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Local family copes with rigors of care-giving
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Tracey Powers’ life is like a sandwich. At 43, she’s caught in the middle between her children, her career and her one remaining parent, her 78-year-old mother, who suffered a stroke in 2004 that left the right side of her body paralyzed.
Joyce Whetsell is now wheelchair-bound and spends half of her time in her own Goose Creek home and half at her daughter’s home in Moncks Corner, where a room downstairs has been converted to a bedroom. Powers and her husband, Bruce Powers, also have two sons, Justin, 17, and Michael, 9.
A day in the life of Tracey Powers is an intricate balancing act that has become routine, but not without taking its toll.
“Back in November and the first part of this year I started having really bad migraines and I was out of work for three days,” Powers said. “I had to have someone come in and take care of mother. Both of my brothers stepped in and asked me what they needed to do. I don’t like to just take control, but I’m not really good at delegating the routine.”
Powers is typical of the estimated 44 million Americans who are caring for someone 50 years old or older, usually an aging parent. About 70% of caregivers work outside the home, and 44% of caregivers between ages 45 and 55 also have children under the age of 21.
Elinor Ginzler, an expert on long-term care for the AARP, said Powers fits the average caregiver profile: a woman, age 46, working outside the home, providing care for parents as well as family members under age 21.
“She really is sandwiched,” Ginzler said. “There are men out there doing this kind of work, too, but this is very much a female issue.”
Ginzler said the ratio of female-to-male caregivers is about 60% to 40%.
“There is a sense that the number of men is going up, and in a way that’s seen as a good sign because that might affect some workplace change,” Ginzler said. “Men still unfortunately drive the workplace agenda more than women do. The reality is many employers don’t even know they have staff dealing with eldercare issues. It’s really typical to call into work and say your kid is sick and has the chicken pox, but it’s not typical to call in and say your mother is sick.”
Ginzler recently spoke at the South Carolina Public Health Association’s annual conference in Myrtle Beach.
“My particular points were about caregiving and caregiver stress and that the caregivers need to take care of themselves,” Ginzler said. “The health toll that all this takes on the caregiver usually goes ignored—not undetected, but ignored. They suffer higher rates of depression than the regular population and are less able to fight illness. ... They’ve done research that caregivers actually have a higher risk factor for death. The American Medical Association has called caregivers ‘the hidden patient.’”
A typical day for Powers involves a daily routine that stretches from her Moncks Corner home to her son’s elementary school to her mother’s Goose Creek home and back to her office in Moncks Corner, about 34 miles round-trip.
Normal days don’t include trips to her mother’s doctor in West Ashley or emergency visits to the hospital. Then there is paperwork to fill out for Medicare and other programs for which she hopes her mother will qualify, plus the daily duties of running a home and caring for a family. Powers is also a Rotary Club member—meetings are at noon on Thursdays—and she tries to make it to all of her 9-year-old son’s baseball games.
“I’ve been to three of his field trips this year,” Powers said. “They have just made me treasurer of the PTO. I don’t know how I’m going to fit that in. I don’t know how to say ‘no.’”
So far, Powers hasn’t thought about retiring from her job as a branch manager for Carolina First Bank. In fact, her aspiration is to run three branches instead of one.
“I would like to be city executive here in Berkeley County. That’s always been my dream,” Powers said.
She is the primary loan officer at her branch and is responsible for business development, customer service and opening new accounts. There are high-pressure campaigns each quarter to raise the bank’s volume, but Powers said she thrives on meeting goals.
“I always set goals for myself really high,” Power said. “I’m very passionate about my work. My clients and my staff are just like my family. They have been a big support group for me, but there are times right in the middle of the day that I have to jump out of the office.”
One of Powers’ best friends, Regina Hesseltine, picks her up nearly every day for lunch.
“She called me yesterday and I said, ‘What’s wrong? Do you need to talk? Do you need to cry?’” said Hesseltine. “I’m glad when she tells me they’re going to Rockingham (N.C.) for the weekend or to the mountains, because she needs a break from that burden.”
Even the simplest of tasks is tricky for Powers, including grocery shopping.
“There are times I’m at the grocery store and I’m pushing mom with one hand and the buggy with the other,” said Powers. “She’s afraid of those electric carts. She won’t get in one of those.”
On most weekday mornings, Powers bathes and dresses her mother and helps lift her into the family’s Suburban.
“Everybody looks at my mom and her wheelchair and wonders how I get her in that car,” Powers said. “She’s got a brace up to her knee on her right leg. She will pull herself up, stand up out of the wheelchair, and then she takes her good leg and props it up on the running board. I brace her bad knee, so she knows not to bend it. She actually pulls herself up on the seat. I grab her right hip and help her pull herself into the truck. I fold up the wheelchair, throw it in the back, and off we go.”
Powers said her mother has always been her best friend. They enjoy shopping and sightseeing on the weekends, visiting the department stores at Northwoods Mall and going to Wal-Mart.
“If I didn’t have my daughter, I don’t know what I’d do,” Whetsell said. “I love her to death.”
Whetsell rides a bus two or three times a week to an adult day care center, and Powers has talked with her mother about the possibility of eventually needing care full-time. At day care, Whetsell has some friends with whom she can play board games or cards, but some of the day residents have dementia.
“It’s all right,” Whetsell said. “It’s boring.”
Powers’ husband Bruce said the family has had to re-arrange its schedule since Whetsell’s stroke, but things are working out.
“It slows a lot of things down that you want to do, but you work around it,” he said. “If we can let her hang on to that quality of life … She still wants to see the people she loves, and that’s what life is all about. My 9-year-old is great with her.”
The Powers household winds down about 10 p.m., after the family has had dinner and Tracey Powers has run a load of clothes through the washing machine. Dinner is usually chicken or pork chops, home-cooked by Powers. At the end of the day, she sometimes flips on the television.
“I don’t read,” Powers said. “Usually I’ll watch what’s on TV, but I’m usually out in five minutes.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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