When the caregiver becomes the patient: Where have I been?

The first quarter of the year is done and we’re midway through the second quarter. You may have been wondering where I’ve been. Well the tables had turned and I – that’s right …lil ‘ol me became the patient -the care recipient, the caregivee. So what happened? While I won’t go into the specifics of my condition, I will share a snippet of my journey. You haven’t seen me around as I needed to take some much needed self-care moments to heal physically and now I’ve come to realize that I needed to heal emotionally. As a caregiver, you jump into the role of superwoman (or superguy if you’re a male who might be reading this).  You zip here and there often to help everyone else. However, you never really slow down because you have work, activities, doctor visits, in between spending time to persuade you Mom or Dad to eat that piece of broccoli which is healthy when they’d prefer to sneak a snickers bar. While you are consumed with doing  all of these things,  you also never really consider that you may be on the other side of the hospital bed on the receiving end of care.

Being Vulnerable

When I think about this, lots of emotions bubble up to the surface. After the initial shock of the diagnosis wore off and I calmed down… I asked myself the typical questions that anyone would in this situation – Why? Why me? Why now? Only this time as the patient, I was on the other side of the table -the side where the doctors are asking you questions and giving you an unexpected diagnosis. How do you feel? I felt scared and also felt like this is not really happening. Am I in an alternate universe? Am I going to wake up and it will be confirmed that this is all a mistake? Yes, that’s what it is! No – but in actually it was not and won’t ever be.

Now it was my turn to fill out the pages of paperwork at the doctor’s office, pre-testing and of course the day of the procedure. Of course, now I’m suffering small bouts of amnesia – what is my family medical history? When was the last time I experienced this or that? Gosh – I can’t remember. Is this how my parents felt all those times that I filled their paperwork out in the doctor’s waiting room? It is then I want to shake myself and say snap out of it Denise! You know all of this stuff. And then I drew a blank.. and this is when I recall…remember the toolkit.. the one you created for your parents with all the info on them, you should have already done this for yourself!! Dang! I knew there was something I had to do!! It’s too late now. I promise myself to get to this right away after I get through this.

It’s my turn to be under the microscope and now I’m forced to ask for help from others. Now is not the time to be superwoman. As I sit in the waiting room filling out paperwork, I couldn’t help but feel anxious. I’ve recently learned that I have developed this particular ailment….

Stay tuned for next week’s post as I continue my story….