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Pulling loved ones out of a tailspin

Written by: Donna Ann Peck 467 views

When you are fighting emotional paralysis, how do you manage to be productive? The details hovering around this question are fresh and achingly poignant after a five-week emergency visit to my childhood home.

My parents live on a meager income that was dwindling fast due to medical costs from my dad’s recent stroke. The costs cut into my mother’s food budget, but, as a family, we were committed to helping my dad stay home as he wished. At 84, the family patriarch relies on others to wash and dress him, and help him in the bathroom. Some family members are appalled and stay away. The successful outcome was clear. Get financial assistance for my homebound Dad and—to the utter relief of my beleaguered mother—be his healthcare aide.

Believe me, my limited nursing skills were a small part of the stress I endured. I observed my dad’s diminished quality of life and brief lapses into anger or melancholy with paroxysms of pain.  I watched his face contort with effort as he inched his walker along the corridor during physical therapy sessions.

Acting like a GTD robot pulled me through. The first day on the job, I bought a Brother labeler and stack of folders and numbly applied the set of behaviors I knew so well. A big woven basket pushed under a corner table overflowed with paper. The basket was desperately in need of a GTD makeover. I took a deep breath and processed every piece of paper; labeled files for each agency, doctor, rehabilitation center and insurance company I had targeted for next actions.

It was the to-do list from hell.

The agencies set up to assist the disabled and elderly are a bureaucratic nightmare. They require dozens of forms; websites provide conflicting advice; and case workers, when they pick up their phones, half-answer questions. I dialed the same numbers each day until I heard a live voice. “Yes, your dad’s application is approved but there are lots of people ahead of him,” was the rely.

I spent enough time training myself, and coaching others, to visualize successful outcomes and think creatively of how to make them happen. I set a successful outcome to get the case worker to move my dad’s file to the top of the stack because of his age and disability.

A healthcare aide, sent by the New Jersey Department of Aging, arrived on my parents’ doorstep the day I was due to return to California. My dad now has a professional aide 10 hours a week. Because of physical therapy, he can walk to the car without the use of a wheelchair.

David Allen writes, “being able to maintain a positive vision amidst the challenging and often messy day-to-day stuff is a wonderful life skill.” I agree as I sink into an untroubled sleep, which ultimately was the successful outcome I had been aiming for.

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