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Eldercare Help For The Self-Employed
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Article 8: Real Stories: The Downside
Not every eldercare experience for the self-employed goes smoothly. There are difficulties and obstacles.
Carol Bradley Bursack was writing a book and freelancing while raising children when she began an odyssey that spanned two decades of caring for a succession of seven elderly relatives. Among her duties, she provided care in their homes initially, then arranged her father’s nursing home stay and her mother’s new apartment, as well as in-home care for an uncle.
“I was shopping for four people at one time other than my own family,” recalls Bursack, who has since authored a book, established a Web site, Mind Your Elders, and writes a newspaper column all on the subject of eldercare. Her advice to readers: “I tell people to do exactly what I didn’t do.
“I was seeing seven people seven days a week for a while,” she says. “I couldn’t make myself understand you can only do so much. You can’t fix it. I really was an obsessive caregiver, and it was hard on me.
“It’s both easier and harder if you’re self-employed,” Bursack says. “When you’re self-employed, if you’re not working, you’re not making money. If you’re the only breadwinner, that can be very difficult.
“Ideally, everybody wants to live very long, very healthy, then die. If we could all have what we wanted, we wouldn’t have these issues. Life is not necessarily always lovely.”
Though the course Bursack traveled isn’t one she recommends, she is comforted by the knowledge that as difficult as it was, “I wanted to help people, and that was good.”
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