I'm young. Youngest of all my siblings do I was told caregiving was my job. I cared for my dad through death and am six years in with my mom... and I work, and have my own family. Two weeks ago as I was keeping vigil at my mom's bedside I fell to the floor with a grand mal seizure, and have had two more. I can't drive. She's back at nursing home but she is in end stage organ failure of heart, lung, kidneys, etc. my trigger is stress. Caregivers your parents don't want you to die taking care of them even though it may seem it. Listen to your bodies.
I really believe our elders forget we are in our own age decline, that we aren't the kids they once remembered. My parents probably thought I was still 35 instead of being 70. Huge difference on what I could or could not do. Heavens, there were days I felt like I needed my own caregiver.
Curious, why did your siblings tell you caregiving was "your job"? To me this should have been a team effort with all of them pitching in one way or another.
Please take care of yourself. Your mom wants you to be healthy.
Carol
To stop the seizures, look up the ketogenic diet, also called “keto” diet. It’s also called the low-carb, high-fat, or LCHF diet. YouTube has a lot of information available.
Some brains do better when fed on ketones (energy produced from fats), instead of glucose (sugar).
Best of luck to you.
I'm My 92 years old mom (with dementia ) prime caregiver. She lived with me for 2 1/2 years. Now in asst living.
Nobody is equipped 24/7 to be a caregiver as I did . My family ignored me or my needs for help while she lived with me.
Hubby recovers, goes back to work ( 2 week trip) and I begin to have horrible "dizzy spells" which left me literally bedbound. I would get out of bed by "falling" on the floor and crawling to where I needed to go. This lasted almost 2 weeks (no, nobody checked on ME since my hubby was the sick one).
After a barrage of tests, it was concluded that my body had simply "given up" and was forcing me to rest. Since I couldn't focus my eyes, I was laying in bed with them closed 24/7. And I did rest, I slept and slept.
After checking to make sure it wasn't anything serious (I'm not making light of something that was truly horrible to go through) I began to realize that my body will shut down when I am over-stressed. I have had this happen a couple more times. It is my body's way of saying "STOP". And now I am older enough, I can, and I do respect that.
Get checked out thoroughly. The inner stress of caregiving (which to the uninitiated, looks easy!) can kill you.
I am sorry for your mom's decline--but that is going to steadily worsen, so you need to self-protect a little.
Good luck.
I completely agree. Our minds and bodies can only take so much. We push our bodies beyond their breaking point before we even realize what we've done not to mention what caregiving does to our minds. Over the course of 5 years of caregiving for different family members I too experienced 4 times my body "just said stop". All 4 times when a Dr asked where's your stress level and I held my hand over my head I was told until I got the stress level down whatever was going on was not going to get better. I hope you are under a doctors care but more important doing as your doctor suggests. Take care of yourself.
I am not saying to not go. All I want you to know is that seizures can be pseudo seizures or a signal something is wrong. Find out that and be careful to what they prescribe you. Don't forget you know your body.
You need a total workup, MRI, cerebral angiogram & carotid ultrasound study to determine the cause of the seizures. Stress is not a "trigger" for seizures---do not convince yourself of this. You've got something else going on that needs to be diagnosed and treated. Get to a neurologist ASAP.