This is from the Life Script Healthy Advantage Newsletter. My mother is caregiver for my father, who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke that left him partially paralyzed on his right side. She has developed high blood pressure and often says "I swear that taking care of him is going to kill me!"
My mother is basically quite healthy, other than having had a hip replacement a year and a half ago and cataract surgery six months ago. But my father has a lot of needs and has always been sort of a "high maintenance" individual.
Here is the article.
Sick Spouse Shortens One's Life
Having a spouse or partner who suffers from debilitating illness raises one's own risk of premature death, a new study finds. The study, conducted by Harvard Medical School researchers, was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers studied medical records from more than 500,000 elderly couples, tracking the health status of both partners over the course of nine years. According to the results of their study, researchers concluded that the phenomenon known as the "bereavement effect" or "caregiver burden" appears to be grounded in statistics. Men and women with sick spouses were up to five times more likely than their peers to die from a variety of causes, including suicide, accidents, infections and undiagnosed conditions.
My mother is basically quite healthy, other than having had a hip replacement a year and a half ago and cataract surgery six months ago. But my father has a lot of needs and has always been sort of a "high maintenance" individual.
Here is the article.
Sick Spouse Shortens One's Life
Having a spouse or partner who suffers from debilitating illness raises one's own risk of premature death, a new study finds. The study, conducted by Harvard Medical School researchers, was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers studied medical records from more than 500,000 elderly couples, tracking the health status of both partners over the course of nine years. According to the results of their study, researchers concluded that the phenomenon known as the "bereavement effect" or "caregiver burden" appears to be grounded in statistics. Men and women with sick spouses were up to five times more likely than their peers to die from a variety of causes, including suicide, accidents, infections and undiagnosed conditions.
2 comments:
Hey! Stop trying to scare me! It seems there are factors they don't take into consideration like the emotional constitution of the spouse, their background experience in dealing with stress and their positive or negative outlook on life. Not to mention the appreciation and support we get back from the person. My wife gives me motivation to keep going and to get well quicker when I get sick. But the flip side of the coin is probably true in my case. I'll probably die shortly after she does as it is with so many elderly couples.
Wow, I'm really pissing everyone off today! I'm so sorry. I didn't even think about you and Red when I was reading this article. The people that came to mind were my mother and myself. As I've said before, Red seems to be a much more easygoing personality than my father, who has always been demanding and obsessive. And my mother is kind of an inflexible character as well, very volatile, gets upset very easily. As for me, I tend to take things out on myself. I'm not really thinking so much of dealing with my father, which does affect me, but I'm not with him more than one day a week usually. I'm thinking about the horrible idea that I may be a paid caregiver for the rest of my working life which, as things look now, won't end until I'm over 70. But it will probably end long before that because this damn job is going to kill me!
I think the article is a bit of a stereotype as well although I do think that being a caregiver can be hard for anybody at times no matter how good natured the person being cared for is.
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