About this time last year, I had a medical situation that required a couple of weeks of bed rest. I wasn't in pain. I wasn't receiving transfusions that would conk me out. I just couldn't get out of bed, except for an occasional creep to the bathroom, for two weeks.

Though my mother protested -- because "no one knows how to take care of their child like a mother" even if that "child" is 38 -- my husband said he was on the case. Every morning before he hit the road for his 6 a.m. commute to work in Kenner, he'd make and serve my breakfast and pack my lunch in an ice chest propped on the side of the bed. Every night, he'd make and serve my dinner and check to see if I wanted books, magazines, videos or audio tapes.

At the end of the first week he sat on the edge of the bed, circles under his eyes, and said, "I'm tired. I don't like being the wife."

By the middle of the second week he had called for reinforcements, a.k.a. Mom.

Care for the caregivers

I've been lucky that, except occasionally being called upon to baby-sit or pet-sit, I've never been called upon to care for someone for any length of time.

I'd like to believe I'd be up to the challenge. One day we'll see. My time will come.

Twenty-two million people in the United States alone are caring for an elderly person, according to Touro Infirmary social worker Mary Anne Catalanotto, one of the speakers featured at the "Choices: Living With Alzheimer's Disease" workshop presented Friday at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Slidell. Two million of that number are caring for someone with Alzheimer's. Eighty percent of the caretakers are female and 50 percent are working full-time jobs in addition to their caretaking responsibilities.

But because caregiving is not limited to caring for the elderly, caregiver distress can be experienced just as quickly by the new mom coping with a colicky baby and the sweetheart-of-a-husband caring for his briefly bedridden wife.

Predictors of caregiver stress

Like the Superwoman, the catch phrase used for more than a decade to describe the overachieving woman overloaded with guilt, stress and exhaustion, there are supercaregivers who are just as much at risk of sacrificing their mental and physical health and their relationships for the sake of others.

Signs of caregiver stress include: social withdrawal, anxiety, depression that begins to break your spirit and affect your ability to cope, exhaustion, irritability, moodiness, inability to relax, grinding your teeth and forgetfulness.

There are just as many ways to cope with caregiver stress: Don't give in to guilt, be realistic and accept your limits, remain in touch with friends, find a support group, accept change as it occurs, focus on what is now instead of what used to be, know what resources are available in your community and use them, make time for yourself, allow yourself to see humor and find pleasure in small things, ask for and accept help from friends and relatives, and more.

"Feelings are neither good nor bad. What's important is that we take responsibility for what we do about those feelings," Catalanotto said. "Learn to go with the flow . . . You've got to take care of yourself first."

Though we'd all like to believe that we're strong enough to take anything life can throw at us or those we love, the fact is simply that life is just too hard to handle on our own. Maybe that's life's way of reminding us that we need one another.

God bless the caregivers.

And heaven help them to help themselves.