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Recession Making it Harder on Those Who Care for Ill Loved Ones
Naplesnews
February 23, 2009
Marel Sargent makes a sandwich for her husband’s dinner when she has to work at night.
The 71-year-old can only hope that nothing goes wrong after her husband, Randy, takes the bus home from Sunrise adult day-care center in Fort Myers. He has a name tag and house key dangling from a chain around his neck.
“He knows who I am,” Marel Sargent said. “But I will tell him something and he doesn’t remember. He can’t tell me what he did at day care. He can’t remember what he ate.”
After 47 years of marriage and raising three children, the couple have different struggles now because of his dementia. He is 73 and she started seeing signs of his decline in 2003 after he was let go from his sales job with Humana.
Each day is a challenge for Marel, who shoulders all the responsibility of overseeing her husband’s care, their household, the bills, and praying she doesn’t lose her job because of the recession. That would be a breaking point.
The stress on a caregiver for an elderly or sick loved one has always been tremendous, emotionally and physically, but the recession is starting to exacerbate the strain for some caregivers. They face losing their jobs and watching their health benefits disappear. They have a tough time finding new jobs with sympathetic bosses because of their family obligations and need to take time off when emergencies arise. Retirement investments and other assets that were once seen as rock solid are evaporating.
“We are starting to see a significant increase for requests from caregivers, they are having trouble making ends meet and they are looking for help,” said Jon Peck, spokesman for the state Department of Elder Affairs. The agency doesn’t compile data from calls to the elder hotline but anecdotally the callers are troubled, he said.
Marel Sargent works full time in retail at the Oshkosh B’Gosh store in the Tanger Outlet Stores in Fort Myers. She is grateful because she is the breadwinner now after being a housewife all her married life. The couple rent their home and don’t have any life insurance. Her husband has a small pension but it’s not enough to make ends meet. Her car is 10 years old and she just had to spend $1,200 on repairs.
She has worked at the outlet store for five years and considers herself a good worker, always on time and flexible, but doesn’t know how long her job will last.
“Anything I can put aside, I save it,” she said. “I don’t know how long they will keep me at 71.”
The Department of Elder Affairs has three programs geared toward providing services to elders and their caregivers but the program’s futures are uncertain given the state’s economy.
One of those programs, Community Care for Elders, and its $1.8 million budget to help seniors stay in their homes and out of nursing homes was on the chopping block during the special Legislative session in January. Gov. Charlie Crist intervened and restored the funding.
Legislators reconvene March 3 for the 2009 regular session where budget crunching will be a top order.
Local nonprofit Alzheimer’s organizations say they are confronting increasing pleas for help.
“We get at least three calls a week with people in traumatic situations,” said Chuck Pollard, president of the Alzheimer’s Support Network in Collier County. “It is usually the caregiver breaking down and needing some type of respite care. It has to do with economic problems. They don’t have the resources they used to. These are almost desperate calls. It nearly always has to do with money.”
Because of income losses, some families may hold off placing a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility because of the cost, said Steve Edmonston, a family consultant with the Alzheimer’s group.
“I know that pervasive anxiety about the future is becoming more intense,” he said. “People are watching their retirement portfolios cut in half.”
Dotty St. Amand, executive director of the Alvin A. Dubin Alzheimer’s Resource Center in Lee County, agreed the recession and losses in retirement savings from the stock market decline is adding to the anxiety levels of caregivers. The center began noticing a change a year ago, she said.
“They turn to agencies like ours for emotional support, just as much as they do for things to help pay for services,” she said.
The Alvin Dubin Center, like the Alzheimer’s support network in Collier, can help with short term respite care for caregivers by placing the elder in a nursing home for a few days or with day-time respite.
“The point is to help them out while they are in crisis and to prepare for a long-term plan,” St. Amand said.
For certain, caregivers make sacrifices personal and financially. A November, 2007 study by Evercare and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that one in three caregivers use savings to cover the cost of caregiving. One-fourth of caregivers reported cutting back on their own health-care spending.
The study found working caregivers spend more than 10 percent of their annual income on caregiving expenses. Caregivers with a median income of $43,000 spend $5,500 a year on their
caregiving.
*************One Day at a Time*************
Marel Sargent’s work schedule at the Oshkosh outlet store changes and when she works at night, she has to leave her husband at home alone. She prepares the cold sandwich for his dinner before she goes.
“I can’t trust him with the stove,” she said. “He has put plastic in the oven and put dishes on top of the stove.”
He is on Medicare and a caseworker came to the house, evaluated him and told her that her husband can’t be left at home by himself. Marel has no choice because she needs to work. The caseworker then enrolled her husband in a state home-care assistance program
“It pays for his day care, it pays for diapers and it sends some TV dinners,” Marel said. “That has been really great.”
Every morning she has to wash her husband’s bedsheets because he wets himself, despite the diapers, and so she sleeps in a different room. That daily chore of stripping the bed and remaking it wears her down. That’s when she gets frustrated. She often wakes up at 4 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep, especially if she hears her husband shuffling around.
“I worry about him falling,” she said.
She deals with the stress by exercising, walking and riding her bicycle. At the Alvin Dubin center, she has found a couple of other women in the same plight and they talk.
“You have to try and stay calm,” she said. “Sometimes at (night) I’ll take a walk.”
Joelle Canglin, 58, lived in Naples for 30 years and left four years ago for Baltimore for a change. Her two children were grown and she was divorced. Trained in medical social work, she worked as a bereavement counselor at a hospice organization in Baltimore.
Her widowed mother, Tina Bartuccio, was living in an assisted living facility in Naples because of dementia.
Unexpectedly, the ALF called Canglin, an only child, and said her mother was falling a lot and needed one-on-one companionship, something that was out of reach financially.
Canglin came back to Naples last November, moved in with her 85-year-old mother in her mother’s condominium because she can’t be left alone. Canglin is still looking for a job.
“I didn’t expect that,” she said, figuring her background as a medical social worker was recession proof. “There is nothing. I go to all the Web sites.”
During the day, she sends her mother to the Care Club in Golden Gate, the adult day center. On Saturdays she gets a babysitter for her mother, otherwise she would not have any time to herself. She has to help her mother with personal hygiene and feeding. Fortunately her mother knows who she is.
Her mother has some money but that will run out someday, Canglin said.
“It is not going to last forever,” she said. “I have that comfort now she has some cash in the bank. Once I get a job, it will be OK.”
She gets stressed and tries not to be hurt by the personality change in her mother, something that happens with dementia patients.
“You just have to keep yourself oriented,” she said. “It can still hurt.”
She didn’t feel the recession in Baltimore where jobs were plentiful, and she knew Naples was hurting because of the construction and banking fallout.
“I thought it might take a little while but not this long,” she said of getting a job. “I try not to think about how long this might take to get through. I like to think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
For help
The Alzheimer’s Suport Network in Collier County can be reached at 262-8388. The Alvin A. Dubin Alzheimer’s Resource Center in Fort Myers is at 239-437-3007. The Department of Elder Affairs is at 850-414-2000. The Area Agency on Aging in Southwest Florida can be reached at 239-332-4233. The elder hotline is 1-866-413-5337.
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