By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.
An increasing number of Canadians must juggle the demands of work with the need to care for children, or for family members who are ill or too frail to care for themselves. Our programs have simply not kept pace with these societal changes.
Families with disabled children are praying for their kids to die before them because they have no support systems. They are very scared about who will take care of their kids and how their kids will have a dignified life after they die.
My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.
His death certificate says he died first of pneumonia and secondly of Alzheimer's disease. They could have listed another cause of death: a refusal to properly care for dementia sufferers, even when they are violent, and an equal inability to care for their carers. My dad died of dementia, but also because dying was the easiest way to treat him.
I think I couldn't balance my marriage and my mother's deteriorating health. I realized it was unfair to my husband to have my divided attention. I understood he deserved better and should go for that. He deserved the attention of a partner, not another headache, and I didn't want to share my time with anyone else but my mother.
She didn't give George any too easy a time when she was alive. She was one of those semi-invalids – I believe she had really something wrong with her, but whatever it was she played it for all it was worth. She was capricious, exacting, unreasonable. She complained from morning to night. George was expected to wait on her, hand and foot and everything he did was always wrong and he got cursed for it. Most men, I'm fully convinced, would have hit her with a hatchet long ago.
I looked after my children, I looked after my husband but there was no one to look after me. I am sure no other woman would have lasted in my situation for too long. But I held onto Mazhar.
Can I remember exactly when I 'lost' my husband? Was it the moment when I had to start tying his shoelaces for him? Or when we stopped being able to laugh with each other? Looking back, that turning point is impossible to pinpoint. But then, that's the nature of dementia.
I can't get people to understand how important the Alzheimer's fight is to me.
Family caregiving has become a predictable crisis. Americans are living longer and longer but dying slower and slower.
Women work overtime, do double triple duty, juggle ten balls at once -- children, careers, husbands, schoolwork, housework, church work, and more work -- and when one of the balls drops, we think something is wrong with us.
They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.
My mother got down sick in 53 and she lived with me, an invalid, until she passed away in 1961. And during the time she was staying with me sometime I would be worked so hard I couldn't sleep at night.
[Chuck's wife] was standing behind me at the time and she said, 'Chuck hasn't fed himself in 19 years. So, you've got a choice: We keep the arm, or you keep Chuck.'
Alzheimer's is a family disease...It requires countless hours of care, which are typically provided by family caregivers...Wi thout professional help, it can be impossible to juggle providing that care with jobs, raising kids or just time for yourself.
I can't bear the thought of my mother having to push me around in a wheelchair. I'd rather die quickly.
Being a caregiver requires infinite patience, physical and emotional strength, health care navigation skills, and a sense of humor - which can be hard to come by after sleepless nights and demanding days.
As a carer for my disabled son, I understand just how hard caring is, at the best of times. I know how important it is for families to get the support they need.
Then my mother had several strokes and my father, who was 85, couldn't handle it, so Donna came back and we went through the same thing here. She lives in Mill Valley; her group is organizing this event.
I have a son, who is a... not an ordinary form of schizophrenia, but clearly, cannot take care of himself. And the great fear of then, of all parents is, when the parents die, who takes care of your child? And the answer is: they become homeless.
Imagine yourself as a wife, and you have to look at a brain-injured husband for the rest of your life, and he can't talk to you. But we're paying for this. That's the easy part, money payment. But how do you pay for the misery? So if we can, we should be able to avoid war.
I'm in awe of people out there who deal with Alzheimer's, because they have to deal with death 10 times over, year after year.
The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?
A source of conflict for women everywhere is the pull between reproduction and production. Women worldwide have difficulty in balancing their dual roles as caregivers and providers.
