Some days are a big struggle, and others are filled with joy. For Val, all these feelings are normal.

Transcript

Hopefully to support other caregivers that know…they may look and try to find out “are my feelings normal?” There were some days where I would like to put a pillow over my husband’s head and just make him be quiet. And yeah, there’s days like that. There’s also days filled with joy, and there are the days that you want to go in the car with the garage closed and you want to start your car and you want to get it over with. But there is a big struggle to get through those days, and when you do get through them, there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not always work every day; there’s joy in caregiving.

I went to ALS group support meetings and there was one lady in particular—she was maybe 10 years younger than I was—and she said, “I’m going to kill him. If he doesn’t die on his own, I’m going to kill him.” And I thought, “Right on. That’s exactly how I’m feeling.” Today, it’s exactly the same. And when you go to the support meetings you get to know how other people deal with it. Some caregivers are, or relationships are—like we had 2 sisters where they’d go, “You’re an angel. You take care of me all the time and you’re just an angel,” and then the next person would say, “Well, he doesn’t do anything all day anyway.” They’re just a great variety of people that just, just think all differently, and you find yourself you’re perfectly normal in the weird things that you think and do.

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