This is my first posting to this forum and my first posting to any forum. I'm not sure that this the right place to start so if it's not please direct me to the appropriate forum.

My name is Tom and my wife, Jill, and I took care of her father, everybody calls him Dada, from Nov. 2001 to June 9th of this year, when he passed away.

He was 89 years old when we began his care and he had congestive heart failure, kidney failure and a mild form of dementia.

We began his care with open hearts and empty heads. The only help we had was when the Visiting Nurse would come after he came home from rehab. We did everything else ourselves with some help from our children. His only other child lives in California and was of no help.

I found caring for an elderly person the hardest thing I have done. We raised four children, changed jobs and industries and put up with the normal stresses of life but nothing even comes close to elder care in terms of frustration.

I am trying to understand why it was so hard. I'm trying to understand the conflicting emotions that elder care raised in me.

I've found that only people who have done elder care know what I am talking about. I look forward to sharing insights with you.

I hope that this post wasn't too long.

Thanks for reading it.

Tom

Since this was your introduction, Tom, I moved it to the New Caregivers Meeting room where folks generally introduce themselves. This would, however, make an EXCELLENT topic for the "After the Caring" forum...

Welcome, Tom. Please accept my condolences on the loss of your FIL. Eldercare is a very complicated situation for family members not only because of the care issues (with which most folks are not familiar), the emotions from caring for a family member are huge. It's not just like taking care of an old person - this is someone you have KNOWN and with whom you have had a long-standing relationship. It hurts terribly to see someone who was independent and vital and often a "rock" of our universe become frail, dysfunctional, etc. Because of our relationship, we have certain expectations of these individuals - their likes, dislikes, talents, etc. When people become old and febrile, that changes, especially if the individual is afflicted with AD or any of the other myriad of neurological disorders which destroy the brain. They become incapacitated and cognitively dysfunctional. It HURTS to see them like that in a way nothing else in life can touch. It's so difficult when dealing with them to grasp WHY they cannot behave as we are accustomed to them doing. The endless repetitive questions, squirrelly behavior, sometimes rages, etc. that no amount of talking will diminish. Besides all that, for the first time, we are getting a peek into the end of life issues that most people are delighted to blissfully ignore. We deal with questions like, "Is this gonna happen to me?" I have often remarked that caring for an elder until their death is the final stage in growing up. We come full circle.

Tell us more about the feelings that are troubling you...

Howdy Tom welcome in my condolences on the loss of your FIL please do pass them on to your wife as well.
If you dont mind me asking what kind of emotions are we talking here?
When it comes to this job (BTW the toughest job you'll ever love) there is a WHOLE range of emotions we can and do go through in a day dependent upon the person or situation like sadness, inadequacy, guilt, anger, frustration, loneliness, weariness, control issues, etc etc etc....Pick your emotion we got it in spades here and I happen to think this an excellent topic of conversation and an appropriate place to plant it...talk to us

Tom, I am very pleased to meet you. My deepest sympathy to you and your family on the loss of your father in law. Thinking that this very important topic may be lost in casual corner, I suspect it may be moved later. For now, I will welcome you in.

Many of us have voiced that this is the hardest, most frustrating, and even dangerous to ones health, job we have faced. For me I think it's because in most endeavors, you build, raise, create, teach, learn.... in this one you desperately learn things you don't want to know and pray you never need again, you desperately try to delay or to slow the tide of time and failing health, and the whole time, you know you will lose. You know that as tired as you are, what it means when you retire from your duty. We tend to feel desperate and that is exhausting.

We remind each other here why we do it, love, duty, honor, the greatest of which hopefully is love. We share a need to do whatever we do well. We watch their money dwindle and know that by caring for them in a way that enriches and extends their lives, we may lose our inheretance, or even spend from our own retirement, but we do it anyway.

All our lives we work toward goals, getting the kids raised and independent, finishing a project, getting a promotion, a raise, watching things grow... and then we have to reverse a lifetime of expectations and take on this role. In many cultures and not so long ago in this one, caring for elders was a part of family life, although life was usually shorter but not always. Somehow we became insulated from this rite of passage and we just have huge troubles with the shifting of gears involved.

I think many of the members will respond to you, when they catch their breath. It is not an easy question to face, not for me anyway. I probably should not have used "we" everywhere because I can't speak for "us", but things just seem better when you don't feel alone.

Welcome to ECO.

Hi Tom, welcome,

Every CG is different! As is the person they are caring for! So there are a zillion ways on this road.

Here is an excellent article from our main page here at ElderCare Online, it might help you sort some things out for yourself:

http://www.ec-online.net/Knowledge/Articles/emotion2.html