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Caregivercenter Asked October 2013

What is the one thing that you are stressing about?

Madeaa Oct 2013
I hate money, things, possessions, they just tie you down. The reality of it all is that we need money to live, I have been living on my retirement savings and now I will use what is left for her care. What happens will happen, I just choose to believe that a way will be provided for me, it is trust that a power greater than myself will provide. Am I crazy, perhaps, but I have been provided for somehow and some way.

JessieBelle Oct 2013
There is no one thing I am most stressed about. I am stressed about my elder mother, my sick pets, and my shrinking retirement savings. I am stressed about my lack of attention to myself. I am stressed about having no good clothes to wear, with my shrinking retirement savings keeping me from buying more. Guess you could say the one thing that I am most stressed about is everything. I am glad that the new Affordable Care Act may make one thing less stressful for me -- keeping up my health insurance. I am self employed and at my age, it has been a drain to pay it each month. No matter how bad things look, there is always hope on the horizon.

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OvrwhlmdTNMe Oct 2013
Stressed about feeling resentment towards my 78 yr old Mother who I feel got herself into many of her health problems (obese, diabetic, mobility issues) and now I'm "expected" by society as a whole to take care of her when I at 48 just want to live my life like she did in her 40's and 50's & 60's.

So stressed by the resentment I feel, and the guilt I feel for feeling resentful which makes me more resentful and more guilty, and so on, and so on.

JessieBelle Oct 2013
Crikey. I think when someone here asks to vent and asks not to get advice it is exactly what we should do. It is not like we are going to fix someone that we really don't even know. I know caregivers do have a fix-it personality, but we shouldn't make people feel that it is not safe to talk here. I have a feeling most of us here know what we could do and what we should do. Sometimes we just need to talk. Talking and listening to ourselves many times is what helps us work things out.

Besides, some of the advice given here just really sucks, given the circumstance of the person writing.

mythyme Oct 2013
I am feeling stressed about always being trapped.

kathyt1 Oct 2013
My Dad is dying. This has been going on for a week now. I woke this morning, and he was ashen white. I called hospice and described his very shallow breathing, and the lady told me the end was near. I texted all my siblings to come after work. After i sound the alarm, somehow my Dad gets up and gets dressed like nothing is wrong. This has been a long process, and I have worked through my grief. What is stressing me is how to handle telling the other 6. I feel like the boy who cried wolf. My one sister thinks I am crazy. The youngest has miracle cures. lol I feel like I am in the twilight zone.

anonymous158299 Oct 2013
im stressy. the process of elimination has orphaned me and made me a family elder simultaniously. im supposed to live right and emit words of wisdom and such. screw that. i aint role model material.. i keep bail money on the books in advance at the county hoosegow.

2tsnana Oct 2013
Afraid my mother mini strokes will be a major one and instead of dying she will live more messed up than she already is. Afraid because I have no control of any of these things...

twopupsmom Oct 2013
stress came on strong this past Monday when I had to take me 82 year old husband ALZ mid stage to Washington DC to the military hospital WRNMC in Bethesda, he fell outside Monday morning walking in the grass with our pup (rabbit holes galore here) hit his head, twisted his leg, then started talking calm but crazy, substituting words for other words, making no sense, he was scared I called our PC Dr. who told me to give him 1/2 tab Ativan & take him to Bethesda Medical emergency room, he was calm, making jokes while we waited to be seen now 3pm - at 9pm he is still not admitted, had no night meds - so ER gave him a shot to calm him & they were going to draw blood, I went to get coffee, when I got back they had given him a shot of Halcyon & mucho Benadryl - he was screaming, total psychotic, it took 6 male nurses to get him tied down, it was like he was on steroids. they finally admitted him, Dr tells me he has to be moved next morning to a facility other than there & he would not be allowed to come home, they would not let me see him again, next morning ( they did not want me there that day as he was still in restraints,) I crashed, dr called to say things were looking up, next Psychiatrist called to tell me they stripped down all the meds he was on, going to start anew, he was so positive telling me he would have my husband better in a few days than I have seen him in a very long time, what a relief, next morning ( I was leaving for a round table visit with all Drs & my dear husband ) I get a call from same psych telling me there was nothing they could do for him, he had to be moved out of the hospital ASAP as the facility does not care for ALZ patients ( obamacare at its finest) I arrived my husband was doing really good, happy smiling, talking, I felt good, Drs mtg wanted me to remove him, I refused, they had social worker come in with the same rhetoric, I refused, he was not leaving until the had him secured on 24/7 meds that I could administer as I was taking him back home to live, they agreed to keep him 24 more hours, I refused, they asked if I could remove him Monday, I said no, they finally left the room. that very night I get a call from a doctor that wants me to calm my husband on the telephone so they could get a shot in him to settle him down, I did, they gave him the shot, today is Sunday, I was there all day yesterday, yes he is doing great, was so happy to see me, he has a one on one USN personnel with him 24/7 who told me they were still restraining him at night up through Thursday morning, what a bureaucratic fight on my hands here, but it is our right for my husband to be treated there for as long as need be. Hope tomorrow when I get there the report will be better. really a tough week just trying to stand my ground.

