Three Funerals Are Coming - But In What Order?

So, let's go to Luke in Georgia. Luke, good morning, Luke.

How are you feeling? Luke, you with me? Hey, this is Luke.

Yeah, this is Luther. It's not Luke. Oh, I'm sorry. It says Luke on here.

I'm sorry. It's Luther. Well, Luther, how are you feeling? I'm feeling okay. Just a little tired, that's it. Well, what you got on your mind this morning?

Well, I want to call the show. We've been caregiving since 1987. So, most of my wife is with her family, her daughter, I mean her sister and her mother. My mother has recently passed and so that's been very difficult for her. But my main concern is now my wife because she's an educated caregiver and it's affecting her.

And I'm just looking for some help for her. Well, what's going, are you doing, are you, Luther, are you caregiving or is it your wife that's caregiving? We both are. You both are and you're taking care of, you're taking care of whom? It's her sister now. Okay.

I'm going to pass about three months ago. And what's going on with her sister? She's been a brittle diabetic since her graduation week so that she was like 17. So her sister has diabetes?

Yes. And she is? She's on dialysis. She's been blind a while but we have to basically do most things for her. She's got tunnel vision.

You can see it a little bit but not much. So that's where we're at and my wife is just at her end. Well, if you could describe your wife's current circumstances in maybe one word, what would that be?

So we can get a better picture of what's going on with your wife. Well, is there anybody else that can sub in for her besides you? She has one sister. Her brother has passed. But none of those have ever helped us really. The other sister has a son that's schizophrenic so he takes constant care whenever she's not at work.

Are you able to bring in any kind of service that would help with your sister-in-law? We've done that sometimes, yes. We've done that. Are you able to continue doing that?

No, not on us. That's not understandable. Can you do it just like one day a week kind of thing or is it even that's out of the reach?

That's become out of reach too. Is that a financial decision? Yes. Okay. How old is your sister-in-law? She's 64 now. And if something happens to your wife, what's the plan for your sister-in-law?

We don't know. I don't know what would happen. I guess I would keep taking care of her. As opposed to her other sister? No, her other sister can't. Shoot. I don't think that would happen. I mean is their other sister unwilling or unable? Unable. She's not unwilling.

Is it possible for you guys to sit down and have some kind of meeting with someone that's involved with your sister-in-law's care to lay out a plan of care? Because at the rate you're going, basically, here's what's going to happen Luther. At the rate you're going, this is going to consume your wife.

And then ultimately consume you. Somebody's going to have a funeral. And whether it's going to be you, your wife, or your sister-in-law. All three of you are eventually going to have one.

It just depends on how this thing plays out. It depends on what order you have them in. So if you go down first, how's your health by the way Luther? It's okay. I mean I've had several bypass surgeries and neuropathy. If you've had several bypass surgeries, let's back up. Okay is not the word I would look for.

Even though you can certainly recover from that and live a full and active life. How's your weight Luther? 220. And how tall are you? 5'11. How's your cholesterol? It's in range now. Probably 180.

I know there were around 100. Okay. Now tell me about your wife's weight. How's her weight?

And I'm not trying to get into your business. How's her weight? She's overweight. She's 200 probably. Okay. And how's her cholesterol? It's high.

Okay. Alright so here's where this thing is hanging out Luther. Here's where you guys are. You guys are driving on a very, very windy mountain road and there's not many guard rails. And it's at night and your headlights are not working properly. That's how dangerous this is. So this is going to, the stress of this thing is going to, if your wife is wore out, she's on insulin. She's diabetic. You know, overweight. She's got a lot of situations going on here and she's taking care of somebody who's also in bad shape.

You are doing okay at this point but you still have some underlying issues. This situation requires immediate action Luther. And that immediate action, sit down and have a care plan for all three of you.

And that's going to take a trained provider, somebody that's got some kind of experience and so forth to sit down with you guys and lay this thing out. There's going to be a funeral. There's going to be three funerals.

We just don't know what order they're going to come in yet. But if your wife goes first, then your sister-in-law and you are going to have a brutal experience dealing with this. If you go first, then your wife is left holding the bag. If your sister-in-law goes, then you're going to be taking care of your wife.

All three of you need a plan of care. When's the last time you saw your doctor, Luther? Last week. When's the last time your wife saw her doctor? Last week.

What was the result of this? Well, they're just still going down the same path with us, I guess. That sounds pretty lackstasical. Her daddy had Parkinson's and she had it too. She is not addressing it. Okay, Luther. That's a problem.

Luther, and I'm just going to be blunt with you here because that's just the nature of what we're talking about here. How sustainable is this? What do you mean? It's not sustainable. Exactly. That's the right answer. That's the right answer.

You guys are really heading for some very, very dangerous water. If your doctor is just saying, let's just keep on keeping on, you need to get a different doctor. There needs to be an aggressive plan of care for all three of you. Now, you can get a different doctor. Pardon me? Who do you see to do that?

Well, if you don't have a doctor, then you're going to need to see some type of caseworker, care worker, some type of social worker, somebody that can get you a plan of care. Okay, we're going to have a team approach to this thing. I'll talk about this on the next block. We're going to a break here. I'll give you some thoughts.

Hang on, just listen on and I'll talk about what you can do at the next block. Welcome back to Home for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver.

We're glad that you are with us. 888-589-8840. I want to circle back to Luther in the last call here and what's going on. Let me get to recap here, what I was able to glean. His wife is not well herself and she's taking care of her sister who's even less well. Luther himself has had bypass surgeries and other issues, but this is all very, very, very dangerous, what they're dealing with. And the stress of caregiving is not noted for being a help to people who are already in bad shape. So, given that, where do you start? Because they both saw their doctor last week and evidently nothing much is happening.

