A Little Levity to Ease the Family Caregiver’s Burden

Illustration by Hana Cisarova for AJN/All right reserved. Illustration by Hana Cisarova for AJN/All right reserved.

According to the CDC, almost 21% of households in the U.S. are affected by family caregiving responsibilities. The pressures and costs of this unpaid labor of love have been well documented.

This month’s Reflections essay, “Swabbing Tubby,” is written from the family caregiver perspective rather than that of a nurse. It’s about the wife and two adult daughters of an ailing older man as they are coached in one of the skills they will need to care for him at home.

It’s a tough situation, but one in this case leavened by the ability of these three women to laugh a little at the more absurd aspects of their predicament. Here’s the beginning:

In retrospect, I can’t help feeling sorry for the earnest young woman who tried so hard to show my mother, my sister, and myself how to hook up our brand-new, at-home, IV feeding device. She was all of 25, with the freshly scrubbed look of a young schoolgirl. Her youthful perkiness was no match for the trio of exhausted, crabby women who faced her across the empty hospital bed. Dad was down in X-ray having yet another CT scan, and the three of us were […]

A Chinese Dialysis Nurse’s Moving Story About Chronic Illness

Skip Navigation Links“I’m preparing for the university entrance exam,” he often told me. He was upbeat and grateful, despite the disease. I admired him for his strength and spirit and felt terrible that he’d been diagnosed so young.

CaptureThe March Reflections, “Skipped Two Times,” submitted to AJN by a dialysis nurse from China, is about a potentially avoidable crisis in the health of a young man with renal failure secondary to lupus. It’s about chronic illness, patient self-management, and a nurse’s remorse.

To my knowledge this is the first Reflections essay by a Chinese nurse that we’ve published. We’ve already heard from more than one reader who was moved by the story. It’s free, so give it a look.—JM, senior editor

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