anonymous187254 Oct 2013
I apologize also. I am sorry I was so off the mark and made you upset. That was not my intention.

To anyone out there who wants to know, I put myself through medical school and have my own solo practice mostly populated by Medicare patients. I have learn most of what I know of life from them as they have an amazing wealth of knowledge from experience. I am not married. I have no children. My only sibling died a few years ago of unknown cause. Since I am a primary care physician, I do not make a lot of money and have struggled due to low reimbursement from Medicare and insurance companies which causes a great deal of daily stress. I care for both my parents who are elderly with a plethora of medical problems. My father was diagnosed a few years ago with severe PTSD and the Korean War torments him on a daily basis. My relationship was very strained with my mother and I got very depressed a couple of years ago not being able to keep up with everything needed of me. I sought counseling and discovered that my mother is likely suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder which she probably got from a very hard life as a child. That explained a lot of my childhood and my life in general. That also necessitated me to spend the next couple of years in counseling to accept and deal with that aspect of my life. Because I could not still keep up, I, myself was found to have been coping with Attention Deficit Disorder which I silently struggled with all my life not knowing what was wrong and blaming myself for not being like everyone else. Now I am seeing both a psychologist and a psychiatrist (to follow my medications) and am pulling my life together and hopefully someday will feel peaceful inside. I tend to have the need to help others probably due to something from my not-so-normal life. Currently I am actively helping a friend who is in her 80's who was the victim of a relative that convinced everyone she was unfit, had her committed to a locked facility, took over her home, car, and bank accounts, emptied her investment account, took her ID, and let her in a locked facility with her only belongings being a TV, bed, and a few rags for clothes. I am actively dealing with a lawyer who specializes in elder law, a professional fiduciary, and adult protective services. I was able to get her into an assisted living facility who got her a much reduced rate and have adopted her as their own so she can feel someone cares. I am in my 50's and from early in the morning to late at night I am going. I have no spare time, taxes that I worked on until 1:00 AM last night, and work up with a splitting migraine. I am late to the ICU this morning to see one of my patient's who is scared and very sick and touch-and-go. So as you can see, I do have some experience behind me.

I am sorry I offended you. I thought that what these forums were for was to help other people. The impression that you gave me in your post was exactly as what I wrote about. People are all unique but also in a strange way all the same. I have heard nearly twenty years of so many people's stories inside the four walls of my exam rooms. They really open up to me as they know nothing goes outside those four walls. My job is to sense if something is going on and to help people to open up so that they can get help with what they need. So many times people feel that they just need to "suck it up" and deal with it or that there is no way out. Like I did for so many years.

So anyway, I hope you find what you are looking for. I am sorry that I misjudged you. I am going to retire also from this forum as maybe you are right, it may not be a place for me. I did not post my bio as I guess I just wanted to be a person on this forum and not an "expert." It helped me in that I was able to vent about the topics in general on an equal level but I guess I came off like a know-it-all.

So good bye all! Hope everyone finds what they are looking for.

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