| Learning Objective #1: Describe three major themes that explain how family caregivers can transform the exasperations of caregiving into blessings and find meaning to the caregiving experience | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Identify two major strategies that can facilitate meaning-making in family caregivers |
Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease is one of the most stressful, challenging experiences family members face. This study examines how caregivers can shape the frustrations and exasperations of caring for a family member with Alzheimer's disease into blessings. As a means to develop a better understanding of how family caregivers find meaning amidst the suffering of caring for a person with Alzheimer’s Disease, Heidegger’s interpretive approach was used to analyze an exemplar case from an original phenomenological study of 103 informal family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s Disease living at home. Stories of loss, grief, and healing can provide powerful examples of transforming even the most crushing forms of loss into hope and meaning. Heidegger's approach is particularly relevant to the analysis since he proposes human experience is hermeneutically meaningful and that narrative forms are the primary scheme by means of which meaningfulness is manifested. When asked to describe the experience of caring for her husband with Alzheimer’s disease, the caregiver initially vividly describes the exasperations of caring for her husband for the past 15 years and her feelings of emptiness and loss. At the same time, she vividly describes how “blessed” and “lucky” she feels and how “a day without him would be meaningless.” Her account prompted us to ask: "How does the caregiver feel both exasperated and blessed? Three major themes emerged from the analysis and provides insight into how caregivers can find meaning, create new possibilities, and shape the frustrations and exasperations into blessings. Exasperations were transformed into blessings by : living cherished memories, creating a happy life by living life intensely, and counting one’s blessings. The paper concludes with a description of strategies nurses can use to facilitate the meaning-making in caregivers unable to naturally find meaning amid the exasperations of the caregiving experience.
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