Dr. Nancy Snyderman: “My Life as a Caregiver”
AARP Magazine often has a short piece that captures the soul of an issue. Nancy Snyderman’s piece caught my eye, as I’ve often liked her wise words when she’s offering her expertise as a physican on medical issues for NBC news.
But as so many of us have learned, when it comes to our own families, being a so-called expert may or may not be an advantage. In her current essay, “My Life as a Caregiver,” she talks about the experience of trying to help her aging parents:
“It would be easy to assume that, as a doctor, I could navigate the health care system with ease. But I was as overwhelmed as the next person. My medical expertise just fueled my exasperation. During the two weeks of my father’s hospitalization, I bullied nurses and aides when my father was in pain, fought the hospitalist when she told me she needed to send him home because the hospital count was too high, and slept on a cot next to his bed so he wouldn’t fall in the middle of the night.”
Her essay continues, recounting the challenges once her parent was at home and the real potential for “caregiver burnout.”