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Let’s walk in the shoes of a seasoned healthcare professional today. Maybe it’s someone in your household who’s been a nurse, doctor, or whatever-ologist for their entire career?
Are you walking in these shoes?
Sometime before or after retirement, bad news comes along. Your spouse’s diagnosis changes everything. For both your lives.
As a healthcare professional, you’re better prepared than most. With the utmost pedigree of having seen it all over the course of your proud career.
That’s the blessing.
But when administering health care professionally, you were just that, a paid professional. One compensated by your employer, who’s compensated by their customers (your patients) or some other source.
The people you saw were your patients. Fewer emotions entered your workspace, and you rescheduled your patients to see them every so often.
The value of the healthcare professional is well respected in our society!
And the transition from paid professional to unpaid aide comes with an emotional toll.
That’s the curse.
The especially complex circle of guilt and shame when you’re career was a healthcare professional, and now into retirement you’re taking care of an ill family member.
They are your loved one. Not a patient.
It makes you feel especially bad about yourself because your whole career was based on caring for others, now you’ve got a case that’s debilitating. It’s not exactly the “game-winning triple series” that most professionals like to end their careers on. Brady came back, but most of us are more like Jordan.
Their condition is progressively debilitating and incurable, so you can’t win this one.
From well-paid and highly-respected to unpaid and emotionally unprepared.
When a healthcare professional becomes a family caregiver, the role and dynamic changes.
“To think, he used to be a respected proctologist, but he can’t even take care of her anymore.”
The fear of rumors afloat haunts the healthcare professional turned family caregiver.
