HEATHER'S CORNER

Every few years my heart needs a little maintenance. Same procedure I've had done several times over the years, nothing new, nothing scary, honestly the easiest part of my whole month. We knew it was coming, we planned for it, no surprises there.

Here's what was new: the last time I had this done, I was the patient and Rob was the one who stepped up and ran the house. This time Rob is the one who needs care, which means my own surgery isn't just a prep on me anymore. It's a prep on the house, the driving, the kids, who's watching him, who's getting him fed, who's making sure nothing falls apart while I'm the one on the table for once.

The hospital that does this procedure is an hour and a half, two hours away. Lucky for us, it's close to my parents, so we worked out a plan: I drive us in (Rob doesn't drive), my parents pick us up, they hang out with Rob during the procedure, and afterward they take us back to their place, because after sedation there was no version of that day where I was getting behind the wheel for a two-hour drive, even if I'd wanted to.

Rob was a wreck the whole time. Pacing. Couldn't eat. My parents, meanwhile, dote on me the way I genuinely don't remember them doting on me since I was about seven, which, if I'm honest, I could get used to.

I slept almost the entire first day. Slept in late the next morning too. Once the sedation had actually cleared enough that I was safe to drive, we made the run for our own bed. The whole way, every ten minutes, Rob asking if I was okay, did I need anything, was I in pain.

My eyes may have rolled. A little. I've also got this deep crease permanently set between my eyebrows, the kind that makes me look like I'm plotting something even when I'm just thinking about lunch, so between the eyes and the forehead, my face was sending a whole editorial nobody asked for. Why wouldn't it? He genuinely cannot fix the fact that my chest muscles are screaming and I can barely lift my left arm. There is no amount of "are you okay" that unscrews a rib cage. What I actually needed was a snack, a nap, and for everyone to stop asking me questions that require using my voice.

When we got home he marched me straight upstairs to bed. But first, I clocked it, Audrey had put together a full get-well spread for me. My favorite flowers, three different ways: fresh cut, the bulbs, and the seeds, so I'd have something blooming now and something to plant later. That got me before the pain meds did.

I slept two more days straight. Then, right on schedule, it was time for Rob's next appointment, the one where his dopamine taper started. No real gap in between. Recovery ends, caregiving resumes, that's just the shape of the week around here.

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ROB'S SIDE

I'm not going to pretend the pacing wasn't real. Watching someone you love go in for anything, even something routine, even something she's done before, doesn't feel routine from where I was standing. I know logically it's a low-risk procedure. My body didn't get that memo. My head starts spinning full of the "what ifs"

I asked her a hundred times if she was okay because I genuinely didn't know what else to do with my thoughts. Next time I'll try to ask fewer questions and just bring her a snack.

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CITED FACT

Caregiver health tends to slide quietly, not dramatically. In a review of family caregiving research, nearly one-third of dementia caregivers reported frequently or occasionally missing their own medication doses, and nearly half did not keep their own health care appointments (Wang et al., 2015, as summarized in the National Academies' Families Caring for an Aging America report; we have not independently reviewed the original 2015 study). Planning your own care as carefully as you plan theirs isn't optional, it's part of the job.

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ONE RESOURCE LINK

If you're juggling your own health alongside caregiving, our Caregiver Support page has resources built for exactly this kind of stretch:

​https://robbinsnestalliance.com/pages/caregiver-support​