The Delta Doctrine

We, of course, have expanded the concept of this. A lot of people, of course, think of caregiving as nursing home related, but it's so much more, and you're dealing with so many more realities. And that brings us to our caregiver tip of the day, which is remember the Delta Doctrine.

The Delta Doctrine is something I was contemplating. I was flying out of Atlanta one day on a plane, as opposed to flying out of Atlanta on something else, on a dirt dirigible. John? It's from the $6 column.

Big board of words. It's always nice when you can work in a reference to lighter than air aircraft. So, yeah. I hope you feel happy about what you've done here. That's what breathing a lot of helium does.

Okay, go for it. Thank you very much. But I was flying out, and the flight attendant came on, and they give the big whole spiel about put your mask on first, and we've all heard that with caregivers. And I thought, that's it. That's what we need to do, is caregivers put our mask on first. But what does that even look like? And I noticed that when I was on the plane that they didn't tell you how to open up the pretzels or the peanuts, which are surprisingly difficult.

Yes. And I have made many a mess with those items before you resort to using your teeth. And they didn't tell you how to use the lavatory with their atomic suction device. They think we're going to figure that stuff out.

But if you'll notice that every flight attendant, every airline associate, every marketing agent with the airlines, federal oversight with the airlines, everybody involved in the whole airline food chain feels it is imperative to remind people that in the event of cabin pressure loss to put your mask on first. And why is that? Well, not only is it important, but why do they have to remind us so many times? Because it's counterintuitive. And we are constantly forgetting these things. And when we see a vulnerable loved one in distress, or things happen, we recklessly hurl ourselves at someone in order to better care for them, or do what we think is the best thing for them. And in the process, we put ourselves in jeopardy. And we get hurt and we end up and if we get hurt, we end up taking them with us because they're depending on us to not be hurt. So it's a real quagmire.

That's another one, John. It's a real conundrum for caregivers because it goes against our basic instincts, which is to rush into a burning building in order to rescue someone we love. And that's noble and it's okay to do as long as you have the protective gear on to do so. But if you're not protecting your heart, your body, your mind, your wallet, all those things, you're going to run into some real problems.

And you're going to end up hurting the very person you're trying to save because you're going to take out their caregiver and then they won't have anyone. Drowning victims, lifeguards understand this. It's not that they mean to pull you down with them. They are just panicked. And so they're trying very hard to not drown. And in the process, they may drown you. And this is a very difficult thing for caregivers because we lose our minds in this thing. We lose our perspective and we need to be reminded of this on a regular basis. So when I was thinking about this, I put in your mask on first. Okay, that's a nice sentiment.

Everybody says, put your mask on first. What does that even mean? I mean, truly, what does it mean?

What does it look like to a caregiver? Well, I came up with three things. W, W, W. And by the way, John taught me how to say W. Prior to John, I said W. W, W, W, W. Well, I was born and raised in South Carolina and W was the thing, baby. And then, of course, when the president, George W. Bush, W. Bush came along. I think his is less like a proper noun. You definitely call W, W. I mean, that's his name. But, you know, John, I remember one time after this, John said that it's W. And I went, thank you. You all have no idea what a blessing John is to me.

He keeps me from gaffes. This is a phrase I heard the other day. It was, never make fun of someone for the way that they pronounce something.

It means they learn the word by reading it, which is kind of nice. Maybe, maybe. I think you can make an argument for that. But, you know. Now, my wife and I have this ongoing thing about nuclear because she does say it like W. She says, she says, nuclear. And she says, that's the way I learned it in Texas. And that's the way it's going to be.

In Texas with her grandmother and she learned it that way. And you can't stop her from doing it. I mean, you just can't. Well, then I think this is one of those things. This is the wisdom to know the difference thing. And yet I was stupid enough to try. And yet.

As Ron White said, I had the right to remain silent, but not the ability. Oh, no. So back to the W. W, W, W. Thank you for getting me back on track, John. But I digress. Easy back on the road. But I wait, water and walk.

And I thought these are the opening opening steps of the Delta doctrine. This is for every caregiver to understand that when you get into a situation where it gets a little bit gnarly. Now, it could be with your loved one. They could be acting out. They could be saying things that are off the wall or mean or ugly, hateful, resentful, despairing, alarming, whatever. Fill in the adjective, whatever those things are, they could be saying it. It could be with a health care provider. It could be with all sorts of different a family member or whatever. But there's always those little traps that we can fall into these little potholes.

When I was out there in the field mowing the other day in the pasture. There's these there's just unbelievable amount of gopher holes everywhere. And they're big.

Some of them are just big. And if you're not careful, you know, you're going to fall and you can break your leg or something. You can really get hurt on these things. You've got to be careful. Well, that's the way it is for us as caregivers. And we can constantly get hooked into these things in these conversational bad places with people or whatever. And we feel the need to to say something. And so wait, W, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Bite your tongue and learn to like the taste of blood. Avoid the urge to talk.

Just wait. Rarely, John, you see if this works for you, but rarely have I ever had to make amends for something I didn't say. Yeah, that's a. Rarely have I had to go back and do a mea culpa for something I didn't say. There's a couple of times in my life I look back, you know, I really should have spoken up there, but rarely do I have to make amends for something I did not say. You might apologize for it. And so if you could just hold your tongue a little bit. Now, you're never going to get this right. We're not going to be perfect at this, but we can make some progress. But it will save us from those those drama places that could really be uncomfortable for us.

