“In sickness and in health.”
They are five words that make up a short but very important sentence. Yet it can be extremely difficult to be a spouse and care for a sick loved one. It’s physically draining, emotionally challenging, and financially stressful for any caregiver, but is especially hard on a spouse.
Home Instead of Sonoma CAREGivers, like Donna, help to care for elderly when it's difficult for a spouse or family member to do so.
Steven H. Zarit, a Pennsylvania University gerontologist, tells the Arizona Republic that spouses who care for a sick lover are dealing with their own age-related health limitations.
Plus, longer life spans means that once-fatal conditions like heart disease are more manageable, which means sicknesses can last a very long time.
Essentially, it means a sick spouse could be caring for a slightly sicker spouse. And that’s not a great scenario for sure.
At Home Instead, we’ve developed a specialized resource guide for spouses (or family members) who are giving care to sick loved ones.
You can find it at www.caregiverstress.com. The site includes a Stressmeter, where you’ll be able to better how much stress is too much to handle. (The Stressmeter is also found on our blog, in the right-hand sidebar).
Consider this: A study released this year by the University of South Florida and the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that high care-giving strain among spouses increased the risk of stroke by 23 percent. That association was particularly strong among husbands caring for wives, the study noted.
If this scenario sounds all-too-familiar either to you as a spouse or to someone you know, we encourage you to visit www.caregiverstress.com, where you’ll find helpful tips on taking care of yourself while taking care of your loved one. Because tending to both are just as important.
For more information about Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma County and the services we provide – such as light housekeeping, meal preparation, transportation and more – please call our Sonoma County Home Care office at 707.586.1516 anytime. Or you can visit our senior home care digital brochure.
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That is such a great service to provide for those elderly in need in Sonoma county. It’s a great place to live, why else would grapes grow there to produce wine? You have to have the perfect temperature and area to grow grapes, and that means its a healthy and wonderful place for the elderly to retire and enjoy the rest of their lives.