My Journey With Health And Fitness – Back To Being A Caregiver

Well as I type this my sister is having surgery. She met with the surgeon yesterday and of course I sent a list of questions that I thought needed to be answered. It turns out she broke her patella into several pieces. They are actually going to have to use a plate to put it back together. Then, she will have 6 weeks of recovery which will be accompanied by a lot of physio therapy.

So once again I am acting in the role of caregiver. You have to realize there is not really much she can do other than move from the bed in the basement to the couch. I have given her my ottoman to use so that she can keep her leg elevated (she argued the doctor didn’t tell her to do that but then I reminded her which one of us has had 4 knee surgeries and that I just may be a bit of an expert on things you can do to help the healing). We are fortunate because when our brother lost his leg I had some work done in the basement including installing strategically placed grab bars etc so that has helped but in general she will be relegated to the basement until such time as the surgeon gives her permission to climb the stairs. I will note that I am definitely doing a lot of stair climbing which is not a bad thing.

There is a major disappointment in all of this, we were supposed to be doing a trip together to the condo on April 2nd. My sister was supposed to join me for 3 weeks which would have been great since she hasn’t come to the condo since 2020. I was actually lookin g forward to the 2 of us spending time together and her getting to know all of our friends down there. I am still going to go to the condo and have decided to look at it as me getting some time to focus on myself. My husband will join me as planned on April 24th but in the mean time he will be home looking after my sister (not really sure how well that is going to go as his patience wears thin pretty quickly).

Yes, being a caregiver can be hard work. However, looking after family is the right thing to do.