Whether it’s helping an aging parent, supporting a partner through illness or raising a child with special needs, millions of Americans are providing unpaid care to a loved one. And if they were compensated, it would cost around $600 billion a year.
WWNO and WRKF have partnered with the producers of the PBS documentary, Caregiving, to shine a spotlight on America’s caregiving crisis. We talked to people living in south Louisiana about their caregiving situations and the unique challenges the region brings when caring for others.
Frederick Griffith was a personal trainer when he started to care for his mother, Anna Hampton. As he became her caregiver he not only found inspiration to start his latest business, but found a way to serve those whose voices were being forgotten.
This story has been edited for length and clarity.
My name is Frederick Griffith. I am the CEO of Anew Fitness. That was developed in 2020 because of the caregiving I did for my mom. I discovered that she had stumped her toe at work, so we tried a bunch of home remedies, but none of it worked until it became a point where the infection had obviously spread.
And once we found out, she was rushed to St. Bernard Auctioner, I remember. She had a stroke, kidney failure and they said that they were gonna cut off her toe first, and then the toe went to the foot, and then the foot went to below the knee, so the full shin down to the foot. From there, I naturally became her caregiver.
I immediately kicked in and started to apply for different services because she had no health insurance at all. And I started to apply for different Medicaid and Medicare and those things, and getting her to dialysis, figuring out her transportation, and you know, just different things that could assist her in living life again, but it won't be the same.
I was a personal trainer as she was going through her physical therapy, so I started to sit in her sessions, maybe the 10th day of there. Sometimes it wasn't a full time, it was just a 10-minute here. Oh, she can only do this. She can only do that. And after the 30 days, I started to work with her, I found myself personal training my mom. So we were using different techniques of hooking a band up to the ceiling. And I remember her pulling it down for the arm strength and stuff, and my boss, wrist weights. And we were also able to go around her ankle. So she was able to just lift that one leg up. And I documented a lot of her changes over six months.
So within that six-month time period, she was able to live on her own. She was able to put herself in and out of vehicles. She was able to go to dialysis three days a week. She was able to cook. She just seems like a totally different mom. What she learned, life wasn't over. I was restarting, she said. So the biggest lessons I learned in my caregiving journey with my mom is just the consistency, determination. Just the caring behind what it takes to care for your mother, to see your mother in a different place than what she was as you were growing up. It really kept that willpower that I built up a lot of strength to really help her during her downtime, and that's what it takes as a caregiver.
It is rewarding as I think about it now, but in the moment, it's never rewarding. You're tired, you're drained, you are exhausted. You feel like your head is going to explode. Some days, me and my mom, we argued. We are both in situations that we don't feel like we should be in.
The advice of what I would leave for anyone, stay in the moment. Find some quiet time for yourself. And never give up on your parent or your grandmother or anyone, they need you. In the end, you'll feel like you did the right thing.