The Caregiving Wife's Handbook: Caring for Your Seriously Ill Husband, Caring for Yourself
168
The Caregiving Wife's Handbook: Caring for Your Seriously Ill Husband, Caring for Yourself
168Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Women are suffering physical, emotional and financial burnout as the United States' leading caregivers. Of the 65 million caregivers in the U.S., 66% are women, and these numbers will only increase as the population ages. And while statistics and resources abound for caregivers in general, very little exists for women in their unique role as caregivers to their dying husbands.
Traditionally, caring for a dying husband has been seen as a "wifely duty." Most wives don’t label themselves, and aren’t labeled by others, as caregivers. But advances in medical technology are making this distinction an imperitive since women are under more stress as caregivers than at any other time in history. Although there are generic similarities in caretaking, caregiving for a dying husband is distinctly different, and the longer the dying process, the more complex the problems.
When a husband is in the process of dying for many months or years the experience is quite different than a husband's sudden death. On top of dealing with the tragedy, the wife must figure out how to make life work. Sometimes a woman is married to the love of her life and sometimes not. Some marriages strengthen, while others disintegrate. Some women are in abusive relationships and find the abuse continues, and even increases, during these times, while others find, much to their surprise, that they become the abusers. Still some will start or increase substance abuse and others will have affairs to get by.
The Caregiving Wife's Handbook aims to help women get through their husbands' illness and death with compassion, emotionally whole and without regret by helping them communicate clearly—and in steps—about issues affecting this unique caregiving relationship.
Without specific direction, many women find themselves over the top with stress as their lives change radically. As a board certified medical psychotherapist and primary caregiver, Diana Denholm recognized the need for a step-by-step process to help women communicate with their husbands to avoid irreparable damage and regret.
In The Caregiving Wife's Handbook, you will learn:
- To ask questions you may not realize you need to ask
- The issues that bother you and a method for categorizing them
- What you should and shouldn't discuss with your husband
- How to make and prepare for a date to talk about difficult topics
- What to do if your husband won't talk
- To create "understandings" with your husband
- How to deal with his family
- Choose roles you should take and those you should avoid
- Understand what is “normal” in what you’re experiencing and feeling
- Take care of yourself so you can survive and even have fun
- Implement do’s and avoid don’ts to make your life simpler
- Balance with greater ease
- Sex life/intimacy
- Current and future finances
- Fatigue
- Sleep
- Household duties
- Job responsibilities
- Irresponsible behaviors
- Unrealistic expectations
Let The Caregiving Wife's Handbook support you amidst the grief—all the way through the Final Chapter.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780897936057 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Turner Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 01/03/2012 |
| Pages: | 168 |
| Sales rank: | 1,066,799 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.52(w) x 8.54(h) x 0.52(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: What's Happening to My Life? 1
My Story 5
What You Can Expect from This Book 6
1 Examining Our Issues 8
Prompts to Start Planning 11
Responses from the Group 13
2 Organizing Answers and Choosing Discussion Topics 30
Category A Things I Want to Say but Don't Expect a Response To 32
Category B Things I Want to Say but Won't, Because It Won't Make a Difference 33
Category C Things I Want to Say but Should Only Share with a Friend 35
Category D Things I Really Need to Talk About, Know About, Have Resolved, or Make a Decision About 37
3 Communication Tools 101 (or Shall I Say, 9-1-1) 41
Keep Your Viewpoint While Your Husband and Others Keep Theirs, Yet Still Get What You Want 42
Change a Person's Behavior, Whether or Not They Change Their Opinion 43
Changing Your Behavior May Make It Unnecessary for Other People to Change Theirs 44
Encouraging Your Husband to Say More 45
Pitfalls to Avoid 46
Speaking His Language 47
Summary of Communication Tools 47
4 Talk Your Way to Understandings 49
What If He Refuses to Meet? 52
What If I Refuse to Meet? 53
The Setting for Your Discussion 54
Preparing for the Discussion 55
The Discussion 57
Closing the Discussion and Creating Understandings 58
Sample Understandings 60
5 Comprehending Our Emotions-Life in the Guilt Factory 69
The Big C 72
Emotional Fine-Line Issues 76
The Stress of Living Grief 87
Sometimes Our Emotions Surprise Us 88
I'm So Tired of Being the "Man"! 89
Emotions and Words 89
My Way Versus His Way 90
Ultimately It Is His Disease 93
6 Practical Issues 96
Practical Fine-Line Issues 97
7 Social and Familial issues 128
Whose Business Is It, Anyway? 129
Everyone Has an Opinion 132
The Hottest Button 133
When Someone Asks 135
Public Face with Private Pain 137
Visitors and Privacy 141
Ceremonies and Services 146
8 Self-Care 151
Manufacture Time 156
Stop Energy Drains 157
The Delicate Topics-Love, Sex, Intimacy, and Affairs 157
Staying Awake When Trauma Becomes Normal 160
"Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar" 161
Health Lessons I Learned from My Husband 161
9 50 Do's and Don'ts 163
10 Decisions, Transitions, and Discoveries 169
Resources 175
Index 189