The best problems to solve are your own
One of the hardest parts of being a caregiver isn’t the care itself. Rather, it’s the coordination and communication involved. In 2023, my grandma lived with my sister in Florida, I was in Virginia, my brother was serving overseas, and my parents were five hours south of my sister. Coordinating something as basic as a doctor’s visit became a logistical nightmare. Language barriers and continuity of information added to the challenge. As I step into a full-time caregiving role, I’m realizing the best problems to solve are your own.
In this article, I'd like to share a bit more into my experience, notably the challenges, in hopes that we create better solutions for other caregivers and their loved ones. As a bonus, I recently launched a caregivers app (link) for myself and my family to use to mitigate some of the problems we've identified as a nod to Paul Graham's 2012 essay: How to Get Startup Ideas.
No Regrets
October 2023. A tumultuous month that will be forever engraved into my memory. It'd become the impetus for writing To Philosophize is to Learn to Die and the infancy of pondering what life would look like if I stepped into a caregiver role. Albeit, one that was much less demanding. You see, my caregiving journey didn't start the day I resigned from Verily, it actually started on October 8, 2023, when I skipped my flight from MCO to BWI and rented a car to Tampa to temporarily alleviate the burden of caregiving that my sister has played for so many years.