Reprinted from the Health District's quarterly publication mailed to district residents (Fall 2007)

When Shauna Murdock, 60, began taking care of her father, he required such constant care that she couldn’t even leave the house during the day to take a short walk.

 “I was at my wit’s end,” she says. “I was doing everything I needed to do to take care of him, but nothing to take care of me.”

Not wanting to put Robert, 87, in a long-term care facility, Shauna was thankful to find Lynette McGowan, caregiver support coordinator for the Larimer County Office on Aging.

“Lynette has spent countless hours with me guiding me through this process,” Shauna says. “She told me the right people to call and places to go. I had been in this downward spiral and didn’t know what to do — she showed me.”

Now a nurse visits Robert three times a week and a companion spends time with him two days a week. About once a month, a professional caregiver comes to stay overnight. Murdock even received a small grant that allowed her to take caregiver classes.

Nationally and in Larimer County, 80 percent of the non-medical care provided to the elderly or ill comes from a family member or other loved one.

“Family caregivers are the underpinning of our long-term healthcare system,” McGowan says. “With the aging of the population and people wanting to stay at home as long as possible, that number is only going to grow.”

A little more than half of the roughly 100 families that McGowan’s office serves each year are adult children caring for an elderly parent, with the remainder being a husband or wife caring for a spouse.

McGowan stresses the need for people to “share the care.”

“Caregiving takes a physical, emotional and mental toll that catches a lot of people by surprise,” she says. “It also comes with a huge amount of guilt because they (family caregivers) think they should be able to do it by themselves. What they discover is that it feels good to share — for everybody involved.”

At the Murdocks, Robert is enjoying the company of his new companions and Shauna is free to again pursue the interests she had put on hold.

“I get to read, go for walks, and the other day I even went to the movies,” she says. “I got my life back.”