I oversee the care for my elderly dad and for the past year (minimum) it’s just been one medical crisis after another. Tonight I’m just exhausted and I think my friend is right when she says I’ve developed a sort of trauma response. I’m always jittery or jumpy and if the phone rings at an unusual time, I leap on it. I feel totally stuck and wonder if this is common with ageing parents and caregiving?
For most of his adult life, my dad has had significant health problems (mostly heart) and even as a teenager I remember repeated visits to hospital. In the last 10-15 years he’s had 4 heart attacks, open heart surgery, cancer and now he’s got severe mobility issues and osteoarthritis. I’m 40 mins away from him but I’m the only family member nearby so every last bit of it falls to me.
In Aug he had a hip replacement and that required a 4 week rehab hospital stay so every night for a month I was up and down the motorway visiting. He got out and within 2 weeks had a really bad fall so a late night call had me zooming up to meet him and the paramedics en route to hospital. One month later he was admitted as an emergency with pericarditis and after a month in hospital, he was only home 4 days before he was admitted with a bowel obstruction. No joke but he was released last Friday and then in the early hours of this morning I got a frantic call and had to ring for an ambulance. Huge emergency and turns out he’s had a heart attack. It’s not just these 4 months but it just seems to have been this way for years.
No idea why I’m posting really just to say I feel permanently on edge and as though I’m planning around ‘the next big thing’. Is this just old age for him and the way it goes? Is there a way I can stop being so ‘hyper vigilant’ all the time?