Jennifer W
Jennifer is a caregiver for her daughter, who has two rare chromosomal deletions, causing her to be medically complex. Among her diagnoses are intellectual disabilities, seizures, IBD and ARFID. For the past three years, Jennifer has been provided with a stipend...
Dianne | Green Bay, Wisconsin
I am his primary caregiver.
Derrick
From Three Months to Four Years: A Caregiver’s Unexpected Path Four years ago, Derrick’s uncle had a serious fall and went into rehab. When he was discharged, he announced that he would be moving in with Derrick. What Derrick thought would be a temporary, three-month...
Anita
When Anita’s mother’s health started to decline, Anita retired early to provide her with personalized care. Anita’s mom is blind, has dementia, and is battling three types of cancer in different stages. Melanoma on the bottom of her foot has caused mobility issues and...
Yang
Yang has been caring for her son who was diagnosed with chronic heart failure at a young age. After several surgeries as a child, her son received a heart transplant in 2018 at the age of 15. Yang believes that caring for his chronic heart condition prepared her...
Ira
When Ira met his wife, Glenda, she had manageable Type 1 diabetes. Their relationship began as a care partnership, where Ira would attend his wife’s doctor’s appointments and would help her manage her chronic disease. Increasing complications with her diabetes...
Hailey
When Hailey’s daughter was born, Hailey instantly became a caregiver. Upon her daughter’s birth, doctors had to remove about 98 percent of her intestines, and only gave her a few weeks to live. They did not explore any options on how to help her. Hailey and her...
Cody
Cody is a caregiver for his young daughter, who was born eight weeks early with biliary atresia, a rare liver disease. Doctors told Cody and his family that she would eventually need a liver transplant, and in the meantime performed a surgery that was able to delay...
Brian
Brian was the caregiver for his wife, who needed a kidney transplant a few years ago. While they were engaged, Brian’s wife went into septic shock due to kidney failure, and that, combined with her pre-existing Type 1 Diabetes, led to high blood pressure and...
Abena
Abena’s husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2013, shortly after she became pregnant with their first child. Her husband lived with his tumor for a little over four years before passing away. Abena did almost everything for him, from managing his medication...
Myra
Myra is a care partner to her husband, who was diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago. She and her husband are a team, so Myra never questioned that she would be the one helping with his care. She’s also never considered the term “caregiver” to apply to her,...
Sanary
Sanary is a Cambodian American who moved with her family to the United States at a young age as a refugee. As the daughter in a refugee family, she feels she has filled the role of caregiver all her life, starting by acting as the English translator and interpreter...
Rey
When Rey immigrated from the Philippines in 1989 as a teen, he made his home in Los Angeles, earned his MBA, and worked in biotech at a Fortune 500 company. In 2014, Rey’s father had a stroke, and Rey left LA for to St. Louis to take care of him. Rey now lives with...Karen
Karen has the mindset that you do what you can to help family, so she began to do the shopping and other small tasks for her mother in 2010. In addition, Karen has a background in finance, so she helped her mother, aunt, and uncle with their finances. By 2016, Mimi...
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn’s wife has lupus and other related diagnoses, and Gwendolyn has been caring for her for the past ten years. Neither Gwendolyn nor her wife have received many resources or much information on the disease, and Gwendolyn herself is rarely recognized as the care...
Harold
Harold was a primary caregiver for his mother, who was diagnosed with chronic adult leukemia. His mother’s care consisted of an extensive support system including Harold’s boyfriend, sister, father and a series of home health aides. Significantly, Harold had...
Martha
Martha is the care partner to her wife, who was diagnosed in late 2016 with stage 4 metastatic lung adenocarcinoma. At the initial diagnosis, the resources provided to Martha by the medical team as a care partner were minimal. Martha, who is a licensed clinical social...
Nia
Nia has been a caregiver for her husband since 2019. Her husband has been diagnosed with heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, kidney failure, high cholesterol, and is blind. Nia was engaged when her husband’s health began failing, so she married him with the...
Paurvi
Paurvi was a caregiver for both her mother and her father. While her father had Alzheimer’s, her mom had many conditions, including lung disease that turned into lung cancer, which originated from cervical cancer. Paurvi’s parents immigrated from India, and being...
Pierre
Pierre is caring for his wife, who was diagnosed with advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer. This diagnosis came as a shock because Pierre’s wife has no known risk factors for lung cancer. Because Pierre was a physician and had his wife’s permission to speak with...
Autumn
Autumn was 32 when her mother was diagnosed with a progressive neurodegenerative disease. As the only child of a single mother, Autumn knew she would be her mother’s caregiver one day, but neither she nor her mother expected that day to be when her mother was only...
Tom
Tom’s wife started asking her doctors about her memory issues at age 52 but didn’t receive the official diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease until age 57. His wife’s condition led Tom to ultimately leave his non-profit work and move him and his wife into...
Jennifer H.
In 2011, Jennifer H. first noticed that her mother was having trouble with her short-term memory. Jennifer didn’t believe it was serious at first, but, over time, her mother’s condition escalated to include paranoia, getting lost or confused easily, suffering from...
Katie
Katie is the mother of a 20-year-old son born with physical and intellectual disabilities caused by a rare disease. The factors of her son’s care have been constantly changing, meaning the caregiving process has changed as well. As her son’s primary caregiver and...
TeriLynne
Zuzette and TeriLynne are from the Gila River Indian Community and have cared for their aging parents, as well as their own children, two of whom have chronic conditions. Zuzette is the primary caregiver for her and TeriLynne’s mother, and supported their mother in...
Rona
Rona lives in rural Oklahoma and is the mother of three children. Her youngest child is a 13-year-old with Down syndrome. Her daughter is non-verbal and has significant intellectual disabilities. She can’t be left unattended. Though Rona feels fortunate that she and...
Laura
Laura spent two years caring for her husband, who was diagnosed with stage IV neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer. They proceeded with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery to close off blood vessels in his liver that were feeding the cancer. Her husband then underwent an...
Debbi
When Debbi’s son was born premature and bleeding in his brain, the doctors gave him two weeks to live. Debbi has now been caring for him, along with the rest of her family, for 27 years. Debbi is not a stranger to hardship. Her husband was a career Marine and was...