Winding down at work: an oxymoron, but necessary as you prepare to go out for surgery and/or are the main caregiver for the surgery-bound one in your life.
Here’s a start at a checklist for you, to go out on leave or to take vacation to take care of the one who is having surgery. It may not be all you need to do in your life, but it’s what we’ve done in my household so will be a basis to customize from.
For the main caregiver
You’re about to add what could be a third job – your career, your family responsibilities and care giving as the third. Something has to give.
Consider your care giving role starts the day you know surgery is the plan. You can assist in two ways at that point.
One is to assist the patient by going to appointments so two sets of ears hear everything. This is comforting for the patient, helps set your expectations, and for some people, ensures your friend/partner gets to the appointments. These times are important for what you learn, but also to help the reality set in of what’s about to happen in his or her life.
Another role is to figure out or assist with how responsibilities will be handled, at work and at home. Once your patient figures out how he/she will handle backups for work responsibilities, could you, for example, hear about the backup plans, before they’re presented to the manager?
And at home, which responsibilities you could offload temporarily? If you live with others, what tasks can they take from you? Can a family member move in for a couple of weeks to support? Can you hire out selective tasks? We, for example, will have trash pickup for a few months so that task is taken care of and so one person needn’t do it alone while the other one’s laid up.
Next blog entry – what about dealing with work responsibilities?
Tags: health organizing, home office, medical, Next Chapter, office, surgery, work
