Aging Gracefully
Heartfulness eMagazine|February 2024
SHANTHI VENKAT is a physical therapist based in the United States. Here, she details how a deeply personal experience as a caregiver pushed her to reflect on the stigma around aging and her own professional work, and the easy steps we can take to prepare ourselves for growing older.
SHANTHI VENKAT
Aging Gracefully

My husband and I have been in the healthcare industry for over three decades; he provides home visit physical therapy services for the geriatric population and I work with the Veterans' Affairs clinic, where I treat elderly veterans of war, and young veterans returning from recent tours. Because of the nature of our work and our adaptation to the ever-changing landscape of geriatric healthcare, both of us developed what we believed to be a thick skin to caretaking.

That thick skin has been tested and recreated over the last seven years, after my husband decided to move his parents, in their eighties, from India to the US, so we could care for their growing medical concerns. Neither of us had any apprehension about this caretaker role, until his parents actually moved in.

The months and years following their arrival have been an eyeopener for us. Much changed quickly: the energy in the house shifted as our lives revolved around their needs, wants, emotions, and illnesses. Prior to their arrival, we were empty nesters planning for our retirement, but the immensity of their health issues postponed those plans indefinitely.

We were also inching closer to our 60s. Little aches and pains magnified in intensity, and no matter how preemptive we were in managing them, we were not rebounding quite as quickly. Neither of us will ever regret the choice we made to bring my in-laws here; at the same time, caretaker burnout is very real. Whether we were willing to accept it or not, we were also aging.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 2024-Ausgabe von Heartfulness eMagazine.

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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 2024-Ausgabe von Heartfulness eMagazine.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

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