the register says she can't sell it to me because "you don't look over forty". I blushed (you can't see it) and tell her thank you, I am so let's just ring it up. "No, I can't. You have to look over forty. Do you have any ID.?" I usually leave it with Louise in the car because she likes to hold my purse; it's her security blanket. I explained, politely, to the 'child' that it was in the car, but I wasn't going to go and get it right now - and that she just sold me mouth wash that had 21.6% alcohol in it without my ID as well as 10% alcohol being in the Tylenol with out ID. O'Doul's has .5% alcohol in it.

Duh!

(Oh , why in the he!! did I say that!)

The 'child' called over her manager, talked her for a bit, who began to look me up and down (in the immortal words of Bernie Mac (like she was getting ready to do something to me) (smile!)) and grunted that in no way was I over forty and for her not to sell it to me until I could prove it.

...do I deal with an irrate, near convulsive Louise later when I promised her a green bottle before nitey nite that night? Hmmmmmmm.....I think not.

Flattery or no? What do you think? I didn't have time too...just needed to get down the street to get to a store to sell me the green bottle so that I wouldn't have a green monster on my hands later!

Perhaps in Shakespeare's time, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet but that's not necessarily so in the twenty-first century. Today we know that words can inspire us to achieve goals we never thought possible, but they can also fuel ethnic, racial, or religious prejudice. Given the speed of communications in the current age, what was politically correct twenty years ago is politically incorrect today. The meanings of words change in our ever-changing world. Case in point  there are any number of terms used to describe those of us who care for loved ones because of our feelings for them and our sense of family responsibility. Academicians and policy makers refer to us as informal caregivers, a term I personally detest. I know why the term exists. It is meant to distinguish us from those for whom giving care is a job or a profession. And indeed it is important to distinguish us from them.

The academicians and policy makers refer to paid or professional caregivers as formal caregivers to distinguish them from us but to also somehow show that we are linked together by the fact that we all give some sort of care. I always laugh when I hear the term formal caregivers because an image of doctors operating in black tie, and nurses aids in evening gowns, immediately comes to mind.

Today neither of these terms informal caregiver or formal caregiver makes sense, and yet they are so ingrained in the literature and in the minds of researchers and government employees that they are still constantly used. It is hard to break people of old habits, but when words convey a negative attitude, suggest a hierarchy of being, or conjure up pictures that are false then we must make the effort to change them. It isn't easy, but it can be done. I am sure that all of you can think of words that once were commonplace that are not heard much in public these days.

You may be wondering why I am making such a big deal of this. Fair question. The reason is that so many of us that care for chronically ill, disabled, or aged loved ones feel isolated. Isolated caregivers don't have a sense that there are million of others, just like them, maybe even four or five in a two block radius of where they live. But how can we locate each other if we don't have a common name that defines our group, that lets us recognize the commonalities between us?

Recent research by the National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA) and the National Alliance for Caregiving (the Alliance) has shown that many of us don't like the idea of having a label, or a group name. Participants in five different focus groups held all across the country said in one way or another, The care I give is something that I do. It doesn't define who I am. That's true in part, but no one name, title, or group identification defines any of us these days. I am a woman, a daughter, a wife and a professional. I am black. I am one of a group of more than 25 million people who provide a significant amount of hands-on care to disabled or ill loved ones. I am always all of these things, and more, but depending upon the context of a conversation one role takes center stage for a while. So if you agree with me that informal caregiver is a terrible term, what do you think we should call ourselves? A common term is caregiver, plain and simple. The problem with that of course is that it doesn't tell you which type of caregiver is being referred to. In addition research shows that many folks who would fit under the caregiver umbrella really do not like the word. They associate it with those other caregivers, the ones that get paid. They think it is clinical.

The research shows that many of us are more comfortable with the term family caregiver because it implies the emotional connection between care giver and care receiver, even though it is much less familiar. I find that when the subject comes up, that's the term I use to refer to myself, and I think it fits quite nicely. In recent years the media has been carrying many more stories about family caregiving than it ever did in the past. Newspapers for instance tend to mean family caregivers when they simply use the term caregiver. Perhaps over time caregiver will come to be the shortened form of family caregiver, but until then I think we should stick with the adjective and refer to ourselves as family caregivers to dispel confusion and to reiterate the fact that our relationship with the recipient of care is one that is based on affection and/or familial responsibility. In addition to the fact that it helps lessen feelings of isolation, there is another very good reason to adopt the title of family caregiver, and that's because it provides us with some very significant power, power to help bring about changes that can make a positive difference in our loved ones care and the quality of life of our entire family.

