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Caregiving: The First Steps

Four A’s of Caregiving
You are a caregiver!  Your key to success is to follow the “Four A’s” of caregiving.

Admit that caregiving is not an easy job.
Nothing quite prepares you for the parent-child reversal that is beginning to take place.  You will experience conflicting feelings.

Accept help.
This is the logical response to the above.  People will offer to help, and believe it or not, they really mean it!  They just need to know what you need. Identify jobs that can be given away.  Someone else can run errands, do a load of laundry or take your family member out to eat.

Access community services.
There are many community resources that you may have heard about but are not sure how to use.  Resources like the Summa Center for Senior Health provide comprehensive geriatric assessments to identify specific problems and tailor a care plan to meet those needs.

Address your own needs.
Caregiving is a marathon, not a sprint.  Pay attention to your own health issues.  Take breaks.  Find something you love and do it.  An effective caregiver must take care of themselves as well as those around them.

 Back to Summa Caregiver’s Kit page

 Source: Summahealth.org

A Thousand Splendid Suns/
Kite Runner

Double book exploration

Book Exploration
By Chuck Bowen

In his first novel The Kite Runner, and now A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini writes about the Afghans caught in the middle of a seemingly endless string of wars and battles for power. Both novels paint a grim and moving picture of life in a war-torn country, and of lives lived in the face of hunger, death and a bleak future. Hosseini makes you realize that, even while bombs rain down and people are dying of hunger, people still fall in love, seek friends and, mostly, try to remain human.