Comments on: Your Caregiver Role

By: Yes, I'm Bitter

Yes, I'm Bitter — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:28:48 +0000

My sister has conveniently erased herself from the lives of our 3 closest relatives – our mother, our father, and our aunt (mother’s sister). I am the one who provides physical, emotional and financial assistance to ALL three of them. My sister has rejected both our father and aunt and barely speaks to them. Well, isn’t that convenient for her. The few times I’ve approached her for very reasonable and practical help, she’s cried poverty.

What really burns me up inside is that when our relatives die (especially our mother), my sister will probably start feeling sorry for herself that she “never was close to them” and then I’ll have to support HER too (probably without getting any support in return… left to my own devices as usual). Not looking forward to it. I have zero respect for her. She lives only for her self… which apparently is seen as a virtue by my parents, since they admire the big house she has and independent lifestyle as a sign of “success.” I hope she cries bitterly at their funerals and then has to go back to her empty designer decorated house and her overloaded credit cards. I hope she chokes on them.

I feel like I will be eternally alone… I don’t have any friends who are going through this or can even comprehend it (they, too, like my sister, are free to live lives of their own) and honestly I don’t much care for caregiver support groups because of the subtle martyr complex they use to “frame” the experience of caregiving. I never asked for this, I don’t enjoy doing it, I don’t get anything whatsoever out of it, I don’t like it, it ISN’T making me a better or richer person spiritually, it’s just making me tired and angry, and I’ll be relieved when I don’t have to do it any more, and I don’t feel guilty for saying so.

I also hate the term “caregiver.” I don’t care, and I’m certainly not “giving” – it’s been imposed on me and my life stolen from me.

I also hate God, because God approves of this situation. God wants me crushed into the dirt. It helps me be civil to people in daily life, reserving all my loathing for the “Man Upstairs” who supposedly “cares for me.” This helps me smile and be polite to my parents and co-workers, and even to my sister most of the time. (By the way, don’t quote the Footprints on the Beach thing to me. Sometimes you really are just simply ALONE in life.)

Last thing: I’d love to know why these caregiver sites almost never talk frankly about alcohol and drug (including prescription drug) abuse among caregivers. I’ll bet this is a coping mechanism that a lot of women are secretly resorting to, but I guess we can’t discuss that because it blows our image of being saintly Florence Nightingales.

By: DeeDee

DeeDee — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:12:41 +0000

Oops – I forgot to add that my dad said that is harder to watch his three daughters not get along than it is to watch his wife of fifty plus years die in front of his eyes. This is why I don’t say anything anymore. Even my parent’s friends, my brother, my spouse, and my cousins all state how controlling and manipulative my twin sisters are! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DeeDee

