Coronavirus is quietly showing us how to support caregivers

The horrifying progression of the Coronavirus needs no further detailing from me, but there’s one aspect of it I want to highlight.

Consider how you live your life right now, in this dystopian reality. Avoiding infection dominates everything you do. Your freedoms are compromised. Social life is down the gutter. Your ability to work may have been limited or even eliminated. You wash your hands, properly, all the time. You might be wearing a mask and carrying hand sanitizer. The world seems awfully foreign, doesn’t it?

You are actually living a somewhat common experience. Immunocompromised people and their caregivers live this reality not for weeks, but more often for months or years. Bringing home a common cold can be fatal for your loved one. Seeing friends seems a distant memory. Don’t even think about going to a gym. Even if you can remain employed, you suddenly stink at your job, distracted and stressed by your overwhelming preoccupation with disease.

A lot of the caregivers I speak with are frustrated right now. “People are out there whining about the challenges we face every day” is a common refrain. Same goes for doctors and nurses. They’re not wrong. Ever the optimist and often a contrarian, however, I find myself cautiously hopeful about the ramifications for caregivers. COVID-19, for all its evils, may be the single greatest generator of empathy we’ve ever seen. This isn’t some distant story of a soldier losing a limb, or hearing about how illnesses we vanquished long ago with plumbing and vaccines are devastating less fortunate nations. This is a shared experience. Years from now, the emotions we are feeling will not fade like a news story so often does.

So, I want to make you aware of a few lessons for supporting caregivers that, surprising as it may be, you’ve already learned from the Coronavirus.

1 | Assume the challenges facing caregivers and patients are more severe than you think.

When we looked at Wuhan struggling, we had trouble grasping the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps it was hubris, perhaps a lack of information, but a lot of North America was thinking “It can’t be that bad. Surely they can handle it. So they’re locked down, whatever, they just get to stay home” etc.. We can now all say, comfortably, that locking down a city bigger than New York was not at all trivial. Being locked in your home, unable to visit your loved ones and favourite places is categorically awful. Being forced to work your essential job when you know it might harm you and your family is terrifying. The world now knows the truth because we’ve felt it: it was a gargantuan effort and a huge sacrifice for everyone on the ground, and it’s repeating itself all over the globe.

The same is often true for Caregivers. They seem like they’ve got it under control. They’re not asking for help. I’m going to say something rather bold — I’ve never met a caregiver who feels like they have it totally under control, because I don’t think that person exists. Don’t mistake pride or composure for a healthy situation.

2 | Checking in actually does matter. A lot.

We don’t need to look any further than the shocking rise of Zoom to understand the value of regular human connection. Only the most introverted among us are not craving more contact right now. We’re all empathic by default, asking “how are you holding up?” to everyone we know, not just the sick or grieving.

Now, consider how truly lonely it must be to isolate yourself when no one else is doing it. People were not scheduling regular zoom calls for caregivers in nearly the same way we now do for each other. I hope we all remember the feeling of isolation and check in on the isolated among us more often in the future.

3 | Small things feel heroic when you’re down.

Has someone done something for you lately that just felt huge? They dropped off toilet paper. They offered a fitness class online. They curated a list of podcasts. A public official gave you a credible, honest account of what we’re facing. These things are not that hard to do, but they make an outsized difference to people who are struggling.

So, if you do something nice for a caregiver, I guarantee you, it will mean more to them than you think it will. Drop off their favourite chocolates, or send them a gift card to the coffee shop in the hospital. It’s surprisingly easy to be a hero.

Before wrapping up, I want to call out — neither my point of view nor our vision of the path forward at Caregiver Support Technologies is not shaped by blame or guilt — the moment we start telling supporters that they need to “step up”, or in some manner wag our finger, is the moment they will shy away. People are unsure of how they could possibly be pushy or intrusive with a family in crisis, and I believe they’ll just shut down. I truly believe people want to support each other, but we need to make it easy — easy to understand the problem and know our role in it, easy to contribute, and easy to stay connected.

If COVID-19 leaves us with one positive, I hope that it enhances our collective understanding of these issues — they will persist for caregivers and their loved ones long after the conclusion of this crisis.