What Happens When the Caregiver Needs a Caregiver?

My husband and I met at Walter Reed in 2004. A few months before we met, he was injured in Iraq, where he sustained severe injuries, including a traumatic brain injury and the loss of his leg above the knee. Within weeks of us meeting, he was back in surgery for a revision to his amputated leg due to complications. These complications would continue for several years to come. Resulting in him basically becoming a hip amputee.

From the start, I walked into this with my eyes wide open. I had a fairly good idea of what I was signing up for. I had been a caregiver before for my mom when she was terminally ill. The thing is, this is far different. For my husband, it is not just the loss of his leg that affects him. With the TBI, he has memory issues. So, I have to keep his schedule for him and make sure he stays on task in many of the normal day-to-day tasks. Over the years, he has always handled being injured well for the most part. But as time has worn on and our family has grown, he has developed more signs of PTSD. He struggles with the things he is unable to do with or for the kids.

The reason I wanted to write this is not to complain about the struggles of being a caregiver to a wounded veteran. I want to bring to light the complications that can arise when the caregiver has their own medical issues come up that can cause them to be unable to fill that role in the family setting. What happens when the caretaker needs to be taken care of?

A few years back, I broke my hip while chasing our youngest son, trying to keep him from getting hurt.  The way the injury happened, it ended up taking several months for the doctors to realize that the hip was actually broken and that it was not just a torn muscle.  Even walking on crutches for a couple of months caused more damage to the hip before they finally did surgery to put in plates and pins to fix the break.  I’ve had to have revision surgeries in the years to follow since the first surgery was done wrong and my hip was put together 33mm off, leaving my leg almost sideways.  It has now gotten to the point where I must make a choice between living in constant pain or have yet another surgery where they will do a full-on hip replacement.  This, obviously, has the potential to make things really rough for our family.  

This is the type of situation I am talking about. When a caregiver gets laid up for their own healthcare issues, what do the families do in these situations?  Part of the issue for me is the fact that I am a bit of a control freak.  In the caregiver role, this is generally a good thing as it plays into my need to be in control of any given situation.  Over the years, I have known many caregivers and honestly feel that most of them share this same common trait.  When you get sick or have major medical issues come up, you have to give that control up to someone else, and that is very hard for me to do.  Now all the things I generally do on a daily basis are things that my husband will have to take on as I will be unable to do them for a while.  I am the one that does these things because of the difficulty he can have doing them due to his physical limitations.  On top of those added responsibilities, he will also need to tend to my needs while I am in recovery.  We are lucky in the fact that we have family that lives close enough to be able to come in and help for the first few days, and that our kids are a little bit older now and do not require the constant care that an infant might; they are able to help out more. But for the most part, it is all going to fall squarely on my husband’s shoulders.  

I know there are a lot of people that would say that these things are just “facts of life” that all parents and families have to deal with, but not all families have the added dynamic of one of the parents being a person with both physical and mental disabilities that they have to work around.  There are resources out there for veterans that would seem like they can help, but unfortunately, gaining access to those resources in a timely manner is not always the easiest thing to do.  This can be difficult for many veterans because most of the ones that I have known are the type who do not like asking for help from friends and family, so bringing a stranger in to help would definitely be something they would shy away from.  The caregivers won’t generally like the thought of this either because if they do not like the concept of giving up control to their own family members, they definitely will not like the thought of giving the control over to a stranger either.  

So, what DO caretakers do when they have their own medical issues or other emergency situations come up, and they find themselves being the ones who need to be taken care of? I personally find that just clearing our schedule for a few weeks until I can get back in action can be a major help, but I would like to hear thoughts from others.  It always helps to gather information and ideas from others so that I can have a plan A, plan B, and a plan C for any given situation.

Written by: Beth, HTH Representative & Veteran caregiver