So where do you start? Well, his wife is diabetic and she's taking care of her sister who's diabetic and blind and has other underlying health issues. The diabetes is something that can be addressed, not 100%, but certainly addressed with proper eating. So if you're overweight, guess what? We're going to have to get underweight. You're going to have to get some of that weight off of you and change your eating habits. You can do that right now. That is something that can be done right now.

There are plenty of things. Go out online and you look for diabetic menus that you can eat. And you start changing the way you eat. You start exercising and you start taking care of your body physically.

And if your doctor is not giving you that kind of support, get a different doctor. There are plenty of them out there that would be glad to help give you some guidance towards crawling back to a healthier lifestyle. But it starts with watching what goes into your mouth. The last thing you want to do is kill yourself with a knife and fork. So you change the way you eat and you change it today. You didn't get here overnight. You're not going to get out of this overnight.

But you can start drinking a whole lot more water and a whole lot less soda or sweet tea or fruit drinks or whatever that have so much high sugar in it. Okay? You can do that today.

It doesn't cost a darn thing to do that. Second thing is, it's time to sit down with a sustainable plan of care as best as possible. And you may be able only to do this for the next couple of months. And then you have to develop another one that will go even further.

But right now you're in crisis mode. You've got to have a short-term path, a medium-term path, and a long-term path. Because the three of them are not in good shape and there's going to be three funerals. Which order are they going to go in is the question. And depending on who goes first is going to create even more drama and more heartache and more suffering. So there has to be a sit down with an honest conversation. There's family counselors that can help with this. There's social workers. A lot of your doctors can refer you to a social worker who can sit down with you and have a plan of care.

Particularly if one or more of these individuals are on Medicare, disability and so forth. There are resources out there that you can tap into. But you've got to raise your hand and say, we're going to do this. We're going to take charge of this. You cannot leave things hanging. There is no open end to this. Well, we'll just wait and see.

No, we don't. I've had doctors tell me that before and medical staff have said, well, we're going to wait and see. I said, how long are you going to wait? I said, we'll wait three weeks.

Okay, on three weeks, I'm going to give you a call. I mean, that's the way I deal. I never leave anything open ended. If we're going to wait and see 45 minutes or 45 days, it doesn't matter. Waiting is an action step, but there is not an open end to this. Okay?

This is unsustainable. So for those of you who are in similar positions where you're in a situation where you don't know what else to do, you've got to deal with what you can control first. You can control what goes in your body.

Okay? You can control what goes in your mouth. Then you can control what you're physically doing, exercising, some type of physical activity. You may have neuropathy. You may have all kinds of issues you can't do. My wife doesn't have any legs. She's in pain all the time, but she physically pushes herself to do something. Whether it's doing, you know, arm exercises or whatever else, but you can't just sit around.

Okay? We're going to couch ourselves into a grave. So you've got to physically move. One of the things I did, for example, you know, I mean, I was getting, I was putting on some pounds.

Every caregiver goes through this. We gain weight. I mean, I got so big, my picture fell off the wall.

I mean, you know, it happens. I started doing martial arts and started working myself into shape. I got rid of a sitting desk and I went to a standing desk. They say standing is the, I mean, sitting is the new smoking.

I don't know if that's true, but that's what they say. All I know is I stand. I'm standing while I do this show. I stand when I do this.

I'm always moving around and I try to stay active. But you've got to do something. Everybody can do something and it's important to take action with that. Sit down and have a meeting. If you don't know who to call, start with your pastor and say, look, we need to develop a plan of care.

If the pastor looks clueless, go to the next person. You keep going aggressively until you get a plan of care that is going to give you guys wisdom and leadership and guidance throughout this process. And you stick to that. And it's never going to be one thing. There's no magic bullet for this. It's just hard work. But your options are a funeral and even more suffering.

So we're going to have to roll up the sleeves a little bit. I remember the first time I stepped into a martial arts class. It was hard work. I started putting down sodas and grabbing water. I put down a Snickers bar and get an apple. And I still have relapses where I love to get a candy bar.

I won't tell you when the last one I had was yesterday, but I have to push back and keep going. I'm not having a Nazi approach to this thing where you can't do this at all. I'm just asking you to start making life choices that are a little bit better.

And eventually you'll start making a sequence of them. Because the alternative is death and suffering. That's where Luther and his family are right now. So you've got a family history of diabetes. You've got Parkinson's involved. You've got triple bypass that's involved. You've got a lot of different things involved.

And they're all in their 60s. Anybody here want to weigh in on how this is going to end? This is not going to end well without some aggressive stances on this.

Okay? Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. I've been saying this since I launched my show. I've been saying this since I wrote my book. And we caregivers sometimes think we're just going to just white-knuckle this thing until we get this loved one to the grave, not realizing that we are in danger of the grave ourselves. So if we don't take this kind of action, we're in trouble. It always starts in the heart. And you can't just start trying to do one thing without realizing your whole mind and heart have got to change.

I've got a thing on my podcast. You can go out and see it. It says, can we change the way we think? Yeah, we can.

We must. And it's the most recent episode. Go out to HopeForTheCareGiver.com. It's free.

You can just listen to it. It's only 10 minutes of changing the way we think about these sort of things, that we get aggressive about it. Be good stewards of our bodies, of this situation we're in. And as we go through this, then these scriptures, these songs that I've put out there for you mean something. You are my hiding place. You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. And as we put down a soda and pick up a water, I will trust in you. Because you're being a good steward and you're trusting God to give you the strength to make better decisions with this. It's that simple. And this is where Luther and his family are and this is where probably a lot of us are. Been there myself. Still have to fight. It's not a one and done. It's a daily changing of your lifestyle. For more information, go to www.fema.gov