thepick4uchicks
Songster
I hear ya! Amen Sista! I ended up overseeing my parents care. Couldn’t do it. My Mama has dementia and required lock down security unit in nursing care facility her last 24 months. It killed me to have to do it. My Dad I got to move on my property in an extra house not fifty yards out my back door. I plugged a baby monitor in and he could yell help if he needed me. He was in his right mind and healthy until the last two months of his life. He was pushing 92 when he died. I had them both on heart hospice also because they had had open heart surgery when they were 79. Like a decade and a half before this for my dad but this was so they could share a care team and we could all talk mostly together about my Mom. This was for my Dad’s benefit mostly because he couldn’t handle traveling to see her much. He couldn’t hear or see well. It wore him smooth out emotionally to see her so in such bad shape and for her to cry and carry on with him to not leave her was hard on him. Anyhow. I was blessed to be able to take care of my parents in my own way and be able to oversee their care was the main thing. I was there with them all the time and spent the time with them as much as possible. I have a special needs son who is 21 and he requires 24:7 supervision so it is hard to do sometimes but we worked it out. My husband’s oldest sister helped me take care of my Daddy and they became very close. I am so thankful for her. I will always be thankful for my healthcare career. It took a lot from me but it gave me a lot too. I learned a lot that prepared me for all the hurdles of their care when the time came. However, I would not wish going through that on anyone with dementia or Alzheimer’s. It’s not for the faint of heart. Cancer is easier. I can say that easily. I have seen family and patients go through both and Alzheimer’s and dementia is worse. It takes no prisoners and leaves no enemies. It eliminates all good or bad in its path.Just about every day but that is all water under the bridge. For me it's like, it took me 10 years to get back on my feet and when I got done being caregiver for my mom and dad what did I do? Go back to nursing. It's like....am in insane?
Now there are so many more career choices open for young women. IF I had it to do over again would I go into nursing. No, probably not. I may have gone into physical therapy or gotten completely away from it and gone into something non medical. Woulda coulda shoulda. As much as I enjoyed nursing, if I had known it would do to me what it did I would have ran screaming into the forest never to be seen near a nursing school again.
I also am in agreement with you about career paths. There are much more of a variety(ies) of careers to choose from now from even when I graduated high school thirty plus years ago. Medicine. Education, computer science, technology, and business education, and engineering were some of the more major career choices that have stayed hot but I would like to see kids get into bio engineering and chemical engineering to bring the U. S. And the world up to speed on fighting some of these viruses, pandemic causes, and challenges that we faced with the COVID-19 crisis from any range of areas from food production, to coming up with better ways to clean our work and homes, our bodies, sanitize our vehicles,etc, and air quality, speed up transit times for UPS, The Postal Service, shipping services in general around the world in crisis times - FedEx, lower food costs around the world, clean water for all, reduce water waste, I could go on and on. There are plenty of jobs that need to be done worth doing for sure.
