The Practical Caregiver’s Guide to Home Hospice Care: How to Help Someone You Love
By Sara M. Barton, The Practical Caregiver
Published by Sara M. Barton, The Practical Caregiver, at Smashwords
Copyright Sara M. Barton 2011
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What are The Practical Caregiver Guides? They are educational guides to help you be a better family caregiver. When you are providing basic care, you need the right tools to help you get the job done. My goal as the Practical Caregiver is to help you provide better care to your loved one, without losing yourself in the process.
There are three important rules for good family care:
-- Love is never enough. You can love someone utterly and completely, but without the right tools and education, you can fail as a caregiver
-- You have to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of your loved one. If you fail, there will be two people who need a caregiver -- you and your loved one!
-- What you don't know or understand can hurt you AND your loved one -- when you learn about what ails your loved one, you can also learn about what will make care better.
Believe in yourself. Believe that for every problem there is at least one solution. Believe in family care -- there's no place like home. Direct your caregiving to meet your loved one's real needs. The rewards can be great. Love really does make the world go around, but if you want a smoother ride, grease the wheels!
HOSPICE CARE ESSENTIALS
What kind of home hospice caregiver are you? Did you volunteer when you found out your loved one had a life-limiting illness? Did you get the job because there was no one else available? Do you feel overwhelmed and unable to cope? Do you feel hopeful that you can make your loved one comfortable in his or her final months, weeks, or days?
Home hospice is an important time for families. It’s a chance to make the most of the opportunities left -- to finish unfinished business, to say the final goodbye to someone you love. A practical caregiver is an educated caregiver. The more you know and understand about home hospice care, the better the care you will give. Why? You will understand that you cannot make your loved one better, but you can make him or her feel better. Comfort is the key to success in home hospice care.
When families work together to provide home hospice care, it can be extremely rewarding and bonding. A cooperative effort can help your loved one to prepare for his or her final journey with a sense of peace and sometimes even relief that the long, hard struggle is ending.
Home hospice care is different from other kinds of home care. If you have been the family caregiver for your loved one, you’ve probably spent a lot of time running back and forth to doctors’ offices or the hospital. Now it’s likely that your loved one will spend the final days at home, in familiar surroundings. There will be people coming to the house to help care for your loved one. The hospice team will work to manage any of the pain or discomfort as your loved one moves closer to death. The effort is directed at making your loved one as comfortable as possible. Some things are inevitable as the body begins to break down, and these issues will be addressed by the home hospice team. In most cases, you will be doing a lot of the physical work in caring for your loved one, and the hospice team will help you to understand the stages as your loved one moves through them. Hospice programs have social workers, chaplains, and volunteers to help you. The stress of caring for a loved one in hospice can sometimes feel overwhelming, and it’s important that you work with the hospice team to get the kind of support you need to do the job.
CAREGIVER’S TIP – DON’T DESPAIR
Some family caregivers can find the challenges of home hospice care to be nearly impossible, especially if there aren’t a lot of family members, friends, or neighbors available to help, or if the physical demands of caregiving are more than they feel they can provide. It’s important to be creative in finding the kinds of resources that can help you get through it.
HOME HOSPICE CHANGES EVERYTHING
Experienced caregivers sometimes have difficulty transitioning into home hospice care. When you are used to providing care that is directed towards a cure, towards preventing problems, it can be hard to realize and accept that your loved one’s body is beginning to break down. You may find that some medications and treatments that you used to provide for your loved one are no longer being used. You may find your loved one is no longer interested in eating, and it can be tough to accept that fact. Home hospice care is often a very emotional experience. It is a time of uncertainty, doubt, and worry for many families. The better you understand what your role is as a home hospice caregiver, the better able you will be to meet the challenges of making your loved one as comfortable as possible at the end of life.
Comfort is more than just a body without pain. It is a mind that no longer worries that family life will change for the worse after death or that death will be physically painful. It is a heart that is not heavy with grief or anger because life is ending with so much left to do and not enough time or energy to do it. A practical home hospice caregiver learns that helping a loved one find peace at the end of life is all about empowerment. Listen to your loved one. Understand what is important to him or her. How should the last months, weeks, and days be spent? What is on that “to do” list, and how can you help him or her get as much done, even as the body begins to deteriorate? Home hospice care is all about adapting your care to meet the rapidly changing needs of your loved one.