Caregiving came without a manual.
One day you're planning a trip. The next, you're on hold with Medicare, holding a pill organizer the size of a tackle box, and wondering how you became the family's nurse, pharmacist, and accountant overnight.
If you're caring for an aging parent, you already know the truth: it's hard, tender, exhausting, and sometimes so ridiculous that laughter is the only sensible response.
Caring for Them, Keeping Some of You is a warm, honest, and often funny guide for adult children in the thick of eldercare. Bernadette Barbeau and her husband spent the better part of a decade caring for parents on both sides. One family had a whole team of siblings and a group text worthy of its own sitcom. The other had one son carrying nearly the entire load through ALS and Alzheimer's at the same time. This book walks you through the parts nobody warns you about, roughly in the order life hands them to you.
Does this sound familiar?
- A diagnosis that upends your whole life in one afternoon
- Seven prescriptions, seven sets of instructions, and a stack of envelopes marked "This Is Not a Bill"
- Losing a parent's memory, bit by bit, or watching a sharp mind trapped in a failing body
- No idea what eldercare really costs or who is supposed to pay for it
- A marriage stretched thin between her parents and his parents
- A family group text with forty opinions and zero volunteers
- Feeling guilty for laughing, and guilty for not laughing
Inside, you'll find:
- A plain-English guide to the power of attorney, HIPAA forms, Medicare, and the "admitted or under observation" question that can determine who pays for rehab
- How to build "The Binder," a single medication list, and a paper trail that works
- Gentle, practical ways to connect with a parent living with dementia and to protect the dignity of a parent whose body is failing
- A "Who's Doing What" list to share, plus the exact words to ask a sibling to commit
- Ways to protect your marriage and your own time while you care for everyone else
- A Take Five box at the end of every chapter you can read in the time it takes to reheat your coffee
- Book club and support group discussion questions, plus a list of where to find real help
Why this book is unique
Most caregiving guides are either clinical checklists or tearful memoirs. This one is a field guide from someone who's been in the trenches and can point out where the puddles are. It follows two families, two very different diseases, and two very different levels of help, all under
one firm rule: we laugh at the chaos, never at the person.
Why you need it now
You didn't apply for this job, and you're allowed to be new at it. This book gives you the
knowledge, the
shortcuts, and the company to get through it, along
with permission to smile along the way, so that you come out the other side with some of yourself still intact.
Scroll up and click "Buy Now" to get the guide, the company, and the permission to laugh you've been looking for.