Table 3:

Interpersonal Systems: Caregiving

Caregiving for Family Members’ Bladder Needs

My husband before he died, he had a catheter… he had kidney problems all the time and he was bedridden. He couldn’t do anything for himself. (age 65+)

I took care of my mom but after she got to a certain stage, we have to put the Depends on her because… as time was going on, we would take her to the bathroom and she wouldn’t use it and sometimes you put her back in the bed, she would use it then. (Group in agreement.) So that’s the experience I had. We had to do the plastic sheets. I didn’t realize that an older person have so much urine in their body when they urinate because it will be the whole bed, so we had to like cover the whole bed, and I never thought it was that much urine. (age 65+)

If you be around Alzheimer’s people a lot, you have to monitor them their bladder because before they go somewhere, it just like a kid. You know you take, when you a kid, you are, you gotta use the bathroom before you leave, and when you, you know going to the restroom, you got to use the bathroom right there. Then when you coming back home, you got to use the bathroom… just be patient, make sure because they can’t tell you, ooh, I got to go to the bathroom, you just got to monitor them, you got to tell them when to go and even if they go and don’t do nothing, just like sometimes when you training kids and you tell them oh, you better go to the bathroom. (age 65+)

Neglecting One’s Health While Caring For Others

My days are full caregiving… I’m a caretaker of my husband. He had a lung transplant. Also, my mother’s 84 and I have to take care of her and I do think that a lot of times, I just don’t take time to go to the restroom. (age 65+)

I think one of the biggest issues with women health is that we do not take care of ourselves as well as we should because we’re so busy taking care of family and everything else and we kind of neglect ourselves, so and we need to you know we can’t take care of everybody else if you don’t take good care of yourself… And I think your bladder, you know, because that, it gets lots to do with your functions and care and all that stuff, cause a lot of time we do things hold out a little longer than you normally need to hold it. (age 65+)

If you have a lot of children, you cannot leave them and go to the bathroom when you need to go. And then you’re holding your urine and that infects the bladder some. (age 65+)

When I think about women’s health, I think about women not having time to take care of their health or you know knowing just being so busy with family and, and children and grandchildren and just not having time to really do it. I think we know what to do. We just forget about ourselves and put ourselves, you know do things for everybody else. (age 45–64)

We, you know, everybody in the house is gonna be you know 100% health, and we the only one going down and we still standing there trying to make sure they healthy. You know and we could get it in our mind we come first and, and, as you know women, we’ve always looked at ourselves as the last person. You know we fixing up everybody, you know, and then when we up and just die for no reason you know they’ll say, “well but, you know, our family is so healthy but she wasn’t doing enough for her. (age 65+)

I think being a woman period is a big responsibility... The overall responsibility of everything that we have to do, the things that whether we want to do it or not, we have to do it. So you have to really look at yourself overall. Otherwise, you know you’re going to leave something out, where you’re neglecting yourself or your children or tiring yourself out caring for family member or whatever. It’s just a big responsibility. If you are not in good health, you cannot carry out your responsibilities. (age 65+)

I think most of all, we need to pay attention to our bodies more… sometimes our body is telling us that something is wrong, and we have a tendency to ignore it. We put it off, like she said, take care of everything and everybody but ourselves… If it was your child or your husband, we’d be rushing them off to the doctor to see what’s wrong with them, but when it comes to us, we don’t always do that and I, I think that’s why we get into a lot of problems that probably should, could be avoided if we would take care of it sooner. (age 65+)