Since April, this year has been a lot and the trend continues.
I don’t think he would mind me sharing, so I will: my father sustained a serious hip fracture (no trauma to provoke; just moving around in bed!) a few weeks out from routine hip replacement. This, as one might expect, came as a total shock and well . . . it sucks.
I don’t have much experience in Sandwich Generation-ing, but I think I am about to take an experiential crash course.
Thus far I’ve just tried to medically advocate for him as far as best as I can from afar. Josh has helped (the surgeon perspective is valuable here and there was even some stuff that pertained to his specialty). I’m working today and tomorrow and on call next week, but I decided to fly up on Saturday to spend the weekend with him and family at the hospital. I feel like just being there will help my mom/sister if nothing else. And I’ll be back in time to start call.
ANYWAY. This was not the June I had envisioned, on a few levels but here we are.
I really hope we can get back to regularly scheduled programming around here (vs these medical notes and life stressor discussions). But as you all know, writing here helps me with processing and I know many of you have been through this (and much much more) with your own family members.
THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN HELPFUL
friends
Pema Chodron
meditation
walks
music
purposefully focusing on work when I need to
But I am definitely feeing my feelings too. And I am worried and sad and stressed out.
I really really hope this repair and recovery can be as smooth as possible.
If you have been in this kind of situation and have advice – I would welcome it.
3 Comments
Ugh, I am so sorry — this sounds so hard. Keep taking care of you through all of this, especially the work / travel / work sandwich. Thinking of you!
Going through this now with own health issues, professional drama (switch from tenure to clinical track due to NIH funding changes, going part time), mother landing in nursing home, father having his own health issues requiring multiple hospitalizations and surgeries and being generally recalcitrant and difficult to help, and having to simultaneously initiate the Medicaid spenddown to pay for my mother’s care. It has been a lousy year!
What has been helpful has been:
1) focusing on my own health – no real choice there
2) delegating parent tasks to my husband, like finding someone to fix the roof and siding of the house since he removed the gutters 10 years ago because he got tired of cleaning them (yes I am serious) — my father won’t listen to me anyway
3) leaning into sleep and exercise — I am up to about 8-10K steps per day, slowly, post-surgery last week. Pre-habbing the weeks leading up to it helped A LOT. I think I will still be able to run the first leg of the Detroit Marathon Relay this fall… but I plan to be VERY slow.
4) trying to plan more fun things, preferably each day — for instance last night we went to see Sheep Detectives at the Michigan Theater (highly recommend) which I *never* would have done previously on a weeknight, and I planned a mother-daughter trip to Chicago for late July
5) savoring the time I have with my husband, daughter, and dogs — I try to spend some time sitting in the yard throwing treats for them and reading a book since I can’t really run agility with them right now or take them for walks
6) trying to feel less guilty about not being everything to everybody at all times — easier said than done
7) oddly trying to enjoy catching up on academic things on my medical leave? I haven’t had this much fun writing in a long time, but it’s bittersweet because I know this degree of bandwidth won’t last forever.
I literally *cannot* be in CT to help my parents even if I wanted to be (I don’t), and I worry that people judge me for not taking care of them. But with the exception of one bitchy hospitalist (“Do you EVEN KNOW what has been going on with your mother?” Thanks sis! I do!) most people have been surprisingly understanding and helpful. My husband in particular has really come through for me. He seems to thrive on acts of service and helping people (my strengths are thinking and planning), and it has been fun to plan stuff to do for fun together while I convalesce.
Oh BTW — I finished Yesteryear (I wish she had taken the plot someplace else, honestly) and The Emperor of Gladness (grew on me as I made my way through it) and am now reading The Overstory (Powers) which has been really enjoyable. I also started Sky Daddy which is weird but fun, thanks for the recommendation. Husband and I watched Band of Brothers and Pacific and are making our way through the Turning Point documentaries (no association with Erica Kirk) on Netflix on the Cold War, Vietnam, and 9/11, which have been really interesting as well.
Good luck! Try to enjoy your time as much as possible, and not to take responsibility for everything. Your own health needs to be priority. I am told this life phase sucks.
thank you so much for all of this – I knew you had BEEN THROUGH IT and would have valuable insight. I really appreciate it (and am so glad it sounds like recovery for you is going okay, so far!!!).