It really can. And so that's the first one. Wait, W, wait. Just remember that.

Wait. Now, the second one is water. Drink something. Drink water. Do not go for a soda. Do not go for coffee. Do not go for Red Bull.

Don't go for those things. Get some water. Cool water. Drink to think.

John, you have a regimen you do every day. You get up and drink. How much water do you drink when you get up? Oh, I it's a it's a large, you know, like Steinwort. I don't know.

It's 22 ounces or something. Just a Stein of water. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, of course it would be, you know, you don't have a Stein sitting by your bed, you know. Well, not lately. Stein of water. Only you. So you drink, what, a half a liter of water?

Yeah. Oh, at least there's there's a lot of stuff that goes on because I drink an awful lot of coffee, too. And that's just that's my chosen thing in the morning.

I just I really enjoy coffee. But it's it doesn't hydrate you at all. So I wake up and I got to just slam some water. And it just it first just wakes everything up. Water is required for every metabolic process in the body. Every reaction that happens, every single thing that goes on when we describe it, we make the assumption that it's happening in an aqueous solution, that these things are, you know, have water to help out with everything.

And if you don't, then no part of your body works better when you're not hydrated. None of it. And think this through. How much does it cost you as a caregiver when you're in those gnarly situations? How much does it cost you to wait?

How much does it cost you to drink some water? A lot of times as caregivers, we're just wanting to get somebody to to rescue us and bail us out of this and make it stop. But it's not it's not going to happen that way. Most most of the time. I mean, rarely does that happen.

Yeah, we all get lucky. What we can do is we can improve our own well-being in the midst of it. And I'm I'm asking you to just try drinking some water. I mean, try drinking water, not a sip of water. Drink, get a bottle of water and drink it. Get two bottles of water. Keep a bottle close by of of clean water. Just water. Just drink it. Our son Gray, he drinks an enormous amount of water.

And out here, I drink a lot of water. And I remember this guy was doing these these guides over the Middle East and they went out kind of in the wilderness area. I think they were going out towards Mount Sinai, actually. And I'll throw out his name for some of you guys who may remember this author.

If you do, I'd love to hear it, because I'd like to know if anybody remembers this guy, because I love this guy's stuff, his work, Jamie Buckingham. But he was telling this story and he was taking this tour and he told all the guys to drink water. Well, there was this one guy on the trip that obviously didn't drink a lot of water. He drank a lot of sodas. And so he kept drinking sodas and coffee, but not water. And about somewhere into the mix, they noticed he was and he was he was getting delusional because he was getting dehydrated and didn't realize it. He kept drinking sodas, but he wasn't drinking water. And it's one of those things where we've got to just knuckle down as caregivers and say, hey, we need to drink water. And this does two things. It helps that we drink to think.

It helps us kind of stay healthy physically. But it also fills our mouth up with something besides words and gives us a moment to cool down so that we're not having to respond so quickly. Have you ever been in a situation with a doctor or nurse or some type of receptionist at a hospital or whatever, and you just want to get snippy with them because they're getting snippy with you and you just want to fire back? You've had enough and you're just ready to just just lose it on them.

If you haven't, give it time because you will. If you do, if you log in any kind of time as a caregiver, you're going to get to that point. Been there so many times and it's embarrassing for me. I look back and kind of cringe because I could have been a lot better place and I could have been a lot kinder. But, you know, you live and learn. That's why I tell you I'm the crash test of being caregivers. But if you could just grab some water, just take a moment to drink some water and give yourself a little moment's clarity before responding. You just don't have to go to every fight that you get a ticket to.

And you're going to get a lot of tickets to these things. Your loved one's going to say things that are just going to fly all over you. A family member is going to come in and parachute in and and give you all kinds of advice and then just immediately leave and not do a darn thing. You know, a nurse or a church member or somebody's going to say something to you to try to just basically if you were, you know, if you were as smart as they were, you wouldn't be having these problems. Just drink some water, cool off, don't respond to that, you know, until you've had a chance to do it and certainly don't react to it.

And then the last one, so that's weight, water, and then walk. When it gets really ugly, when it gets really unpleasant, when you are struggling to kind of find solid ground somewhere, go for a walk. Just take a few moments to walk around the block.

Just get out. If you can't leave the house, walk to the back of the house and back. Walk around the room in a circle. You know, just walk. Physically move your body. Physically move your body and distance yourself away from the craziness. Walk down the end of the hospital hallway. Walk down the end of the rehab center.

Walk down the end of the hospital place. Just physically walk away for a few minutes and let your head clear. It'll buy you some time. It'll bleed off some stress. Drinking all that water is going to help you manage a lot of things in your life.

I don't know that it cures or whatever for high blood pressure, but it's not going to hurt. Drink some water. Wait before you respond. Take a walk. These are the three initial steps of the Delta doctrine.

The Delta doctrine. Wait, water, walk. And it's putting your mask on first as a caregiver.

That's what we've got to do. You cannot get hooked into these things. All it's going to do is take you down to some dark places and you still got to be a caregiver. You can be happier. You can be healthier. You can be calmer. I didn't say you can be happy.

I said you can be happier. It can get better. It's going to take a little work, a little bit of smarts, and a little bit of discipline on yours and my part. All this can be found in my book, Hope for the Caregiver.

You can get the audio book, the Kindle version, the print version. It's all out there. Take advantage of it. Take advantage of these things. There's more to come. This is Hope for the Caregiver. I'm Peter Rosenberg. We'll be right back.