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What is the value of human life after a devastating injury or illness?
A person's values are measured by his or her work and achievements. But what happens after a person can no longer work to produce anything? Does that person have any value anymore? Respect? Friends? Understanding?
Americans go abroad and help rebuild catastrophic areas damaged by hurricanes, they send third world countries huge monetary amounts, and TV personalities are urging us to help people infected with AIDS. We have a network of cancer societies, societies for diabetes, and many more societies for a lot of other illnesses, but what about our disabled people? What do we do with them? Hide them? Kill them? Get rid of them? Are they considered the "shame" of our society?
My name is Zorita Koenig-Witcher and I live in JAX FL. In Dec. 2003 my husband had a car accident and became quadriplegic. His injury is incomplete Spinal Cord Injury C4-5.
I am qualified Medical Secretary, graduated in 2002- 1 year MEDVENCE - Medical Institute in Tennessee. After my husband's accident in Dec. 2003 I became his full-time caregiver. I have ZORITA KOENIG HOME CARE Agency license # 229024 licensed by the State of Florida Agency for Health Care Administration - Division of Health Quality Assurance and I have been also trained for Spinal Cord Injury bowel and bladder management at the James Haley Veterans Administration - Spinal Cord Section in Tampa FL. I work together with my husband's health service provider the Veterans Administration - Home Based Primary Care. In December 2006 I received a CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION from North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health Service Gainesville, Florida and have been recognized for Outstanding Achievement as a Caregiver, Outstanding Caregiver Award for Sustained Caregiving Excellence.
I am a proud author and I published my first book "Out of the System" www.outofthesystem.com. When I said I am proud, I mean it because I finished and published this book under the special circumstances, taking care 24/7 of my spouse. It is a very interesting book about my life, with ups and downs and with tremendous twists of fate. In the third part I described few of the issues that I went through with my husband and how the people treat the Spinal Cord Injury patients.
As a fighter for the SCI people rights and knowing the huge amount of difficulties that the caretakers and their caregivers are faced with in their each and every day life, I decided to establish a non-profit organization "Beautiful Souls Inc." and build up the Beautiful Souls Center in JAX FL first, and then expend statewide, a state-of-the-art facility with 3 programs for SCI and related diseases.
The Center will offer:
1) In-patient respite - offers the so much needed relief for caregivers of the Spinal Cord Injury patients and related catastrophic injuries.
2) Active Adult Day Care for Spinal Cord Injury patients and related diseases.
3) Unlimited Rehab options - membership fee based.
Let's take a look at each of these 3 programs.
1) In-patient respite - package / Caregiver and the urgent need for respite
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - The National Women's Health Information Center describes Caregivers as people who take care of other adults, most often parents or spouses, who are ill or disabled. The people who receive care usually need help with basic daily living activities such as: grocery shopping, house cleaning, cooking, shopping, paying bills, giving medicine, toileting, bathing, dressing and eating. The terms which are usually used are "informal caregiver" and "family caregiver". These terms refer to people who are not paid to provide care.
Let's take a look and see who our nation's caregivers are?
Live takes people sometimes through a turbulent journey. These journeys become a part of the people and make the people who they are. Becoming a family caregiver for a loved one is one of those hardest life lessons. The role as a family caregiver can happen abruptly or slowly-unnoticed until one day we realize we are caring more for someone else that we are for ourselves. As next, we find ourselves beginning to struggle with the day to day demands and somewhere along the way we realize we have lost our identity and have allowed the care giving role to define who we are. The new role as a family caregiver can become as frightening as the initial diagnosis.
