Caregiver Spotlight: Jerry

November is National Family Caregiver Month, and we’re celebrating the caregivers in our community. Jerry provides care for his wife, Julie, and shares his reflections with us below.

On finding balance…

This is one of those things I’m not so good at.  I have been so focused on Julie and my daughter Trinity (who turned two just three days before the beginning of our journey) that, unfortunately, I haven’t focused on myself as much as I should.  We had a few challenges in 2019 but 2020 has been a pretty good year in terms of Julie’s health (although been challenging for other reasons) and Trinity is now old enough that she is helping both Julie and I around the house.  Trinity is also cooking dinner three to four times a night.  It’s time for me to be a little selfish and focus on “me” time in 2021!!! 

on learning through caregiving…

More than I probably have room to write but I’ll limit it to three things. Compassion, Grace, and Courage. At the LYB Retreat we were fortunate enough to attend together, I shared a story from early in Julie’s recovery that was pretty emotional and was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. I’m not going to repeat the story but the compassion and grace on the part of Julie came through as I wanted and is really something we should all strive for. Several people thanked me for sharing which meant a lot. As far as courage, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m sure it’s true for most caregivers but the first few weeks following the beginning of our journey were filled with waiting for Julie to become conscious, signing waivers for various procedures where the list of precautions always made it sound like a positive outcome was doubtful, waiting through several surgeries, and many other challenges that really took their toll on me. Once she regained consciousness and was aware of what was going on, she attacked every therapy session with as much determination and courage as anyone could given the circumstances. After a few months, the time came for her cranioplasty (where they replaced the portion of skull that was ripped off in the accident). We arrived at the hospital pretty early that morning and the parade of doctors started coming in at 6:00 a.m. or earlier. When I say courage, and I’ll never forget this, the last person to visit was the anesthesiologist. A few minutes before they were going to wheel her back for surgery, he told her “We’ll see if we can give you something to help you relax a little bit.” I happened to look at the machine displaying her vitals….she was getting ready to be wheeled back for brain surgery and her pulse rate showed 57 beats/minute. Um…sir….can I have some of that please???

on what it means to ‘loveyourbrain’…

If I have to choose one thing, it would be community.  Julie’s had the great fortune of attending two and I one of the LYB Retreats.  As mentioned in Jerry’s Journey, coming together as a group of strangers and bonding throughout the week was pretty amazing.  I’ll admit that I’m not a facebook user so don’t keep up with people as much as I should or would like to, but I am always amazed that when I do send Adam or anyone from LoveYourBrain an email, I get a response very quickly.  I know when Julie had a couple of setbacks in 2019, she showed the courage and vulnerability in reaching out to her LYB community from her first Retreat and got a lot of support and encouragement.  That meant the world to me also because even though I’ve been living this for over a decade now, there are still times where I have a hard time relating or don’t understand how Julie is feeling and knowing she has a community to turn to who may be able to better understand has helped us both.  Final thoughts with regards to community is the LoveYourBrain website.  I will often go to the Community Stories or LYB Tips pages for inspiration.  I’m really glad you’re sharing caregiver stories this month and would encourage other caregivers to share their experience.  As caregivers, our lives have forever changed also and learning how others cope with the added responsibility does provide encouragement.  I was overwhelmed by some of the feedback I received from my own Community Story, Jerry’s Journey.

on finding opportunities within caregiving…

It may sound strange, but I’m going to say community again here. In the past I have always been very private and shy. When Julie was first injured, communities of support came from everywhere – my immediate family, friends, work, our neighborhood...and many other places. It was really unbelievable at times to be quite honest. Between that and a now 12-year old daughter whose primary goal in life seems to be to try to embarrass her Dad, it has forced me out of my shell a little bit. Sharing our experience on the LYB website through both Julie’s Journey and Jerry’s Journey has made me realize that there are others who may be going through something similar and can relate. Because Julie and I are both pretty private, I didn’t send many updates throughout her recovery but on the rare occasion I did, I would always receive emails saying they had a relative, a friend, a coworker, etc… who had recently sustained a traumatic brain or some other type of injury and asking if they could forward the email. That actually meant a lot to me to think that someone would be encouraged by something I wrote. Just knowing you’re not alone is sometimes enough to help someone.

Did you know?

Caregivers are welcomed in all of our programs, including our Community Retreats, Yoga program, and Mindset Online. We even have a Caregiver Retreat specific designed to help nurture our caregivers’ capacity to care. Often it gets overlooked that the family and friends of the person who experiences the injury also need time to focus on their healing. Our approach is to support the caregivers in our community to find balance between caring for themselves and those around them. Click the program links above to learn more.