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Doctor, Doctor!

When Pat Drea needed help she started passing notes—to her parents' physician.

By Laurie Herr

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Ask Pat Drea how long she’s been an active caregiver, and you can almost hear her mentally adding up the years on her fingers—four years for her late father, and another two for her mother, now ailing from Alzheimer’s disease. During these six tough years, Pat, Vice President of Operations for Visiting Angels, a homecare network based in Havertown, Pennsylvania, has come close to burnout. Dealing with previous jobs that required travel didn’t help, she says, recalling one especially tough time. “My family took one look at me and said, ‘Oh my goodness—she’s gotten to the end of her rope and let go,’” she recalls.

What she did: Luckily, Pat's two sisters swooped in when she needed them. The trick, Pat says, was realizing she needed help. “I’m like a lot of daughters. I’m tempted to do more. Now I try to do less, hand things off—let others do more.” These days, she lets one sister shop online for Mom’s clothes. The other goes to the post office and runs errands.

Pat was also savvy enough to enlist help from her parents’ doctor—someone she knew her mom and dad trusted. “I’d slip him a note during a doctor’s visit,” she says. “It would say something like, ‘Dad’s getting closer to making a decision about moving. Anything you can do to encourage him I’d appreciate.” By confiding to the doctor about current situations, Pat was able to take some of the pressure off herself.

Pat found more intangible help, too. “My spiritually helped me cope a tremendous amount,” she says. “I spent a lot of time in prayer. It made me optimistic. That’s a strange thing to say when father is actively dying. But I felt very spiritually supported.”

Is there anything she wishes she’d done differently? Yes. “At the time I was very sedentary.” Pat says. “I was gaining weight because I was just sitting with [my dad]. I would have changed the way I ate and started a morning workout routine. I think I would have felt better and had more energy.”

Workout routine or no, Pat says she’s grateful for the time she had with her dad, and now with her mom. “For me it’s one of the most rewarding things in my life,” Pat says. “What greater gift could I give to my parents?”

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