Caregiving Story

I go by Charlie.

My parents came to live with me in the last part of 1999. My mother was on a walker at the time and my father was using a cane. Within a year, my father started using a walker, so I had to be with them at all times. Then my mother went into a wheelchair, so I had to help her from bed to wheelchair then back to bed. Then my father took a turn for the worse, and when he woke up one morning he had had a stroke in his sleep, so he ended up in a wheelchair. I had to take him back and forth to Livermore to the VA hospital. When he came home from there, things progressed pretty rapidly for him. He lost all mobility and couldn't swallow very well so we had to work with his swallowing. I changes diapers and bathed and fed him in bed and administered all meds.

My father passed on 9/11--what a time for him to go. Then my mother became bedridden for 6 years after that. Things began all over again. It wasn't easy since they both weighed over 250 lbs, but I would do it all again to hear their voices. It's a lot harder taking care of parents then other people because parents think you never grow up, and believe me there were 6 children and I was the only one who took care of them 7 days a week. Hospice taught me a lot of how to take care of them when they came in the last 2 weeks my father was alive. It's rewarding and sometimes very hard, but the best gift you can give anyone.