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There comes a point in everyone’s life when someone you know and love will need to be cared for from sickness, disease, or old age. Whether a child, parent, sibling, husband, wife, friend or partner falls ill, you may become the sole provider in giving the love, support and care one would need. From feelings of denial, sadness, sickness, and fear – it may seem almost impossible to make it through, but to know that you will, becomes the backbone to the long journey. In the new book,“Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence,” renowned journalist Gail Sheehy takes readers through her personal experience of her husband Clay Felker’s battle with cancer and other incredible stories, tribulations, and triumphs while providing detailed strategies for each stage of caring for a loved one who is terminally ill.
“It’s one of the most universal points in anyone’s life,” says Joan Hamburg on WOR’s The Joan Hamburg Show. Nearly 50 million Americans deal with taking care of an ill loved one and the responsibility could be quite overwhelming and unexpected. “I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t expect it,” says Gail Sheehy who has written over 15 books, is a contributor at New York and Vanity Fair magazines, and a care-giver advocate at AARP. After her “bigger than life” husband Clay Felker, who was a successful editor and professor, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Gail Sheehy took on many roles in providing the necessary care, love and support she knew her husband would need.
In her new book, “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence,” Gail starts off with the most unexpected of stages, Stage 1: Shock & Mobilization. She says, “It’s important to make personal contact with any and all doctors, and health-care providers. Take a tape recorder to remember everything the doctor says and don’t accept the first diagnosis or treatment option.” Gail intricately describes each of the eight stages while softly inserting personal stories and anecdotes from an array of different people explaining their own experiences when dealing with doctors and hospitals. She explains that it’s as though you’re finding a “medical quarterback – you need someone to help assemble your team and call the plays.”
“It’s one of the most universal points in anyone’s life,” says Joan Hamburg on WOR’s The Joan Hamburg Show. Nearly 50 million Americans deal with taking care of an ill loved one and the responsibility could be quite overwhelming and unexpected. “I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t expect it,” says Gail Sheehy who has written over 15 books, is a contributor at New York and Vanity Fair magazines, and a care-giver advocate at AARP. After her “bigger than life” husband Clay Felker, who was a successful editor and professor, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Gail Sheehy took on many roles in providing the necessary care, love and support she knew her husband would need.
In her new book, “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence,” Gail starts off with the most unexpected of stages, Stage 1: Shock & Mobilization. She says, “It’s important to make personal contact with any and all doctors, and health-care providers. Take a tape recorder to remember everything the doctor says and don’t accept the first diagnosis or treatment option.” Gail intricately describes each of the eight stages while softly inserting personal stories and anecdotes from an array of different people explaining their own experiences when dealing with doctors and hospitals. She explains that it’s as though you’re finding a “medical quarterback – you need someone to help assemble your team and call the plays.”
Sometimes it may seem as though you are alone in this process, but it’s vital to seek family members, friends, and even health experts for help and support. Gail recommends, “Form a circle of care. Nobody can do care giving alone and not just with siblings and family members, but with health care providers, social workers and nurses. Call a family meeting early on and talk about what each family member does best and how they can help. Social workers, doctors and nurses can then become the mediator between family members.”
As the stories continue one after the other, intertwined with useful advice, you learn that sometimes you need to be fearless. When life seems to bring you down, it’s the ability of seeing beyond the struggles that will help you to pull yourself back up. “When you know your loved one is not going to come back, you have to prepare yourself to come back onto your own path. There is life after caregiving,” says Gail. The stress and pain of care giving can be monumentally exhausting both mentally and physically. “Take at least an hour every single day to do something for yourself that has nothing to do with care giving – yoga, coffee with a friend, a walk in the park – anything that gives you pleasure. Your body needs to rest.”
The unbelievable stories in “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence,” along with the strategies to deal with every stage of caregiving will help guide you through one of life’s most detrimental moments and when you think all is lost, you’ll learn that there is hope beneath it all.
