Caregivers Out Loud
Becoming a caregiver can creep up on you. Maybe it starts with dropping by your mom’s house to do her laundry or taking your dad to a doctor’s appointment or delivering groceries to your friend. Gradually, you find yourself doing more and more as the person you are caring for needs more support. You may not even realize it, you are making a commitment to care for someone else.
Today we speak with Katrina who shares her experience of caregiving for her mother with Dementia. Katrina has strong values rooted in family and supporting family, which led her to care for her mother at home. Katrina’s episode is honest, raw and real. It is very inspiring to hear despite her caregiver challenges and lessons, she evolved and deepened her spiritual connection with self and with her mother.
About Katrina Prescott
Katrina is a dedicated community advocate and innovator, as well as a full-time caregiver to her mom, Kathy, who is living with dementia. Katrina produces commercials and content in New York City and Vancouver. She has developed service programs in Vancouver to mitigate loneliness among seniors, acknowledging homeless citizens and elimination of single-use disposable chopsticks. Currently Katrina is a Caregiving consultant to individuals and an active volunteer with Family Caregivers of BC, West End Seniors Network, a UBC Health Mentor and Coordinating Dementia Care Advisory Group and is a member of the Alzheimer Society of B.C.’s Leadership Group of Caregivers. Learn more about Katrina at katrinaprescott.com
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Quotes
She was full of energy and full of life and wanted to, you know, live with some purpose and be of service to people, a lot of people living with dementia really want to be of service, and the world that we live in currently doesn’t provide a lot of space for that. Katrina
I didn’t know any other caregivers or anybody else who’d been down the road of dementia, Alzheimer’s, so it was very isolating. Katrina
Caregiving can be very isolating, especially for people who haven’t been caregivers themselves. You know most people that I know, including the medical system said put your mom in a home, put your mom in a home. Even though the mandate in BC is home first and people living with dementia do better at home. Katrina
Caregiving for mom has been a huge gift to my life and I, I would not trade it for anything, it has been hard, there’s no denying that. And when I accepted the letting go and when I started to accept mom for who she is and allow her to be herself. That really started to grow, me, if you will and allow me to fully become myself. Katrina
Caregiving is more than what society tells us caregiving is. When we are willing to change and shift, even just two degrees. It allows opportunities and gifts that may not look like gifts, but they are to come to us and that opportunity is always available, in caregiving and outside of caregiving. Katrina
Resources
- New to Caregiving Flipbook
- Challenges and Benefits of Caregiving
- New to Caregiving: Finding the Right Information
- Navigating the Health Care System Resource
- Learn more about Katrina Prescott here
Connect With Us!
- Family Caregivers of BC Website
- Telephone: (250) 384-0408
- Toll-Free Line Within BC: 1-877-520-3267
- Fax (250) 361-2660
- Email: info@familycaregiversbc.ca
Follow us on Social Media
Thank You
- BC Ministry of Health- Patients as Partners Initiative
- Organized Sound Productions
Transcript
Bill
Becoming a caregiver can creep up on you. Maybe it starts with dropping by your mom’s house to do her laundry or taking your dad to a doctor’s appointment or delivering groceries to your friend. Gradually, you find yourself doing more and more as the person you are caring for needs more support. You may not even realize it; you are making a commitment, to care for someone else.
Today we speak with Katrina who shares her experience of caregiving for her mother with Dementia. Katrina has strong values rooted in family and supporting family, which led her to care for her mother at home. Katrina’s story is honest, raw and real. It’s very inspiring to hear that despite her caregiver challenges, she evolved and deepened her spiritual connection with herself and with her mother.
Katrina
So mom’s shifting into the space of dementia. It seemed gradual at first. And after grandma died after mum’s mum died. She changed. The toll of losing her mom, who she was caregiving for at the time and very close with I mean, they were together every day. It was a void in her life and mom was very lonely, she didn’t have any family left except for me, you know her sister had passed and both of her parents and mom just really shifted. I saw this shift in mom, especially after grandma passed, and I, of course, was there for for her to do some, it seemed like surface stuff, you know, meals and entertainment going for walks and just spending time together. It didn’t all come on at once, and I didn’t realize the significant amount of care that was going to be required from the onset. I didn’t know.
Bill
That took a while to come clear and you had to cross some barriers in your own thinking, and as well with the people with whom you were consulting about what’s going on here.
Katrina
Yeah, mom and I, you know, had a challenging relationship, there’s always so much love there, so much love, love, my mom. But boy, we’re really good at arguing. We’re very good at it, we could, you could say we’re professional arguers with each other. So it was really hard we had really challenged communication between us. And I was worried about Mom, I could tell things had shifted and, so we went on a journey for diagnosis and whatnot and that process was very challenging. And, it made things even more scary. It was demeaning. It hurts me to think about it. When I think about it still. And it was very hard to navigate the system, understand what to do next. Understand, anything really. It was very hard, and there was a lot of judgment. I didn’t know any other caregivers or anybody else who’d been down the road of dementia, Alzheimer’s, so it was very isolating. And when I did seek help, it wasn’t always a very nice process. Without getting without blaming and getting into specifics it’s just been a very challenging situation and it wasn’t what I thought was going to be provided in the healthcare system. I thought we would be supported. And that wasn’t the case so you know I started seeking, you know, a different path. And that path also included, keeping mom at home because of what I’ve been experiencing through the system. I didn’t feel confident in them caring for mom, in a capacity that seemed healthy, it just did not seem like an option.
