The Caring Caregiver's Guide to Dealing with Guilt - Softcover

Starr Calo-oy; Bob Calo-oy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0975319507 ISBN 13: 9780975319505

Publisher: Orchard Publications, 2004

Synopsis

This guidebook is a collection of 10, true, short stories about the undeserved guilt families experience when they turn the care of their loved ones over to someone else. "Caring Caregivers" is written in a down-to-earth style that families will easily identify with but still professional enough for medical management to purchase as a handbook for their employees and libraries. It also contains the stages the family goes through in dealing with the guilt, a question and answer section and a much needed checklist for placement and specific problems and how to overcome them with creative solutions. This book is the first in a 13 book series of "Caring Caregivers" yet to come.

If you have an elderly loved one and are feeling guilty about not caring for them yourself but simply cannot, this book will help you to see you are not alone in dealing with these debilitating emotions and what to do about ridding yourself of the guilt monster once and for all.

If you are not at the point of relinquishing their care yet, Caring Caregivers can give you creative tips on caring for your loved one and make your job at home much easier.

This book will also help medical professionals to better understand the anguish and pain their clients’ families are experiencing so they can better serve them. We have identified 9 types of guilt in this book.

Coping with death, guilt, mental illness, violence, abuse, revenge, victory, tears and love are but a few of the tumultuous feelings and seemingly insurmountable situations in which the real-life people in "The Caring Caregivers Guide to Dealing with Guilt" find themselves in.

"Baby boomers", "the sandwich generation"- you can label this group in a variety of ways, but the facts speak for themselves in regard to the increasing population of adult children of the elderly.

If we take into consideration the fact that people are living longer (according to the Census Bureau, the average age at death in the year 2000 was 85), we can see that there are millions of Americans between the ages of 38 and 67 who out of necessity make decisions about arranging care for their elderly parents or grandparents. Many of these caregivers have children of their own and the responsibilities of caring for them, both in the home and on the job; they want to help their parents, but they are simply overwhelmed. All too often, they suffer from a tremendous burden of guilt that keeps them from making important and sound decisions about their parents’ care until it is too late--and their own health, and their careers or marriages, are sacrificed in the meantime. Caring Caregivers helps them make important decisions much easier.

In addition to the impelling stories, is included a highly beneficial suggestion box with solutions for the reader regarding the type of guilt addressed at the end of each story.

Family caregivers, as well as medical professionals who deal with families everyday, will find the chapters on the stages that the family goes through, and how to handle dementia-specific problems, highly beneficial and easily applicable.

About this title

From the Publisher

There are many books written about issues concerning the elderly, from the clinical viewpoints of medical experts to hands-on suggestions for the caregiver. Starr Calo-oy’s experience in working with the ailing elderly and their families has led her to the inevitable conclusion that there is one gaping hole in the literature. She feels that it is imperative for families to have a resource that deals specifically with how to find emotional relief from the one factor that will prevent them from getting on with their own lives, and being productive: guilt. Caring Caregivers is written from practical, hands-on experience with caring for the elderly in a home environment. Because it is not written from a clinical or institutional perspective, the family caregiver will be able to identify with it more readily. Reading this book will also help medical professionals, who are trained "by-the-book" rather than through hands-on experience, to gain a deeper insight into and develop a greater sensitivity for the practical realities and the painful emotions of the families they come into contact with every day. Dr. Harry Croft, who has written the foreword, say's it best. "Until this marvelous book came along, I have not had a resource I could comfortably refer these families to, a book that I believed would truly help them to find solutions that are specifically aimed at this extremely common, but rarely addressed, dilemma of guilt.

Many physicians, myself included, find it frustrating when they see the pain and guilt families go through: because of the limited time available to us, we are forced to concentrate and focus our efforts on helping the patients. The family, more often than not, has no opportunity for resolution of their problems, because they are there to work with the physician on behalf of the elderly parent. They don’t even consider their own mixed emotions, grief, and guilt, until they have left the office and have to deal with it once again. They view their problems as having little significance in comparison with the monumental issues their loved ones are dealing with. They don’t see that when an elderly parent is failing, the whole family is in crisis. In short, they literally cannot see the forest for the trees. After completing Caring Caregivers, you will find the writing refreshingly easy to read and come away with a great sense of peace and hope for your future.

From the Author

My husband, Bob, and I have taken care of the terminally ill, dementia victims such as Alzheimer’s patients, as well as the general elderly public, in our own home for the past 15 years. This is our calling.

It is also our calling to now share what we have learned with you. It is with a great amount of satisfaction that we present "The Caring Caregivers Guide to Dealing with Guilt" to you. I have always been frustrated by the fact that I could only help a limited number of people directly in my home. It is my hope that with this book, I will be able to reach out to many more families, and help them through the difficult process of caring for their loved ones at the end of their lives. "The Caring Caregivers Guide to Dealing with Guilt" will help families and individuals see that they are not alone, and hopefully will help alleviate the pain and isolation they experience. Most of all, I hope it will help them to dispel the monster of guilt that stalks them, and leave room for a new, and more productive approach to this very difficult passage in life.

If you apply the suggestions in our book and it changes your life or your loved one's life, then we have accomplished what we set out to do. May God richly bless you and your elderly.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orchard Publications
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0975319507
• ISBN 13: 9780975319505
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 145