FROM THE NEST | Issue 16

The glue was dry. All of it.

ROB'S CORNER

She came upstairs and it only took one look to know she was mad.

I was still waking up. I had no idea what had happened downstairs. I asked her what was wrong.

She told me.

I did long blinks.

I want to be clear that I understood every single word she said. I also understood that laughing would have been the worst decision I had made in recent memory. And I have made some bad decisions recently.

She hobbled out. I did more long blinks.

I am still alive.

-- Rob Robbins

HEATHER'S TRANSLATION

Let me tell you about last week.

I wake up at five thirty every morning. Not because I am a morning person. Because that is the window. The quiet hours before the day reorganizes itself around someone else's needs. I make coffee, I putter in the garden, I empty the dishwasher, I do all of the things so that when Rob wakes up it is his time. That window is mine. I protect it like it is the last resource in a drought.

Last week it went sideways in the first ten minutes and did not stop for four hours.

My outdoor slides had been separating for a week. Rob said he would glue them. He did not glue them. They were sitting on top of the dryer next to a bottle of glue with a crack in it that had dried up completely. Why was the glue dry? Because there was a crack in the bottle. Why did nobody throw the bottle away? That is a question for the universe.

So I am outside in my daughter's size six shoes. I am five ten with a size ten foot. My pinky toe and my ring toe are hanging off the edge. I am walking on my tiptoes through the grass because the shoes have still not been glued so I am stabbing my full foot into the ground in shoes that fit like a toddler's Croc.

I have to turn on the sprinklers manually because the automatic system has decided that one bank of sprinklers is optional. To do this I have to crawl between rosebushes and sago palms. In my daughter's shoes. On my tiptoes. In the dark.

I lose my balance. My foot goes into the mulch. A rose thorn goes into my foot.

I go inside. I go upstairs to the laundry room to get the glue myself because clearly that is where we are now. I open the door in the dark and walk directly into the handle of the mop. Full face. I saw stars. I saw birds. I briefly saw what I can only describe as a spiritual experience that I did not ask for.

The mop had been left in the utility sink at exactly eye level. The perpetrator of this was asleep in the next room.

I find the shoes on the dryer. I find the glue. The glue is dry. Obviously.

I go to the garage to find different glue. The garage light is on because the garage was not fully closed the night before. The box of glue contains Elmer's glue and blue PVC pipe cement. I find a bottle of Gorilla Glue next to the car polish. The lid is not on it. It has never had a lid on it since the last time someone used it and did not put the lid back on or put it away. It is dry.

I throw the shoes away.

I go to make my coffee. The dishwasher that was supposed to run overnight did not run because it was never actually started. My espresso cup is dirty. I wash it. I open the creamer. The lid is not screwed on because it was put back in the refrigerator without being screwed on. The creamer falls. It goes everywhere. On the rug. On my robe. On my last remaining shred of composure.

I go back to bed.

Four hours later I go upstairs to get laundry from the dryer and Rob is awake and asks me why I look mad.

I tell him.

He does long blinks.

I want you to know that I am telling this story because every single person reading this newsletter has a version of it. The loops that did not close. The things that were almost done. The glue that was right there, right next to the shoes, completely dry, lid nowhere to be found.

This is caregiving on a Tuesday. Not the hard Tuesday. Just a regular Tuesday where nothing closes and the creamer goes everywhere and the mop is at eye level and the rose thorn is still in your foot.

I have photographic evidence of the thorn. It is still there. He is still alive.

That is also PTG (Post Traumatic Growth)

-- Heather Robbins

THE MEDICAL FACT

Caregiver burden research consistently identifies what clinicians call task incompletion stress as one of the most underreported sources of chronic caregiver anxiety. It is not the large medical events that accumulate into exhaustion. It is the unclosed loops. The things that were almost done. The hundred small tasks that live in the caregiver's working memory simultaneously because nobody else is tracking them.

A 2019 study published in The Gerontologist found that caregivers reported significantly higher cognitive load than non-caregivers the same age, driven primarily by the mental labor of monitoring, anticipating, and compensating for incomplete tasks in the household environment. Researchers described it as an invisible second shift that runs continuously in the background of every other activity.

The clinical term is anticipatory vigilance. You are not just doing the tasks. You are tracking which tasks will need to be done, which tasks were started but not finished, and which tasks will fall apart if you do not intercept them before they become a problem.

A mop at eye level in a dark laundry room at five thirty in the morning is a clinical data point.

So is the fact that you laughed about it eventually. Humor as a coping mechanism in caregiving is documented in the literature and associated with lower rates of depression, higher resilience scores, and better long-term caregiver outcomes. If something about this newsletter made you exhale and feel slightly less alone, that is not an accident. That is your nervous system doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Source: Roth, D.L. et al. Informal caregiving and its impact on health. The Gerontologist, 2019. Martin, R.A. Humor, laughter, and physical health. Psychological Bulletin, 2001.

WANT TO GO DEEPER?

If this landed somewhere close to home, these resources are here when you are ready.

Caregiver Support at Robbins Nest Alliance
​https://robbinsnestalliance.com/pages/caregiver-support​

Watch: What We Become | Post-Traumatic Growth and the Caregiver's Hidden Transformation
​https://robbinsnestalliance.com/blogs/the-nesting-journal-1/what-we-become-post-traumatic-growth-caregiver​

Brain Injury 101: Start Here
​https://robbinsnestalliance.com/pages/brain-injury-101​

Browse the RNA Shop
​https://robbinsnestalliance.com/pages/shop​

Robbins Nest Alliance provides free, peer-reviewed caregiver education across neurological conditions. If someone in your life needs this, forward it. That is how we grow.

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