General advice for caregivers

Caregivers are those who take care of someone - such as a parent, spouse, sibling or child - with a chronic illness or disease. Caregivers often provide emotional as well as physical support to the chronically ill and the job can be very taxing. Caregiver stress levels can run very high and there is a real danger of the caregiver also becoming ill if they do not take care of themselves. The tips below may help caregivers to balance their critically important caregiving role with their own health and well being.

Take care of your own health

It is critical to remember to take care of your own health as well as the health of the person you are caring for. Caregivers are at greater risk for contracting infectious disease than the general public. This is probably due both to the stress that being a caregiver entails, which can reduce the effectiveness of the immune system, and to a lack of time in a busy caregiver’s life to devote to one’s own health.

If someone is dependent on you for regular care, when you get sick both of you will suffer. Keeping up with your vaccinations and having yearly physical examinations and other appropriate medical surveillance (e.g. mammograms, prostate exams) are two things you can do to keep yourself healthy.

Depression is twice as common among caregivers as non-caregivers. While it is normal to feel down sometimes when taking care of a sick relative, it is important to pay special attention to your mood and seek out medical advice if you start to have symptoms of clinical depression. For example, if you find you are losing interest in the things you normally enjoy the most, or getting angry for no reason, or if you are avoiding friends and loved ones, you may want to see a doctor to be screened for depression.

Take time for yourself

Caregivers often have the responsibility of employment in addition to the large amounts of time spent caring for their patients. You should try to take some time for yourself every day. That doesn’t mean you need to watch a three hour movie; sometimes a hot bath is enough, as long as you have some respite from the day where the only person you are focused on is you. This can do wonders for your emotional well being.

Get some exercise

Physical activity often gets neglected when caregiving. Finding time to exercise, even for just twenty minutes a day, can help you maintain your physical health.

Eat healthy

When people are busy they tend to eat more fast food and junk food, or to skip meals entirely. However, even a little effort can improve your eating habits dramatically. Buy healthy breakfast foods that you can eat on the go. Get fruits and vegetables to eat as snacks - they are affordable and portable. Try to make dinner at home. If you don’t have time to make dinner, get takeout or delivery from a restaurant that has healthy menu options.

Learn how to manage stress

Learning how to manage stress can be difficult, but it can make all the difference for your own health. Stay in touch with your friends and family members. If you need to, ask them for help giving care. Asking for help doesn’t make you a failure; it just means you know your own limits.

Find caregiver resources in your area

Finding support is critical to sustaining yourself as a caregiver. Sharing your experiences with others in a similar situation, or hearing how other people deal with the same challenges that you face can help you gain perspective. See “Core Resources” for links to some caregiver organizations.

Breast cancer-specific issues for caregivers

Taking care of someone with breast cancer requires mostly emotional support. The disease is often highly treatable, but like any cancer diagnosis, this one is hard to deal with. Breast cancer treatments can result in drastic body modification and also cause a lot of unpleasant side effects, so patience and understanding are paramount.

Helping them through the diagnosis

When your loved one finds a lump, it is one of the scariest experiences a woman can have. It takes a lot of courage to make that doctor’s appointment and to follow through with the visit and the tests. While most breast cancer scares are just that: scares, you should be supportive and prepare for the worst. Go to the appointment with them, even if they say they are OK, even if it means missing the big meeting or the big game; this is one of those times when you need to be there.

Help them prepare for the appointment by anticipating the questions the doctor will ask and preparing written answers. Make sure that you remember to tell the doctor all the relevant information if your loved one forgets - which may happen during such a stressful experience. Be sure to be there when the doctor gives the results of any tests or discusses any diagnosis or treatment options. A lot of medical information is now available on the internet so you can research treatments even if your loved one is not yet ready for all that reality.

When a loved one is newly diagnosed with breast cancer, one of their biggest immediate concerns may be what will happen to their breast. It may seem counterintuitive that physical appearance would be foremost on the mind of someone with a serious disease, but this is the reaction of many women. If you are a man, it may be hard to understand, but you can think of it this way: for many women, their breasts are a critical component of their womanhood. Many women fear that they will not feel “whole” if they have a breast removed. It is very important to reassure the patient that losing a breast is not the end of the world and that you will love her no matter what she looks like. This is a complex issue that may take time for her to work through so your job as a caregiver is to be there, to listen to her concerns, and to reassure her when necessary.

Support during treatment

Treatment for breast cancer may include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or other drug treatments. All of these result in some undesirable consequences. Losing a breast to surgery is not only emotionally traumatic, but it can be physically painful and may require physical therapy for a full recovery. Having the lymph nodes under the armpit removed can cause buildup of fluid and a lifelong increased risk of infection in the arm so you can help the patient deal with these new complications. Radiation causes fatigue and can also cause changes to the appearance of the breast as well.

Chemotherapy often causes hair loss and serious temporary digestive problems as side effects. Hair loss can be difficult emotionally because it is an obvious external manifestation of what is really an internal disease. You can reassure the patient that the hair loss is always temporary and help her decide how she wants to deal with her newly naked head: hats, wigs, or nothing at all, perhaps.

Dealing with the sickness of chemotherapy can be hard on you both. It is very difficult to watch a loved one go through the amount of discomfort that chemotherapy sometimes causes. The extreme fatigue that often accompanies chemotherapy may require you as the caregiver to help with everything from feeding to trips to the bathroom. Again, you can reassure her that, like the hair loss, these effects are temporary as well.

Medication management

Several medications may need to be taken to help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. As a caregiver, you should have a system to make sure that the patient takes her medications when and how they are supposed to be taken. You can use alarms or timers to remind them when to take each medication and weekly pill dispensers to make sure they only take the dose that is prescribed. You may want to keep a medicine calendar and note every time the patient takes a dose, or have them do it themselves. You may also want to refill prescriptions before the patient runs out, so keep track of the supply of each medicine.

Emotional support

Especially with breast cancer, the most important role of a caregiver is providing emotional support. Simply being there to listen to the patient’s concerns and to provide encouragement can help keep their spirits up and improve their prognosis and overall health. Letting them know that you are there for them and making them feel safe despite their disease may help them deal with their condition.