Fernanda asks employers to put themselves in the caregivers’ shoes; it is really hard to balance care and work.

Transcript

Please understand that, even though your life, maybe that you’ve never had to take care of anybody, that it is extremely hard to take care of somebody and have a job. I’m not asking that employers say, “Okay, you’ve got to take care of somebody, so you can have all this time off.” No. I’ve never been like that. Whatever time I’ve had off, I’ve worked it in. If I’ve taken an extra half an hour at an appointment, I have worked in that half an hour. I’ll come back in the evening and I’ll finish my work. I try to leave everything. A lot of times I can—I used to go in at 2 o’clock in the morning while mom was in hospital. I’m not asking for freebies, but I think the people that have a job and have to run people to appointments because there’s no one else—I mean just nobody else—and you can’t put them in a taxi or expect them to catch a bus because they’re too sick to do that, or they don’t know the language… is please have some understanding what’s it’s like. Because when I was told after my dad died and my mother and […] they told me that my mom had about two weeks to live if she didn’t go back on dialysis, and I was told—and not by the employer—that business is business and no one really cares, that was a big shock. Because you know what? It’s true. As long as people, businesses, are out there to make money and everything, and so it’s just really, really hard.

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