Day 29 of CCAM: Going Gold🎗for Those in the Trenches of Caregiving

On this second-to-last day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, I want to shine the light on the people who so often stand just outside of it:

The caregivers.

Of course, my experience comes from childhood cancer. For years, Bill and I cared for Ryan while also trying our best to make sure Olivia had the childhood she deserved. A definite balancing act, with more balls in the air (and spinning plates) than we could count!

But caregiving certainly doesn’t belong only to the cancer world, amiright?

Every single day, people are caring for aging parents, spouses with cancer or other illnesses, children with disabilities or chronic conditions, friends recovering from surgery, loved ones with dementia, and family members who simply cannot navigate life alone right now. It's all ubiquitous.

Caregivers drive to appointments. Keep track of medications. Make meals. Sit beside hospital beds. Ask the doctors questions. Fill out forms. Make phone calls. Lose sleep. Hold hands. Try to keep everyone else informed. And somehow, in the middle of it all, they still have to buy groceries, pay bills, do laundry, go to work, and keep the rest of life moving; plus someone has to work to get insurance to keep all the gigs going.

Caregiving is love in action; though it can also be exhausting, way beyond our individual thresholds.

It’s not a surprise that caregivers need caregivers, too. We certainly did. I am/we are forever grateful to those who kept us humming along (no easy feat when we were depleted so often).

Sometimes our caregivers arrived with dinner or gift cards to local eateries. Sometimes they drove Olivia somewhere to soccer practice and where she needed to be. They called. They sent cards. They cut our grass. They prayed. They walked our dogs. They made us laugh. They sat with us. They did ordinary things for us when our lives were anything but ordinary. That was the beauty that’s hard to quantify, but oh, so needed.

We know our village couldn’t take childhood cancer away from us, but they helped us carry it. I’ll never forget their quiet ways of doing so much to lighten our loads for over 10 years in the early years. That is a loooong time for caregiving...just saying.

So today, I’m Going Gold for the caregivers—in the childhood cancer world and far beyond it. For every person quietly doing the next thing that needs to be done for someone they love, I see you. I applaud you. My heart is bursting with gratitude for you.

For everyone standing behind those caregivers, helping them stay on their feet—a HUGE SHOUT OF THANKS to all of you! And you know who you are.

Day 29. For the caregivers. Still Going Gold. 🎗💛🎗

Photo of our first caregivers: my parents, John & Sophie Nolan (flew out of Cleveland, Ohio, the day Ryan was diagnosed (10/17), and stayed until after Thanksgiving of 1996.