The Cancer Caregiver

I am not a nurse! Yet I still had to do things I consider better suited for a trained health professional to do. I had to flip the caregiver switch in order to stomach having to strip drains and help take care of wound sites. Listen today to hear how I handled helping my husband heal after his thyroidectomy. Episode 16 is ready for you. Just make sure you aren’t eating while you listen to it. 

Once you get your loved one back home from the hospital you realize life is very different. You begin to navigate through the days to figure out what your are normal is. One of the important things while doing this is to never lose sight of your why. Why did you fall in love with this person? Why are you caring for them? Being reminded of your why will help give you focus through the difficult mom...

We all have the moments as caregivers where we are overwhelmed with emotions. We feel like we just can’t take more. We feel lonely, misunderstood and left behind by everyone else we know. It isn’t fair. You aren’t alone. There are so many of us that understand how you feel. Listen to Episode 14 now. 

Going to appointments is stressful enough with out the addition of Pandemic protocols and meeting new doctors. However, you need to continue to go to your appointments for scans and Dr’s visits if they feel it is important for you to go. Listen to Episode 18 today to hear how it all went. Reach out and let me know how your visits have been during this Covid-19 pandemic. Send me a message at www.ca...

“Take care of yourself”. You’ve heard those words before.  “Take care of yourself so you can continue to care for your loved one” What do you feel when you hear that? Anger? Frustration? Acceptance?  Usually someone you love tells you this because they sense you need it. Or maybe they’ve said it because they’ve heard it somewhere. It’s not the reason why someone says it but the mood you are in whe...

Do you remember that feeling you got when you were told you could bring your loved one home from the hospital? Did you feel relieved and anxious at the same time? Leaving the hospital, after my husbands thyroidectomy, and going back into the “real world” can be unsettling to say the least. You are exhausted and under a lot of stress and then you have to go back home and take care of this person al...

Do you let kids come to the hospital to see your loved one after surgery? That’s a loaded question. These are the types of decision you have to make that completely suck! There isn’t one right answer and it’s not the type of question your doctor would be able to help you out with because it’s a personal decision. You probably don’t have a lot of other caregivers to give you their ideas and maybe d...

In this episode I will talk about how I find that sitting in the hospital room with your loved one is the initiation to your life as a caregiver. That uncomfortable chair is the metaphor for all the things you are going to try to deal with by sidestepping your own needs and over riding your need to find comfort and moments of rest.  Find more at www.caregiverconnectionpodcast.com Join our supporti...

Today in Episode 9 of the Caregiver Connection Podcast, I explain how important I felt it was to be by my husband's side while he was in the hospital recovering from his cancer surgery. Listen in to the end for hospital tips and tricks

Remember sitting in the waiting room while your loved one was in surgery? Am I the only one that felt going to the bathroom meant missing a call down from the nurse? Find out how I dealt (or didn't) with waiting over 6 hours for my husband's cancer surgery to end in today's episode

When my husband was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer our lives were forever changed without warning. I didn't have a moment to look back and have one last look at my old world and life. I was thrust into this new normal that was uncomfortable and difficult to manage. Listen to the episode and learn how I coped with this unforeseeable change as I was thrust into the role of a cancer caregiver.

You can chose to see the silver linings or not. As a caregiver I found that I needed to work hard to keep the atmosphere in the house a positive one. Sure, for many cancer=death but we can die so many other ways in-between now and then. My husband wasn’t on death’s door so I refused to have people act like he was. It wasn’t helping either one of us to have to console other people when he was the o...

I don’t know how other people prepared for their loved ones Dr’s appointments but I spent a lot of time studying and researching all I could find on thyroid cancer just so I could make sure I understood what the Doctor would tell us and the options we would be given. That didn’t change how hard it was to go into the office and wait in a room feeling that in a mere sentence your life could be chang...

Isn't it interesting how people react when you give them bad news? As a caregiver, when you first find out about a diagnosis the next thing you have to do is tell your loved ones and then continue down the line of people you feel you should tell. Each time you have to do that you lose a little bit more of the energy you need to continue sharing the news and then answering the subsequent questions...

Information is an overwhelming commodity in the world of a caregiver. Sometimes you want to know more and other times you feel you know too much. People want more of it from you and you don’t always have the energy to give it out. In a time where you feel you can find out about anything from your computer you soon find that what you can find and what you can understand are two different things in...

There is always an origin story for us as caregivers. Most times we don’t even see it coming and then it sweeps us up takes us along on this ride we never asked to go on.  In today’s episode I will share how I became a caregiver. Find more podcast episodes and content for caregivers at www.charlottebayala.com

Get to know Charlotte and her experiences as a Caregiver for her husband, who has thyroid cancer. In this episode, you will get a little background information and what you can expect from the podcast.