Mirror Neurons in Family Caregiving - 2023 12 02

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24 Hours - 2024 01 08

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  I am working to develop a scenario that will allow my family and my household to survive Mom's family caregiving mission. We know that I cannot face another year of 500+ hours a month caregiving and if I cannot do this, Mom is going to have to go into institutional care and if Mom has to go into institutional care, she is not going to survive for very long, compared to the happy days she is spending at home with various of her children and grandchildren looking after her. Mom is at the highest level of care needs. She is an extremely frail elder who would not be able to push the call button for help if she was alone. During her waking hours she has someone attending to her needs every half hour or so to make sure she has everything she needs. Mom has 6 children, 5 of them live locally, one at a distance. I am her second daughter, I am her primary caregiver. When Mom needed to move out of her mental health group home, I led the effort to bring her home to our two bedroom suite on ...
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The Ethical Imperative - 2023 08 13

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  The ethical imperative to reverse the negative socio-economic impacts of family caregiving are written across the Internet in tens of thousands of anguished posts written by family caregivers in high degrees of distress and hopelessness.  Family caregivers express their feelings of disempowerment, of feeling taken advantage, of feeling taken fore granted, of how their lives have been consumed by caregiving responsibilities and they cannot see a future for themselves.  The work they do is untraceable, there is no authoritative oversight. The work they do is unaccounted, the time and energy they put into caregiving is not recognized as employment.  They find themselves in an impossible dilemma - they cannot, in good conscience, leave their family member to suffer or risk mistreatment from strangers; they also cannot, materially, financially, emotionally and mentally, sustain the level of output to family caregiving without suffering (their own health, the quality of ...
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Systems Imperative - what if families say NO - 2023 08 22

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  Hobson's choice -  1. : an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative.  2. : the necessity of accepting one of two or more equally objectionable alternatives. I have been thinking about family caregiving from a system's perspective and the impossible situation families are put in when one of their family is no longer able to fend for themselves. The family is put in the position of having to make decisions on behalf of their family member to ensure the family member's health and well being. There is no choice in this situation. The family must step in to support their family member.  The Hobson's choice would be to either step in and support the family member or to step away and not support the family member. Both of these scenarios carry a great weight of responsibility and requirement for internal and external negotiation. We may tell ourselves that we have a choice and it is unthinkable that we would not step in to support our family member, no mat...
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