This post is sponsored by Depend® brand. All opinions and statements are my own.
Remember the TV series ‘Dirty Jobs’? In this Discovery Channel series, host Mike Rowe would explore what he deemed the dirtiest jobs in America. Rowe acted as an apprentice in these jobs and assumed responsibilities as a roadkill collector, septic tank technician, pig farmer, and landfill operator.
Well, during the seven seasons this show was on…they forgot the often unpaid job of family caregiving. I believe it definitely warranted a dirty job episode!
When I reflect back on my family’s journey with caregiving, it’s slathered with diabetic injections, wound care, potty chair emptying, brushing teeth, changing soiled bed liners and sheets, emptying catheter bags, rubbing swollen feet, and wiping and applying creams in places you never imagined yourself going.
We’ve also had to assume cooking and cleaning responsibilities. Sometimes it’s the unexpected job of picking up soiled disposable underwear and pads my sweet dog accidentally got in to! Literally, sometimes you just can’t make this s%#t up!
Essentially caregiving is a dirty job.
- fumbling through it with cryptic to little instructions from health professionals who just assume we’ve got this
- called to do these things at all hours of the day without a day off in site
- juggling competing priorities such as a career, children, and our own personal goals
- performing these caregiving duties without any financial compensation
And…sometimes these situations get even hairier when we are caring for someone of the opposite sex. Our care recipient can sometimes be the same person we avoided seeing naked at all costs for the majority of our lives. So disturbing in some cases that as a middle-schooler, if you were like me you ran and hid in your bedroom closet when you accidentally saw this person naked. Traumatic!
So how have my siblings and I coped with the unwanted dirty parts of caregiving? With humor, support and creative expression.
Use Humor as a Coping Mechanism
My siblings and I sometimes come up with funny terms for procedures we have had to perform. For example, we called it ‘marinating mom’ when we had to do a lengthy three step process to rid bodily yeast rashes over a holiday break. This ordeal involved soaking areas with solutions and washcloths, then using a hair dryer to thoroughly dry them, and finally applying topical ointments. Oh, and this happened multiple times a day.
My sisters and I have named bowel movements nestled in bed liners like meteorologists name tropical storms – starting with A and going down the list toward Z.
We send each other group texts starting with “You Know You are a Caregiver When….”. We’ve collected so many of these, I filled a whole blog post with them.
We laugh for a bit, counsel each other, and then roll up our sleeves and show up for the job.
Just like many of you do…each and every day.
Why? Because we unconditionally love this person and we want them to be as comfortable and as happy as possible. Or honestly, we feel obligated to care for them since most likely they cared and performed dirty jobs taking care of us.
Adopt a Community of Support
Thankfully, we have access to products designed to help make our dirty job a bit easier to deal with.
If you’re looking for a place to learn more about incontinence and connect with other caregivers, go to The Incontinence Community, a private Facebook group sponsored by Depend®. This type of online community ensures all family caregivers have access to a group of people who completely understand what you are going through.
Caring for others is emotionally draining and physical exhausting. The crux of the Happy Healthy Caregiver site is helping family caregivers integrate self-care with practical tools and strategies. Caregivers require self-care because we need to tap into as many sources of energy as possible. Self-care helps us understand that the dirty jobs we need to do comprise only a fraction of our life – not our whole life. I certainly hope you have found support on this site as well as on the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast and social channels to help you integrate self-care.
Find Your Creative Outlet
- drawing and painting
- writing
- dancing
- acting
- photography
- scrapbooking
- DIY projects
Any of these are bound to feel like a reward from the ho-hum of some of these caregiving duties and will re-energize your spirit to be able to show up for another round of caregiving.
At a minimum, we can whistle while we work. Evidently several musicians echo the message that dirty jobs are so compelling we just can’t give them up. Ratt, Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler all have songs with the title ‘Loving You is a Dirty Job” and most come to the conclusion someone has to do it.
