Filtered tag: Family Issues

  I thought if I wrote about summer and heat perhaps we would be blessed by actually having some warm and sunny weather in the Comox Valley. Wishful thinking… Having come back from three glorious weeks in the Ontario and Interior heat wave, our family spent every day outside in the sun. Transitioning from the… Read more…

It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Monday and a colleague interrupts me from a board meeting to take an important phone call. It’s my brother from Toronto. The conversation is choppy. It’s Dad. He’s had a massive stroke. Don’t fly home. He was a candidate for surgery and is recovering in hospital. He should be fine.… Read more…

You are in a work meeting and your cell phone vibrates. You ignore it. Two minutes later, it vibrates again. You check the number and see it’s your mother calling. Between meetings you call her back and she tells you she needs to go to a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. You wish that she had… Read more…

One of the biggest social phenomenon to hit our nation moves front and centre during Family Caregiver Week in British Columbia from May 7 to 13. Unpaid family caregivers are “unsung heroes” in B.C. communities and make up over 25 per cent of our population. Family Caregiver Week is an opportunity to increase public awareness… Read more…

I recently received a late-night phone call from a friend whose mother was in hospital after a fall. Needless to say, there was panic and uncertainty in her voice. I started asking some questions around the severity of her mom’s fall, if she was being admitted to hospital, and the physician’s diagnosis and possible treatment.… Read more…

One of the main reasons family members take on the role of caregiver is because they love their aging loved ones and they want to help them with a better life and prolonged independence. Sometimes though, the rewards of caregiving are outweighed by the stress, physical and emotional work, which invariably leads to burnout. How… Read more…

  Coming home for the holidays is for many caregivers a very joyous and special time. For some adult children, this visit might represent the first opportunity in several months or a year to personally interact with their aging loved ones. Most long distance caregivers rely on regular telephone conversations or by keeping in close… Read more…

  The joy that accompanies the holidays can often feel absent from the halls of a residential care facility or in a widowed grandparent’s home. Our aging loved ones can often feel more lonely or isolated as a result of changes in their senses, memory loss, illness or a loss of mobility. Visiting around the… Read more…

I’ve developed a new philosophy… I only dread one day at a time.” — Charlie Brown For caregivers, the holidays are often a particularly stressful time of year. Coming face to face with the changes in their loved one’s life is hard enough. Add in gift buying, decorating and entertaining on top of caregiving responsibilities… Read more…

When I was 34 years old, my Nana Cumming died after very slow death from Alzheimer’s disease. I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time and was unable to travel back to Ontario. In many ways, I said “goodbye” a long time ago. I remember grieving most when her dementia was progressing and she was… Read more…