Despite the amount of passion and love you have for an ailing family member, caregiving might still be overwhelming as you will be facing new responsibilities that you may not have prepared yourself for. To make the process easier for you, this article outlines different tips, tricks and strategies that you can use.
Research
There are two things that you have to study before committing to being someone’s caregiver: the nature of your relative’s illness and the requisites of being your job. With the first, the more you understand what condition you’ll be faced with every day, the less intimidating it is. It also allows you to prepare in advance for typical mood swings, therapy and medication schedules and possible side effects that you have to handle.
Researching on the latter will allow you to mentally condition yourself of what’s expected of you and also reassure yourself that you’re not alone; it can be done. You can approach other caregivers, especially those who also did it for their family members. This is also a great way to shorten your learning curve by asking them how they deal with the day-to-day.
Respect your limits
You’re one person responding to all the needs of another, and there will some that you cannot handle. It’s okay; learn to accept that you may need help or that there are things that you have to teach the patient to do to make it easier for you both.
In some cases, even if you’re the primary caregiver, you don’t live in the same house as the relative. In that case, you have to open and even encourage the patient to do some simple things on his own, maybe even aided by technology. When that’s not possible, enlist the help of your friends and other family members who may live closer or are free at that time. You can even tailor fit the tasks to the specialty of your volunteers.
Seek out services
If these are menial tasks that can be outsourced, don’t take full responsibility for it. Most areas have community services that help primary caregivers in doing routinary jobs for the patient. The cost is normally negotiable. Services covered by these are stay-at-home health aids, healthy home-delivered meals and transportation for the patient.
Make plans
Planning everything out is more convenient. List down all the tasks that need to be done, the time it takes, when you have to do it. It lessens the propensity for you to forget essential tasks that need to be done just because there’s a lot on your plate. This also makes seeking out help, taking time for yourself and knowing which services to outsource easier.
Take time for yourself