By: DeeDee

DeeDee — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:09:59 +0000

Well Beatrice & Kate – I have a little bit of both. I along with my two older sisters that are twins share the caregiving for our mother. I am three years younger, and even though I am in my fortys, I am treated as the young disobedient child by my sisters. We have a brother that is one year younger than me, that has no responsibility for the care of my mother. He has always gotten everything handed to him on a silver plater. My parents gave him a two-story brick home fully paid for in the nicest subdivision in town, that is a couple of streets away from them, yet he has no caregiving schedule so to speak of since he is male. He does come over for about an hour on Sunday to sit with the single sitter and my mom while my dad goes to church.
Let me state that I don’t mind sitting with my mom at all. I am able to work from my laptop, and it is not physical at all besides light cleaning, diaper changing, serving meals… The one aspect of caregiving for my parent that I can not stand, that makes me sick to my stomach, that has my hair falling out, that the doctor has prescribed me anxiety meds and depression meds for, is MY TWIN SISTERS TAG-TEAMING ME, COMING OVER EVERYDAY THAT I AM ON SHIFT, THREE DAYS A WEEK, TO CHECK UP ON ME, I GUESS TO SEE IF I HAVE KILLED MY MOTHER YET FOR THAT DAY. My God, I have 3 children, 4 grandchildren, was in the military for 10 years, a police officer for 10 years, and I am a private investigator for the last ten years. I think I know how to change a diaper by now – but yet, they tell me every day a different way to feed her, change her, talk to her, look at her… I’M SO SICK OF THIS S–T, THAT I DON’T EVEN WANT TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM WITH THEM ANYMORE. My sisters I believe are dealing with their own grief of watching our mother die everyday in front of our eyes by controlling me, I guess taking over the mother role to me, my brother, and my father. Yes, they treat him like he is 2 years old also. I have tried talking, emailing, crying, begging, pleading, screaming… Nothing gets through to them. They go behind everyone’s backs and talk to my moms’ doctors without even asking my brother and I if we would like to attend, they hired a sitter without even telling me about it, so I could have at least run a back ground check. They have also done what I perceive to be bazarre things – such as telling me that someone stole our mother’s jewelry. So when I questioned them about calling the police, and told my dad that we needed to get a police report made, the sisters stated that no one actually stole the jewelry, they just wanted everyone to think it was stolen, so it wouldn’t actually get stolen. I could list about fifty bazarre occurrences. We’re all college educated, professional adults in our mid to late fortys. I feel like I am a child again, and like they are trying to compete against all the siblings to see who our mom or dad like the best. They won’t work with me, refuse to switch shifts with me, and go behind my back and cancel my replacement sitter to come take my shift. It has gotten so bad I refuse to communicate verbally or in writing anything. I pass on info to my dad. They also do not pass down information to me that I need to know inre to my mom – i.e. when the nurse is coming so I can give my mom a pain pill before hand to alleviate pain. IT HAS GOTTEN SO BAD THAT I DON’T EVEN THINK I WILL GO TO MY MOM’S FUNERAL BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE AROUND THEM, AND I DON’T WANT ALL MY PARENT’S FRIENDS TO SEE HOW HATEFUL MY SISTERS ARE TO ME!!! For the first time ever, I and my children and grandchildren did not attend the family Christmas gathering. I have attended every year that I have been in the United States during this time. I did not tell my children anything, my sisters have aleniated my children by doing ridiculous things like calling my daughter’s ex-husband and not my daughter and inviting him to come down in the middle of a messy divorce, emailing another child for them not to come to my parents’ home with their child because they are don’t watch their child. All this behind my back, and behind my fathers’ back. It is horrible. I don’t even say anything to my father anymore about the way they treat me because he has screamed at them, begged them… also to treat me with a little respect. Oh by the way, my mom was given 6 months to live, she has brain cancer, GBM Stage 4, and she just made her 27 1/2 months since brain surgery, and has had 9 months of hospice. Now, if I wasn’t changing her diaper correctly or treating her negilently, she would not be surviving so well. GBM is the one type of cancer I’ve been told that doesn’t have anyone survive from. I spend 50 – 60 hours a week every week at my parent’s home, and I have only asked my dad to find a replacement for me for 2 days during Thanksgiving while I had the flu. ANY SUGGESTIONS??? Thanks for letting me vent!!!!

By: Daisy

Daisy — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:37:21 +0000

Another thought. Perhaps the sibling who is doing the most for the elderly parent DOES want parental approval. Perhaps he or she was the child who wasn’t as favored by the parent as their sibling, so perhaps it is a subconscious attempt to win more favor with the parent. I think that’s a normal response to an unequitable situation in a family where one sibling has always been more spoiled and favored over another. In my case, my younger sister was more spoiled and more favored by my mother than I was, so perhaps by being the main caregiver of my mother, I’m attempting to finally obtain some recognition and affirmation from her. However, that’s not necessarily wrong. To me, what’s wrong is a sibling who doesn’t help me and a parent who has blinders on about the lack of help that I’m getting.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:37:52 +0000

“Sometimes the caregiver may have unresolved sibling rivalry and a deep-seated need to play the martyr, to be in control of everyone and everything, or perhaps to