When talking to the family of a patient whom they are considering putting into full time care, it is almost always the case they will express feelings of guilt surrounding the decision. Going into full time care is usually the last resort; the loved one has likely been deteriorating over a long time but there’s always been a way to deal with it if you’re willing to put the work in. Family has gone over often to check in, hired a part time carer, and maybe even moved the loved one in with them. But there comes a point that you know you can’t keep going anymore. Maybe you just don’t have the physical or mental capacity to be able to help the patient anymore. Having someone with dementia in the house is incredibly disrupting and it only gets worse as the disease progresses. By the time many who have had family members living with them decide it is time to look into care facilities, they are at the end of their rope. It has simply become too much of a burden to realistically keep caring for them.
Naturally, acknowledging your loved one has become a burden, through no real fault of their own, can cause a lot of guilt within a person. They’re your beloved family member and they need you after all; looking after them in their time of need shouldn’t be a burden. But the sad reality is when dementia enters the scene, nothing is as it should be. No matter what the circumstances are, making the decision to move a patient into a full time care facility is in no way something to feel guilt over. More often than not it is the best decision that can be made for everyone involved. When you decide to take on the task of looking after someone in cognitive decline, they become the patient and you become the carer. You may also be the child, spouse or any other relation, but from this moment that relationship begins to shrink as the care needed becomes greater. In the later stages you may feel like being a carer is all you do anymore; this new paradigm begins to take over the relationship you have. In this way, either admitting a family into full time care, or finding someone to come in and take over the care can be the best thing you can do for your relationship.
Admitting you are no longer able to fully provide the care needed and having someone else take over doesn’t mean you are off-loading them. It means that since you are no longer needed to be their carer, you can go back to being their child, their spouse, what you were to them before this disease got in the way. If the burden is always on you to look after your loved one, it means you don’t have the time or energy to simply be with and enjoy the company of this person anymore. You’re likely so busy running around playing full time nurse that you are unable to simply sit and be together. Giving yourself the freedom to have that time and relationship again isn’t something to feel guilty about. When the journey is over and you’re looking back at the last bit of time you were able to spend together, those quiet moments you were able to have again will be worth their weight in gold.
