Jody’s Navy Captain dad Larry stood on his head atop the piano bar, and sang “Oh, Lord, it’s hard to be humble.” He flew jets onto aircraft carriers in the Pacific, inspected nuclear weapons installations in the Mediterranean, and golfed three times a week in his retirement. Now, two heart attacks, a stroke and Alzheimer’s Disease have altered his world.
Mom, full-time Navy wife, ferried three kids to myriad activities, taught Red Cross back yard swimming and worked in ticket sales for the Padres after Larry retired. She suffered though cervical cancer, two new knees and now end-stage renal failure.
Sharing the Journey: Becoming a Caregiver for Your Parents is a visceral, heart-rending, hilarious and informative chronicle of caregiving from the daughter’s point-of-view. It explores not only the challenges of parent decline and death, but shares the unexpected joys and transcendent new worlds that emerge along the way.
When trauma and tragedy threaten, does a family pull together or fall apart? How does a daughter become a caregiver, maintain a job, and preserve her own health and sanity? When the challenges of parent decline threaten to overwhelm, how do caregivers accept help and realize they are not alone? Jody’s book shares every moment from discovery of symptoms to diagnosis, treatment, decline, death and survival after death.
An actress since 1967, Jody has relished her stage, film, and TV roles. Likewise, her jobs as waitress, teacher of creative movement in a psychiatric ward, acting teacher for kids and adults, public relations for a ballet company, and eight years as an account executive in sales, have all helped prepare her for her new role of caregiver as she leaves behind old perceptions and boldly enters into her parent’s changing worlds.
Join Jody on her journey of caregiving as she learns by trial-and-error and research, interviews healthcare professionals, attends support groups and forums and discovers what it means to be a caregiver. There are how-to chapters, caregiver tips, resources, bibliography as well as Jody’s very personal account of her own struggles, mistakes, revelations and joys.
Jody Catlin, daughter of
Patty and Larry Baumgaertel
For twenty-one years, Jody was a New York stage and television actress. She swore she would never leave New York and she would never give up acting; until she did. She had never heard of the term caregiver; until she became one. It was Jody’s unexpected and rewarding role as caregiver for her parents that taught her to “never say never.”
Over the years, it was sister Janny or brother Jim who lived closer to their parents and spent more time with them than older sister Jody did. By 1991, Jim was living in Washington state and Janny, in Louisiana, while the parents resided in San Diego. When a casting director beckoned around that time, Jody relocated to the West Coast, along with her daughter, Yvie. Jody wanted to go to Disneyland and La Jolla Shores and the San Diego Zoo with the parents, too. It was her turn. When her previously active parents became ill, it made sense that Jody would be the one to help out.
Jody became a full-time caregiver for her mom who endured cancer, two titanium knees and end-stage renal failure; and for her dad, who suffered two heart attacks, a stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease. Feeling isolated and overwhelmed, Jody discovered she needed to reach out to family, friends, support groups and healthcare professionals. Her subsequent fifteen years of research, as well as her family’s traumatic and transcendent journey, evolved into her book Sharing the Journey: Becoming a Caregiver for Your Parents.
With a playful exuberance and a focus on celebrating life, Jody and her parents revisited their eventful past, embarked on new adventures and learned to savor each moment of life’s waning years.
As Madeleine L’Engle once wrote: “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” Perhaps every job Jody ever had helped to prepare her for her role as caregiver, whether she was an actress or a waitress, clown, teacher of creative dramatics for kids, teacher of creative movement for adults in a psychiatric ward, representative in sales or in public relations. When her mom became immobile and could barely see; when her dad became intermittently aggressive, child-like, obsessive, silent or unresponsive, Jody learned to let go of her own preconceptions and expectations and to embrace her parents’ new worlds of awareness and reality.
Sharing the Journey: Becoming a Caregiver for Your Parents is a daughter’s chronicle of her family’s journey of love and loss, tragedy and transformation, as well as a practical guide for caregiving. Jody shares her failures as well as her triumphs and the important lesson that we, as caregivers, are not alone.
Endorsements
For Sharing the Journey: Becoming a Caregiver for Your Parents
“Jody’s narrative account of her caregiver journey is told with love, joy, sadness, and trepidation. She maneuvers her way around uncharted territory with a brave exuberance. Her account will make you laugh and cry…sometimes simultaneously.”
~~Norma Brownell, LVN,
Executive Director, ActivCare
I am a licensed Marriage, Family, and Child Therapist, employed at the Office of the Public Conservator in San Diego County. I endorse “Sharing the Journey: Becoming a Caregiver for Your Parents” by Jody Catlin as it is a heart-warming account of living and dying. It contains precious loving moments as well as overwhelming experiences of crisis and terror. Also compiled are lists of valuable resources. This book is so well written it should be utilized as a college textbook. Informative, resourceful, passionate…It is a must-read for caregivers.
~~Mary Unterwegner, L.M.F.T
“Dealing with families whose loved ones have become caregivers is a trying job, many times because of all the legal issues involved. Jody has set down on paper the methods for dealing with these legal entities with compassion and feeling, never losing sight of the great love the caregivers have for their loved ones. I would highly recommend this book to everyone who may need to go through the tough road that Jody has traveled.”
~~ Marcia Fram
Retired Probate Assistant
A beautiful book, with the intensity and drama of the everyday life of a devoted daughter caring for her elderly, disabled parents. You will laugh, cry, and learn from it. A must read for anyone who is now a caregiver for loved ones, or who will become one in the future.
~~ Shelly Chandler, Ph.D.,
Professor Emeritus, Sociology
“I honestly loved it. I don’t know whether it’s because I work in the health care industry or if it is a personal thing. It is as if Jody is talking directly to me. I couldn’t put it down. When my husband said, ‘Okay, the movie’s ready,’ I said, ‘No, not yet, I have to finish this chapter! I’ve got to know if they found another gun!’”
~~Bonnie DuBois,
Radiology Technologist