One thing that our family had to rely on where amazing friends and family to get us through the very trying time we had with cancer. I can say that there is no better cure than the love, time and energy they gave us. And although my first post on the experience was maybe more negative, I can say that a lot of good came from our families experience with cancer.
From hot meals left on our door step, to cards stuffed full of funny jokes, to waking up to the sound of a lawn mower… then realizing it was in your yard, we were always taken care of.
We had the entire community on our side, however, my parents are both very independent people – and when fall came my mother had to return to teaching her college courses. They felt that they could not ask their loved ones to do any more than they already had. So we had to find someone to assist my dad while mom was away.
For obvious reasons, this is not a very easy thing to do. For one you are leaving your home and your loved one in someone elses hands… but as we learned, this became a VERY hard thing to do. This could merely be a geographic issue (meaning, we are from a small town), but there were only a handful of individuals available – and those who do that line of work – were already busy. Our hospice nurse provided us with a list – but all of these people were too busy to take on one more family.
There was little in the way of finding assistance. Thankfully, with my mother being a professor of nursing, she knew plenty of colleagues to call, and we found a wonderful home aid to be with my dad. However, based off our search, we learned there was a fairly high demand for these individuals. It seems as though (again, maybe only it’s in our area) – there is a need for a network of trusted individuals to assist people with finding in home assistance (aside from hospice). This leads me to wonder what type of organization should take this service network on? And how would it work? What would it look like?
