Caregiving Is A Roller Coaster
As a caregiver, the past week has been one of the most challenging. I realize, I am starting to use that phrase more often now. I feel like I am constantly on edge, stressed and neglecting to take care of myself. Due to Covid, I am being extra cautious and not attending as many spinning classes. I started to feel very lethargic, moody, and no desire to do anything. My daily tasks are becoming mentally and physically cumbersome, and most importantly I am not motivated. I walked a few times and so far have achieved over 120,000 steps for the month of December, but that too is not getting me out of my funk. (My goal is 200k steps for the month of December)
To add to to the matter, suddenly last weekend my mom started to experience excruciating headaches that scared the living daylights out of me. When the headache episodes suddenly started last Saturday afternoon I kept thinking the worse case scenario. I thought she was having a stroke or maybe a heart attack and not able to express herself. She was crying and kept saying sorry. My immediate instinct was to call 911 but there were no signs of slurred speech, facial droopiness and she was talking fine and moving her limbs upon command. I was also terrified to Google because that has a tendency to instill fear in me even more. I tried to stay calm and increased her Tylenol dosage, and gave her something to relax so she would relax. I suspected she was not, so I put down the shades and did cold compresses on her forehead as well as rubbed eucalyptus and lavender oil on her forehead. Gradually she was getting relief- maybe she was feeling overheated or the cloudy day was getting to her. In the meantime, I noticed on my fitness gadgets that my heart rate was slowly creeping over 100, and I felt like I was going to collapse. I tried to get her to sleep, so I could rest, but it was very difficult.
This same episode happened again Sunday, as I was just as worried. I messaged the Home Health Nurse making sure I was doing the right thing, and reached out to her physician. Towards the evening hours, they reassured me I was doing the right thing. It gave me a sense of relief, and I was even more relieved when the nurse came and indicated all her vitals are normal.
Those 48 hours were pure hell for me. I felt like I was falling apart. For the remainder of the week, I was in bed early evening hours just resting so I can be motivated to get back into a normal workout routine for myself. Today, I finally went back to spin class, and feel unstoppable. Although, my mom woke me up 3am with a headache, I attended to her and still made sure I made it to my 9am class.