‘It’s a job, and a tough one’: the pain and privilege of being a millennial caregiver | Carers

On Sunday afternoon in October, Andrew Rahal imprisoned his wheelchair for his grandmother in his place – “Click it or Ticket”, before – before heating a bowl from Porsche from the Armenian grocery store near their home in Granada Hills, California. Then he sat in front of her, and feed her spoon with patience after a spoon.

YEGHSABETH “Elo” Voskian, 83, suffers from vascular dementia and advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Nearly a decade ago, Andrew, 33, was a full -time care provider, as he helped her from bed to a wheelchair, rain daily, manage her medicines and help them in meals. It is one of about 12 million generations of a family member, and it is a variety of already a variety It constitutes 23 % Among the residents who provide care in the United States, according to the Aarp report for 2020. The number of millennial sponsors is certainly increasing in the coming years.

In 2015, Elo was driving her car when she forgot how to get to her daughter’s home. This incident caused it to diagnose. One of the girls of Elo takes care of her at the beginning, but she found it difficult to do so, even though she is also responsible for her children and her work.

Before the death of his grandfather, Andrew made him a promise: he took care of Balal regardless of obstacles. So, when I asked his family, Andrew took the career’s role easily. He registered for a gradual camp at the University of California, Los Angeles, and learned the Montessori approach to care for dementia and read every book on Alzheimer’s disease that he could find.

Andrew performs more than watching Elo at home and accompanying her to hospital visits. It is her driver to the salon dates, holding her hand where both nails are drawn. It pushes its wheelchair around the Santa Monica berth, the Universal Studios, and to the resorts of lymphatic drainage massage.

“It somehow changes the mood,” Andrew said of their matches. “Just because they have Alzheimer’s and dementia, I think people forget they are human. They still feel.” He wonders whether the flights have increased their longevity. “Doctors told me more whenever she was sitting on the chair, the more it became a chair. I tried hard to prevent it.”

Allo, who is of Armenian origin, was born in Lebanon and raised her four daughters there during the country’s civil war. Silvia, Andrew’s mother, said that Elou would venture from the basement to the kitchen while the bombs fell to make her children a hot meal. “It was the backbone of an entire family,” said Silvia, who runs a commercial company with Andrew’s father. Silvia said: “Allo continued to be a symbol of strength for the family after they migrated to the United States in 1988,” Silvia said. She has the same strength to fight this disease. “

Millennial providers on average 30 years old. studies It has shown that many feel the reward by providing care and depth of relationships with family members who are interested in them, but they also find care for a very stressful responsibility. They face challenges in school, secondary professions and personal relationships, and they are likely to feel Economic pressure Because of the provision of care, which is often unpaid.

Andrew was a university student when he began to take care of his grandmother. She was still mobile at the time, and was worried about wandering. If you need immediate care, he had to ask the professors to obtain permission to overcome the separation; They often surprised when explaining the reason. On one occasion, Andrew Ello took the separation with him. He said: “Only in the past few years, universities have dayt sponsorship for children, but they have no daytime care for the elderly.” “If you are the Millennium care, where is I supposed to put it?”

ELO now requires Andrew 7/24 assistance. It is largely non -verbal and does not transmit pain, so it is its emotional translator, and it is constantly looking for signs of discomfort and infection. “You have to defend it everywhere. Not only has it in the hospital, but in the family.”

Andrew receives compensation from California for 283 hours of providing care per month; Most countries You do not have compensation programs for family care providers. If ELO requires advanced care in a home to care for the elderly, then medicaid will cover the expenses, but her family worries about the quality of care in these centers that suffer from employee deficiency. California’s memory care centers can cost more than memory centers $ 6000 per month From the pocket. (Trump has pledge Additional support for family care providers, claiming in a mass rally in October that he would return The proposed tax credit))

For Andrew, the provision of care is not only “glorious children sitting”. “It is a job. It’s difficult.” It is published to Instagram and online chats with sponsorships all over the country, making it one of a number of young sponsorships who are trying to remove mystery from their jobs and retreat against the stigma associated with dementia. One day, he hopes to go to public relations and call for dementia.

However, he wonders if he meets all the needs of his grandmother. “In an educated brain, I know I did everything” to take care of Elo. “In the emotional brain, it is not enough.”

When he wants to break from everything, he drives his car to a mountain base near his home and watches the old episodes of Lucifer and the ugly home in his car, and periodically checks his grandmother by applying video monitoring during her sleep, and often sleeps, often. He feels moments of sadness, especially as he watches her from the grandmother he remembers.

But his sense of duty exceeds everything. He said, “I love to be with her.”