Caregiving, From Both Sides Now

By PAULA SPAN

Susan Katz thought she knew all about caring for old people. Trained as a social worker, she had spent more than 15 years working for home care agencies and for assisted and independent living facilities. So when her own parents began to falter in their mid-80s – her mother had Parkinson’s disease, and her father was debilitated by the aftereffects of prostate cancer treatment – she felt prepared to step in and help.

The reality has proved very different. Ms. Katz and her family are in some ways fortunate: her parents managed to sell their Long Island home, though not before the housing market had nose-dived. They moved into a continuing care retirement community near her home in Middletown, N.J., and hired an excellent home care aide to assist them four hours a day.

Yet Ms. Katz has found the past year and a half an eye-opening experience. Below, in an excerpt condensed from a conversation we had, she relates how her professional experiences in caregiving diverge from her personal ones. Read full article