Caregiving is a crisis that lasts years, which is why nobody treats it as urgent. It never resolves, so it never gets attention.
In 2017 I sat in a community college writing class next to my son Jesse, who needed to raise his GPA to get into firefighter school. I signed up so he would not have to walk in alone.
I wrote a paper that semester about the aging baby boomers. I argued that Social Security, Medicare, and the housing supply would not cope, and that rising rates of dementia would create what I called a caregiving crunch. I was right, and none of it was fixed.
Nine years later my husband got sick, and I became the statistic I had written about.
What I learned that nobody tells you
That the staff caring for someone change every shift, and you are the only person present for all of them. That asking questions is not being difficult, it is the job nobody else in the building is assigned.
That the first hospital would not let me stay overnight, and the second one would, and that this changed the care he received rather than merely how I felt.
That the average family caregiver spends about $7,200 a year of her own money, and almost none of it gets written down.
Women who care for a family member lose an average of roughly $324,000 in lifetime wages, pension and Social Security. You are not being dramatic. It is a real number, and you are allowed to count it.
I am building this for the woman I was in that first hospital room. Practical, calm, and never trying to frighten you into clicking.