Bill
So you were early on. Seeing a future here that was gonna make demands on you to take care of her in a way that quote unquote the system wasn’t going to.
Katrina
Yeah, mum, mum was young. I think she was 63 or 64, when the diagnosis was given, and she was full of energy and full of life and wanted to, you know, live with some purpose and be of service to people, a lot of people living with dementia really want to be of service, and the, the world that we live in currently doesn’t provide a lot of space for that. Yeah, I knew that there could be more opportunity for mom to have a rich life, if she was at home.
Bill
Sure. A lot of people miss that. And I have included myself for a long time. The notion that once a person has dementia, you know, their life is over. When in fact your mum, as many others suffering from dementia, are still full of life. And so, you took on this role of preserving that and protecting it and nurturing it even against the advice of some associates and friends who said things like, what?
Katrina
Yeah, the. This is a place for Caregiving can be very isolating, especially for people who haven’t been caregiver themselves. You know most people that I know, including the medical system was you know put your mom in a home, put your mom in a home. Even though the mandate in BC is home first and people living with dementia do better at home. There was a lot of judgment. You know you’re wasting your life. What about you, you have to think of yourself. A lot of that, and you know I was also thinking of myself when I chose to keep mom at home, because I wasn’t interested in, sitting in a facility for 10 hours a day, and, you know, being the watchdog over the staff, and not feeling good about the food that she was getting or the lighting, or the air or whatnot. You know, this is another thing what are the options for caregivers, there isn’t an easy option. I don’t think that a lot of people don’t want to put their loved one in long term care and they might not have another option. Long term care was definitely not an option for my mom, and at 65 or whatnot I, you know the average age is 80, it just did not seem right at the time.
Bill
And in the process, as you began to take on the responsibility of looking after your mom at home. I don’t, I haven’t heard you say much about how easy that was. And yet, it had some profound effect on the two of you. In doing this, can you speak a little bit about that.
Katrina
Yeah. Mom and I had a challenged relationship we, argued a lot and dementia can be very good at also continuing on that argumentative streak, and I would let that trigger me, and I would, I would react. And I learned quite quickly, but maybe not quick enough Bill that, I got to a place where it became apparent that you know okay wait, Katrina, mom’s not gonna change. Unless you want to fight every day with mom to the for the rest of her life for the rest of my life whatever comes first. I’m gonna have to change. And it was that simple. It was just a moment I realized that it was hard, and what made it hard was fighting and disagreeing in these, these little arguments. You know why was I holding on to what pants you’re wearing today, I mean who cares i don’t you know it’s just everything. I want something to go this way, she wants it to go that way. Is it, why not just let it go that way, who cares, you know, sometimes it matters I guess for safety. But in the big picture, a lot of these things really are just letting it go just let it go. That kind of realization began the process for me, of allowing myself to gradually begin letting go. Letting go of being right, letting go of what the way I think things should be. I did really start to let go and allow, and that did really shift our relationship into one that became full of laughs and moments of joy. And that was such a gift for both of us and we both wanted that. I really saw my part, in not being able to allow that to flow through because as soon as I shifted that, it shifted.
Bill
As you can hear, Katrina faced several challenges in getting clarity about her mom’s diagnosis. Her personal life as she knew it completely shifted. All of her energy went to caring for her mother, ensuring her mother was safe. In an instant, caregiving became her new normal.
Despite the challenges, Katrina has generated her own personal growth and discovered the healing capacity of accepting her caregiving role, and letting go.
Katrina
Caregiving for mom has been a huge gift to my life and I, I would not trade it for anything, it has been hard, there’s no denying that. And when I accepted the letting go and when I started to accept mom for who she is and allow her to be herself. That really started to grow, me, if you will and allow me to fully become myself. I feel now that I have much more to offer than I did before this experience to the world. But I feel like something is going to be beyond now, because of this teaching. You can’t you can’t buy a teaching like this. No one’s teaching it and maybe it was you that said it somebody said it but no one’s gonna sign up for this.
Bill
(laughs) That’s right, that’s right.
Katrina
So It’s been a gift to give back to the person that gave me life. I wouldn’t be here if mom didn’t have me. I’m so grateful to be able to give her back, a tiny sliver of what she’s given me. And even in the process of her chronic illness and me being able to be on that journey with her has given me so much, just that has given me so much. It truly has been a privilege to learn from my mom, to be able to spend a few years being present with her, giving back to her, learning from her. I feel very blessed, very privileged to be able to do that for my mother.
Bill
In spite of the initial barriers to her caregiving role, Katrina created the means to care for her mother which proved to be transformative for both of them.
FCBC has many valuable resources that address the themes that arose in our conversation. We have resources in our Caregiver Learning Center on our website around ‘New to Caregiving’, ‘Healthcare Navigation’ and ‘Caregiver Well-Being’. You can visit www.familycaregiversbc.ca and click on Resources and Education for Caregivers to learn more.
Caregiving is more than what society tells us caregiving is. When we are willing to change and shift, even just two degrees. It allows opportunities and gifts that may not look like gifts, but they are to come to us and that opportunity is always available, in caregiving and outside of caregiving.
Katrina
Caregiving is more than what society tells us caregiving is. When we are willing to change and shift, even just two degrees. It allows opportunities and gifts that may not look like gifts, but they are to come to us and that opportunity is always available, in caregiving and outside of caregiving.