Sunday, December 3, 2017

The Best Gift for a Caregiver


I haven't blogged much lately.

There hasn't been much time.

The holidays always seem to do that around this time of year.

But that sounds so silly, doesn't it? I haven't had enough time. Because time is constant. It's one of those things that no one has more or less of than anyone else.

But time is also one of those things that works like those complicated math word problems that boggled my mind in junior high

Two trains were traveling toward one another at the same speed ... 

Remember that?

If there's one thing I've learned about time since Jeff's injury, it's that time operates very differently in our new life compared to how it worked in our old life.

For example: before Jeff's injury, it used to take him, oh, probably about 2 seconds to get out of bed. He would sit up, put his feet on the floor, and stand up.

2 seconds.

Now, the equivalent of getting him into that same upright position (i.e., into his wheelchair) takes approximately 2 hours.

And that's not just 2 hours of his time. It's also 2 hours of my time. Collectively, that's 4 hours.

In our old life, we would have spent 4 collective hours doing things like: me doing laundry and Jeff vacuuming the house. Me running an errand to Target, and Jeff bbqing us chicken for lunch. Or me paying bills and Jeff taking Evie to the park.

Something we've lost in our new life is the ability to accomplish physical tasks simultaneously. 


Because when you live in a world where one adult takes care of another, tasks are accomplished in a very linear fashion.

Like a conveyer belt. One thing at a time.

And as a caregiver, my conveyer belt is always full. And always on.

And more often than not, I feel like Lucy Ricardo when she worked in the chocolate factory and the conveyer belt kept spitting out more and more chocolate than she could manage.

Only my conveyer belt isn't delivering chocolate.

It's delivering time-sucking tasks. I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just that so many things in our daily routine take up an enormous chunk of my time.

That's why time is one of the most precious commodities in my world.

It's also why time is one of the best gifts anyone can give me.

And today I got a great gift of time.

I ordered a new desk for Evie for Christmas. One of those desks that comes in a gazillion pieces in a box labeled HEAVY with a graphic of two stick figures doing a tandem lift stuck to the outside.

One of those pieces of furniture that takes time to build.

I told my in-laws that it was arriving over the weekend, and they immediately offered to put it together for me. That's kind of their thing. They have assembled nearly every piece of furniture in our house that's arrived in a similar box. They're really good at it.

And I always thank them for their time and their effort.



But I don't know if they truly realize just how much their time and effort mean to me.

Their act of putting together this piece of furniture means they've essentially plucked this item off of my conveyer belt. And this isn't an item that had been placed in line with all the other items. Oh no. This one had been stacked right on top of a few others.

So them claiming this task as their own has allowed me to keep plucking off other items so that they don't fall off and cause a massive pileup.

While they started work on the new desk, I was able to vacuum and clean the master bedroom and bathroom, do laundry, make lunch for my family, feed my husband, and get him ready for transferring out of bed.

Now that's simultaneous time management at its finest.

****

So here's a new math problem for you:

Question: How much time does it take for a caregiver to accomplish all the tasks in her daily routine?

Answer: More than she has.

That's why the gift of time is the most precious gift any caregiver could receive.

And I'm grateful for all the times it's been gifted to me.


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