THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511030724
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
THERE IS a hospital bed in the master bedroom. A high chair in the kitchen. A wheelchair in the master bath. And a baby walker in the living room.
Signs of the caregiver Marion Deneen has become.
Upstairs she cares for her 85-year-old mother, bedridden with Alzheimer's disease.
Downstairs she cares for her grandchildren, ages 1 and 3, two days a week, and her 5-year-old grandson every afternoon after kindergarten.
Deneen is one of an estimated 25 million caregivers in this country - most of them women - who spend an average of 18 hours a day giving care, mainly to aging, severely ill relatives.
As the American population continues to age, a growing number of baby boomers - those between the ages of 40 and fiftysomething - will find themselves in this role. Some will be part of the Sandwich Generation - caring not only for aging parents, but for their own still-at-home children.
Although Deneen's four daughters are grown, she relishes her role as caregiver for her mother. The 55-year-old Virginia Beach woman feels no resentment, self-pity or anger at the circumstances that have led to this role - although there is sadness.
She can track her mother's regression against her granddaughter's progression. The 1-year-old is about to walk; Deneen's mother can't move. The 1-year-old babbles incessantly; Deneen's mother can't talk. The 1-year-old eats beautifully, opening her mouth ``just like a little bird''; Deneen's mother receives liquid nutrients via a stomach tube.
But both need the hands-on care and love that Deneen provides.
``In my heart I feel this is what God wants me to do,'' Deenen said. ``My spiritual life grew from this. To me, this is a labor of love.''
Deneen's parents came to live with her family 12 years ago.
Her mother, Marjory Pritchard, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's years before, and Deneen's father couldn't care for her alone anymore.
Deneen has five siblings, and when they asked if she would care for the older couple, she immediately agreed. Now, she reflects, maybe she should have thought about it longer. But the answer, she is sure, would have been the same.
Caregiving was what she knew. She'd been a stay-at-home-mother to her four daughters, born within a five-year span. When her parents moved in, she'd just started a job as a clerk in a fabric store, which she loved. Caring for her parents forced her to cut her hours to part-time however, and, four years later, she quit altogether when her father suffered two mini-strokes and needed more hands-on care.
For a while, she had two hospital beds in the master bedroom she and her husband had ceded to her parents. But once he was confined to bed, her father's health failed fast. He died in 1990.
These days, Deneen says, her mother is in the ``good stage'' of Alzheimer's. She's near the end and spends most of the day sleeping.
So Deneen can spend some time caring for her grandchildren. Most days, she's up before 6 a.m. The kids usually arrive around 6:30 for breakfast and cartoons and then, with Deneen, walk the 5-year-old to the bus stop.
When they return, she puts the baby down for a nap, runs upstairs to change her mother's diaper, turn her to prevent bedsores and refill her feeding bag with the liquid nutritional supplement that is her breakfast, lunch and dinner. Deneen is the only caregiver. She and her husband divorced years ago - for reasons unrelated to Deneen's parents - and her four grown daughters have homes of their own.
``I couldn't keep the children full-time and still take care of momma,'' she says. ``It would just be too much.''
It's lunch at the Deneen house, and 3-year-old Jared Launder sits next to his 5-year-old cousin Scott Enos at the kitchen counter, polishing off the rest of his peanut butter crackers. Jared's sister, Corinne, scoots around in her baby walker. Toys are scattered on the floor and a neat pile of Little Golden Books are lined up in the bookcase.
A dozen apples sent from Deneen's sister are on the counter, waiting to be turned into applesauce - if Deneen can find time. But now it's nap time.
Deneen has the children well trained. At a request from her, the boys crawl along the floor, picking up forgotten toys. They take their shoes off and scamper upstairs to their designated bedrooms. Deneen follows, Corinne in her arms.
``Nighty-night, honey,'' she murmurs to Corinne as she puts her down in her crib.
Jared and Scott lie down in separate bedrooms and almost instantly are asleep.
Without sparing a minute, Deneen enters her mother's room and heads to the bathroom to fill a plastic tub with warm, soapy water.
``Momma, you have to wait. You're the last one,'' she croons to her mother as she washes her face with a cloth. ``Now, honey. Yes, momma. My sweet little momma.''
With practiced motions, Deneen hooks her mother's legs over her own neck, unfastens the disposable diaper, then uses her elbows to pry apart her mother's clenched knees so that she can wash her.
Once a week, she perches her mother on the toilet and gives her a thorough sponge bath, including washing her hair.
Her mother diapered and washed, Deneen slips her arms under Pritchard's and, with a mighty heave, half lifts, half swings her into the waiting wheelchair. She wheels the chair over to the couch and, using the same motions, maneuvers the older woman onto the cushions, where she will sleep the afternoon away.
The work is emotionally as well as physically draining. But here is where Deneen is luckier than many caregivers: she has an excellent support system.
Every four months, one or more of her siblings comes to stay for 10 days. Then Deneen takes what she calls her ``sabbatical.'' She flies to Chicago to visit her daughter; to Buffalo to see another sister; or just has a few days to herself at the camper she keeps at Lake Gaston.
Her brothers use the time to perform maintenance on her house - putting up paneling, tearing down a fence, shampooing the rugs.
Her daughters also help. Last weekend, for instance, one daughter stayed with Pritchard to give Deneen a much-needed break.
Deenen also uses respite care. Virginia Beach's older adult services program provides her with a caregiver for $2 an hour for up to 30 hours a month. The respite workers enable Deneen to get out of the house to see her beloved opera, shop or just take a walk.
Deneen also has help with the financial side of caregiving. Her mother doesn't receive any Social Security. Instead, Deneen's brother sends her a check every month to help cover living expenses.
Luckily, she says, her mother has outstanding private health insurance, so she doesn't have to rely on Medicare.
Although Deenen is often tired - sometimes falling asleep on the sofa in the evening as soon as she sits down - she's not resentful.
``I feel that someday my day will come and I'll be able to go to my daughter's house.''
The experience has deepened her love for her mother. It's payback, she says, for the many afternoons she'd arrive home from school to find her mother baking cookies, or to the smell of a hot loaf of fresh bread. So she vows that her mother will never go into a nursing home.
``She needs me. To be needed is a wonderful thing.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot
Marion Deneen, 55, hugs her 85-year-old mohter Marjory Pritchard,
who is bedridden with Alzheimer's disease.
Graphic
RESOURCES
Virginia Beach Older Adult Services Respite Care Program:
437-6110.
Caregiver's Support Group: Meets first Friday of every month from
10 a.m. to noon in the Chesapeake Health Department library, 748
Battlefield Blvd., and 2 to 4 p.m. in the community room at
Chesapeake Square Mall. Contact Carolyn Savinsky, 436-8644.
Alzheimer's Association: 459-2405
Hampton Roads Caregiver Coalition: 461-9481.
Caregivers Support Group, Portsmouth: meets second Wednesday of
the month at 7 p.m. at Maryview Medical Center. 398-2452
Eldercare Locator: helps identify appropriate referral agencies
for community services anywhere in the country. (800) 677-1116.
by CNB