The statistics show that about one in four American families or 22.4 million households care for someone over the age for 50. The number of American households involved in care giving may reach 39 million by 2007. - About 75% of caregivers are women. Two-thirds of caregivers in the United States have jobs in addition to caring for another person. Most caregivers are middle-aged: 35-64 years old. The New Study on Family Caregiver Costs statistics reveal that family caregivers are providing 80% of long-term care in US, a level of care valued at $ 306 billion a year, more than what is spent on nursing home and paid home care combined. The question is: WHAT DO THE CAREGIVERS RECEIVE IN RETURN? NOTHING! Even though most families take great joy in providing care to their loved ones so that they can remain at home, the physical, emotional and financial consequences can be overwhelming without support, such as respite. Respite provides the much needed temporary break from the often exhausting challenges and stress imposed by constant care giving.
What is caregiver stress?
Caregiver stress is the emotional strain of car giving. Studies show that care giving takes a toll on physical and emotional health. Caregivers are more likely to suffer from depression that their peers. Caring for another person takes a lot of time, effort, and work. Most of the caregivers juggle care giving with full-time jobs. In the process, caregivers put their own needs aside. Caregivers often report that it is difficult to look after their own health in terms of exercise, nutrition, and doctor's visits. So caregivers often end up feeling angry, anxious, isolated, and sad. Caregivers for people with catastrophic injuries like Spinal Cord Injury and related diseases are particularly vulnerable to burnout. Also studies show that the more hours spent on caregiving, the greater the risk of anxiety and depression.
Women caregivers are particularly prone to feeling stress and overwhelmed. Studies show that female caregivers have more emotional and physical health problems, employment-related problems, and financial strain. Other research shows that people who care for their spouses are more prone to caregiving-related stress than those who care for other family members.
What the statistics don't show and what is a true fact is that an employee works on average about 8 hours/day, about 40 hours a week and has the weekends off. Cumulated a normal employee will benefit of 8 days off in a month. If we compare a normal employee with a caregiver the results are shocking. A caregiver work 24/7 round the clock and has no weekends off. So when and how should a caregiver, who does such a demanding job, take off and take care of himself?
Another true fact is that most of the women caregivers give up on their jobs so they can take care of their loved ones. That means most of them have no income or very low income, one of the major frustration and one of the major reason why a lot of the potential caregivers turn to nursing homes options. Not having jobs, there is no medical insurance. That is the major problem why the caregiver often do not address her health problems to the doctors. Simple as this, they have no financial means to apply for a health insurance and cannot afford to pay out of the pocket the cost to see a doctor.
Beautiful Souls Center is going to provide the Caregivers the opportunity to receive the so much needed respite in a package. The package will include respite services, Physical Therapy 1 hour, Occupational Therapy 1 hour, Educational Therapy 1 hour. 3 hours a day mandatory participation. The participants will be able to use any of the facility programs after their mandatory 3 hours. That means they can go to the PC room and exercise and work on them with the aid of the special assistive devices, or they can go in the rehab section and use the medical equipment and work out of course with the help of our trained staff, or they can just relax and watch the big screen TV.
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2) "Active Adult Day Care package will implement the "active" day-care, which will include Physical Therapy 1 hour, Occupational Therapy 1 hour and Educational Therapy for 1 hour and the rest recreational activities. In the educational therapy the attendees will be trained to use and work with Computers that way some of them could eventually be able to work as part-time job or gain as much independency as possible. Same here 3 hours a day mandatory participation. After these 3 hours, they can take a brake and either rest, go back to the rehab and use medical equipments and exercise, go to the Computers and work more with it and exercise or choose the recreational options which can offer them the possibility to watch TV engage in some games. That will be a double relief for the Caregivers. For once the Caregiver will be able to keep her/his job and so financial independence. Second, at the end of the Day Care the disabled loved one will have all what she/he needed to be done in terms of PT, OT and Educational training, feeding and so on, once back home the Caregivers and their disabled loved can enjoy the rest of the day together.
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3) Unlimited physical therapy program with the all new and up-dated medical equipment. This program will offer the attendees unlimited possibility to use the medical equipment. For this program the attendees will be charged with a monthly membership fee.
The Beautiful Souls Center will have a cafeteria with fresh cooked food and for the attendees who use the "Unlimited PT- program" there will be a charge for food and beverage.
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