An essential and all-to-relatable conversation at the Retirement & Longevity Summit on Sunday afternoon, hosted by Amy Heinrich, Business Development Manager with Transamerica, began with a heartbreaking description of Liz O’Donnell’s experience as a caregiver for multiple family members.
Women are more than twice as likely as men to become caregivers, O’Donnell, author, and Founder of Working Daughter, an online community for women “balancing eldercare, career, kids, and life,” noted.
The demands of caregiving can interrupt or end a career, affecting income, savings, and retirement security. O’Donnell led attendees through the issues caregivers face, noting advisors can help with financial planning for the hardship and much more.
“I was experiencing ‘caregiver creep,’ which is when adult children do more and more for their elderly parents,” she said. “Soon after, I received the ‘crisis call,’ the one from the ER or a family member experiencing an emergency.”
Her father was acting strangely, and her mother fretted, not knowing what to do. A one-week whirlwind of hospital visits eventually led to a dementia diagnosis, and she had just a few days to find a memory care facility. As she hung up the phone with her father’s doctors, she received another from her mother’s physician, who informed her of an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
“My next six months were wild,” O’Donnell recalled. “There is an emotional side and a tactical side, and through it all, I continued to work, even though the stress threatened her job, marriage, and sanity.
“I was on a work call from home, and my doorbell rang,” she said. “It was a comfort kit from Hospice for my mother that contained drugs to ease her pain as she died.”
“I don’t want to depress the entire room,” she said to laughter, “so there are a couple of points to underscore. No. 1, everyone will eventually be a caregiver, and no. 2, it will sometimes be multiple people and ongoing.”
Her mother and father eventually passed, and she looked forward to having fin and living once again until her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He, too, eventually died, and she was now the single mother of two teenagers.
Unlikely as it sounds, real and tangible positives come from a caregiving experience.
“When I was researching my book, I came across a study from Johns Hopkins University and contacted the authors,” she explained. “They found that caregivers have better longevity, cognitive ability, physical strength and resiliency than non-caregivers.”
She spent so much time thinking about what caregiving took, but not about what it gave her, some of which was incredibly positive.
“Rather than fixate on ‘Why me?’” O’Donnell concluded, “I transferred that energy into something empowering.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
