R-E-S-P-E-C-T

     Caregivers provide all kinds of assistance.  This assistance can be shopping, it can be paying bills once a month or living with and providing care for someone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  It can also include long distance care assistance.  Most people have difficulty seeing this as providing care.  After all, what is the big deal to have to do something over the phone?  There is no trouble attached to making a few phone calls, right?
     Let's look at this a little ore closely.   We can use the example of the son who lives 12 hours away from Mom.  Mom develops an acute medical issue.  Son makes some phone calls and appointments for Mom.  He cancels meetings, rearranges his schedule  and goes to see Mom.  They go to the doctors and make a plan for treatment.  Son comes back home, calls his siblings to let them know what has happened and reschedules all of the things he missed around Mom's upcoming treatment.  His siblings are very supportive and genuinely offer to do whatever they can to help.
     Mom, in the mean time, has decided that she does not want to go along with the plan.  She needs time to think about things and insists that everything be cancelled.  She agrees to a new plan, then cancels it again.  The son, and his siblings, are constantly rescheduling their work lives and family obligations around these ever changing appointments.  Mom, of course, does not see that any of this is an issue.  She is concerned with her needs and is understandably nervous about all of the things going on in her life.  She calls the son constantly to complain about how she feels or just to talk.  The son is trying to be patient with Mom, after all she is experiencing something frightening.  But, he is trying to work.  Mom insisits that he call the doctor to request medication and report symptoms several times a day.  Mom will not do it herself because, "You can get the information faster than I can".  Mom does not take medication the way it was prescribed because the doctor "does not understand" and she knows better what will work and what won't.  At one point the phone calls are coming 16-20 times each day. 
     Even though the son is not spending a lot of time with Mom physically, the thime spent on the phone becomes overwhelming and intrusive.  For the son there is also a feeling of lack of control.  He feels stressed thinking that if he were there he could cotrol the situation more effectively, but this is not always the case.  Chances are Mom has been like this her entire life.  As a younger woman it was better hidden.  Now that she is older and needs some assistance with these things it is coming to light.  Caregiving is caregiving, whether it is provided on site or long distance.  Both are equally as difficult and time consuming, just in different ways.  With the correct resources the family could assist Mom in her quest to be incontrol, but not make them feel as if they are crazy, or incompetent.
     Asking questions of the doctor or nurse, calling someone who has worked with a homecare agency before are all ways to begin the quest for a solid agency.