Getting Organized

I’ve been a caregiver for 30 years. Sometimes my commitment was a few hours a week. Sometimes the situation escalated to the point where it required moving in with the person for a few days or weeks. Most of the time I was part of a team of caregivers who shared the work and the responsibility, but there were times when I was on my own.

My background is in business management, specifically computer systems—very linear and left-brain stuff. I used to teach classes in an organizational style called “Management by Objective,” where work was divided into projects. Each project was described in terms of goals, objectives, tasks, skills, timelines and cost.

When outrageous fortune brings us a sea of troubles, the first response is usually shock, followed by an emotional roller coaster ride. In my experience these reactions never really go away. They just become the background to the foreground of daily tasks. But these emotions can sometimes overwhelm and obscure the fact that caregiving is a job that has objectives, tasks and a schedule. Organization is essential. The sooner one can get organized the better.

The challenge of getting organized increases in proportion to the number of specialists, treatments, prescription drugs and other requirements specific to the person and his/her condition. There’s a saying that all politics is local. All sickness is local. It happens to a body, in a specific place, at a specific in time.

A good way to make the invisible visible is to write things down. In an earlier blog entry (Off the Radar Screen) I mentioned a TV special program, The Caregivers, produce by the UC San Francisco department of Neurosurgery and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. One of the caregivers featured in this program kept a daily log during the year he took care of his wife who had brain cancer. After his wife died, the man showed the inches-thick binder to his wife’s neurologist, who was stunned by what he saw. He had no idea of the complexity, intricacy, and burden of the daily care provided by the husband. For the physician this was a whole new universe.