Family Caregiver Investigation

  I have started processing time records from 2022. I did not start an organized online schedule until the fourth month, so I don't have any records from the first three months. After reviewing the emails from those months, it is safe to assume my time caregiving was likely higher than the month in this report. I may yet find the paper records from those first harrowing months. In the meantime, we do have comprehensive records after February 1, when I set up and started using my Google calendar for scheduling and tracking significant events. Month 1 - Nov 2021 Notes - we were entering our first month of family caregiving. Mom moved home on Nov 1, 2021 - her 91st birthday. In the first month she was diagnosed with pnuemonia (exacerbation of her COPD) and dementia. The first month was scrambling to keep Mom alive as she was still smoking and struggling to breathe. Month 2 - Dec 2021 Notes - our second month family caregiving. Mom was put onto the Palliative Care Registry, we complete...

  As I work to understand the impact of family caregiving on my family and my household, I have divided the cost into to two categories: Time and Material. Time refers to the cost of time providing caregiving service to my mother, the amount of time we are spending to look after her. Material refers to the non-time tangible costs, these include property cost, lost wage earning, and other lost revenue cost, as well as other tangible expenditures resulting from providing a fully serviced family caregiving bed to the healthcare system. In 2023 my family caregiving service was responsible for 8761 hours of caregiving for my Mom (1 extra hour to account for daylight savings). We were 100% responsible for staffing Mom's home-based living space. This included a requirement to have someone sleeping over with Mom every night. My caregiving time on duty for the year totalled 6,127 hours, or 70% of the overall amount of caregiving time required. This averaged to 511 hours a month. The rest of...

   How do we measure wear and tear in family caregiving households? My son calls it, "Time Confetti". It is the myriad tasks and activities that we do to keep our caregiving homes operating smoothly. It is all the dimensions of family caregiving and self-care that sustain a home-based caregiving operation. It is defined as tasks too short to plan or measure that maintain the operations of a functional home, a family caregiving operation. I have tried several approaches to define and capture where my time and energy are consumed in my work to provide housing and care for my frail elder Mom. I do this, in part, to explain to myself why I don't have energy to do 'extra' things, like a plan a trip to visit my newborn granddaughter in Montreal. I want to understand why my mind is a blank when Mom goes for two overnights to my brother's house and I don't have to immediately take care of her needs. Just when I thought I would have some precious discretionary time...