Gary Barg:
You have a unique approach to
talking about caregiving. Can you
tell me a little about that?
Debbie Reynolds:
I try to get the point across
without being too dead-serious,
because it is such a difficult
subject. It’s life and life is not a
bowl of cherries; because if it
were, why am I feeling in the pits?
My family has a history of
longevity; my mom lived to be 82 and
my daddy, 83. We all have caregiving
situations. Every generation has to
take care of the next generation, or
not and not care at all. I don’t
think that it’s “we” as a people who
feel this way, because most of us
want to take care of our loved ones.
Not everybody gets to live well
towards the end; and because people
are living longer, you either have
to take them into your home or find
a place for them. This type of
decision-making can either be life
threatening or life making.
GB: What
is your personal experience with
caregiving?
DR: My
grandmother lived with my mom and
daddy until she went blind, and then
my mother became critically ill with
a bad heart. My mother started
having heart conditions when she was
39, so I’ve been a caregiver since I
was 14. We had to place my
grandmother with her other children,
who were also very good to her. All
this time, my grandmother suffered
from osteoporosis and my mother had
this heart condition, so my family
seems to weather the storms; but
they have a lot of health problems
that still exist today. This why
I’ve been so involved with all these
causes. When breast cancer awareness
first came out, I was one of the
first spokespersons for a test to
detect that; and when osteoporosis
awareness came out, I became a
spokesperson to take tests for this
as well. And then, the
problem of incontinence, or
over-active bladder, which I guess
just sounds nicer. Both my mother
and father were incontinent, and it
was the most embarrassing problem
for them to overcome. In fact, they
never did overcome it. We just had
to deal with it, because at that
time there was no help. I went to
the doctors about it, but there was
no pill, there was nothing. It was
especially difficult for my father
to handle his incontinence.
GB: I was
wondering what advice you would have
for families who may be just
beginning to deal with the issue of
incontinence.
DR: They
have to run, not walk, to the
doctor. We know that the doctors
know of a couple of different
pharmaceutical companies that have a
pill that can be given to the
patient and eliminate the
incontinence; not all together, but
at least where it can be controlled
for long periods of time. They
can actually function and be social
and active again; not hide out in
their room and not be embarrassed to
death. They lose their will to go
out because they don’t know when
they’re going to have this problem,
so they must talk to their doctor.
There are at least 17 million people
who suffer from this, and that’s
only in this country.