Many of the family caregivers that are uncomfortable thinking of themselves as caregivers, also don't see that caregiving can easily be like a job, more work and responsibility than was ever possible before the advent of modern medicine. They just don't see the connection between the difficulties of caregiving and the fact that our healthcare system was never set up to help patients with chronic conditions, which of course is what our loved ones have. That's why Medicare is in such sad shape these days. It is paying doctors to put people in the hospital but not to spend time talking with them, answering their questions, giving them advise and counsel. As advocates for our loved ones, as advocates for us as their family caregivers, we must come together and speak with a common voice that says we want, and need our healthcare system to be more responsive to people with chronic conditions. After all the majority of healthcare expenditures are spent on people with chronic conditions. Let's make that money work for us by providing the type of care and services we need.

This is our issue good quality, affordable healthcare that is consumer focused and consumer friendly. Healthcare that is flexible so that it meets the needs of individuals, and healthcare that respects families and considers family caregivers as real members of the healthcare team. If we don't stand up and demand it, why should we think it will ever come to be?

Right now, my mother and I are sitting in our screened in back porch at home eating pancakes, strawberries and grits. We've been talking about the different birds chirping and hopping from tree to tree and watching the squirrels run back and forth across the grass.

13 years ago this week, I almost lost her to one of those "incompatible with life" diagnoses by the 'Almighty Whitecoats' ( of which I am one) in our traditional health care system. She had a massive brain hemorrhage and was given 96 hours to live...

I did loose my mother, the personality that was Louise up until that time, but have been blessed to get to know my mother, Louise, the personality that emerged and has evolved over these thirteen years.

As her primary caregiver, I take care of this "new" Louise and encourage her to do whatever she can for as much as she can endure each and every day. The daughter in me misses the "old" Louise, my mother, running buddy and friend, but the new and albeit, improved model [smile] does just fine too! It's been rough [an understatement] but , fortunately, the bad times have been punctuated with long periods of very good times which continues to spur us both on and forward, each and everyday.

This afternoon, we're going over to Stone Mountain to check out the annual Pumpkin Festival over there. We'll probably come back pretty messy, but that all a part of it. Yesterday we went to the Great Georgia Air Show. She complained a little bit about the F-18 after burners noise, but after giving her a Coke and a smile, all the complaints subsided.

13 years and counting...

...my lucky number 13....

I cherish each and every moment, day... and 'number' I have with her!

There is a difference between aging and getting old. The first is something that you'll do , just as a matter of course, with each and every breath you take until you make your next phasal transition. Getting "old" is totally a mindset; it's avoidable and should be consciously avoided at all costs, like anthrax or a plague. We must learn to age with grace and respect. We must learn to respect the wisdom (where it exists) that comes with the experience of aging. At the risk of sounding too cliche' we've all heard that we should strive to live each day as if it were our last. We need to, as a society, as the sentient human being that we are, eliminate this 'should word and replace it with the word MUST. If we approached each day and the moments in each day with this mindset, the aging factor would become a non-factor; a non-issue.
 
We must, absolutely stop striving (at least in our American society) to have 'retirement" as a goal. That goal, this false goal of rewarding ourselves after a 'job well done' "age" with kicking back and doing nothing is a procrastinators way of putting off an inevitable suicide...not an initial death of the physical but definitely a mental and then an emotional one. The physical death (generally speaking) , unfortunately, follows not long after.
 
 
I see it all too often during some of my volunteer activities with seniors. I am met sometimes with vapid stares where autonomic, physiologic activity continues to take place but not much else...behind those eyes...I know, can feel even sometimes a wanting, a yearning to do, be engaged in something, anything...but just existing. A scream every now and then would be better in some cases than the deafening and crushing silence I am met with from those who are with us, continuing to age in such a less than honorable and humane manner

So, I am assisting my mother (76) and have been for the past 13 years to fight the good fight to be as vibrant of a participant in her life as the 'dementia diagnosis' continues to fight it's fight as well. In providing reinforcement for my father's fight (86 - long distance),where 'the mind is willing the body is unable', helping fight his good fight is a little bit easier.
 
 

This is where I get the mantra of 'Don't Retire; ReTool and ReNew'. This is what I know. This is what I do.