Reflections On Hurricane Helene And Its Impact When Dementia Caregiving
Have you ever thought about how an unexpected emergency, like a hurricane, could impact your caregiving duties? In this episode, we reflect on the lessons learned from Hurricane Helene and how to prepare as a caregiver when disaster strikes.
This episode offers personal insights, practical advice, and faith-based encouragement for caregivers dealing with crisis situations.
The Unseen Challenges of Emergency Preparedness
As caregivers, we often focus on the daily tasks of caring for our loved ones with dementia, but an emergency situation can throw everything into chaos. Lizette shares personal experiences of being caught unprepared for Hurricane Helene.
With no extra food, water, or power, it became clear that basic needs like food, shelter, and safety are crucial during emergencies. Without preparation, daily caregiving tasks took significantly longer, increasing stress and exhaustion.
The episode stresses how important it is to plan ahead for emergencies, especially for caregivers. Even if you live far from the coast or think a natural disaster won’t impact you, the lesson here is: Always be prepared.
The Importance of a Support System
During the hurricane, one of the biggest blessings was seeing how the church community stepped up. From providing generators to helping with food and basic needs, the church became a lifeline for many.
Lizette emphasizes how vital it is to have a strong support system in place—whether it’s family, friends, neighbors, or a church community.
This lesson can be applied to caregiving as well. When emergencies happen, having a support system to lean on can make a huge difference in how well you’re able to care for your loved one.
How Cognitive Impairment Affects Emergency Response
One of the most eye-opening parts of this episode is how different levels of dementia affect awareness during a crisis. While people without cognitive impairment may understand the urgency of an emergency, those with dementia may not.
This can lead to mismatched priorities between caregivers and their loved ones, increasing frustration and stress.
The episode explains how people in the moderate stage of dementia are most affected. They may not fully comprehend the emergency, but they can still physically do things like wander, pace, or ask repetitive questions—behaviors that add to the stress of an already tense situation.
The key takeaway here is that caregivers must prepare not only for the physical needs but also for the emotional and cognitive challenges that arise in these moments.
Lessons Learned: How to Be Better Prepared Next Time
Lizette offers several key takeaways for caregivers who may face similar emergencies in the future:
1) Prepare Early: Don’t wait until the last minute. Stock up on essential items like food, water, medications, and supplies for your loved one’s daily care.
2) Consider Evacuating: If you’re caring for someone with moderate dementia, consider evacuating to a safer place where their needs can be met more easily, or placing them in respite care during the emergency.
3) Have Extra Help: If evacuation isn’t possible, consider bringing in extra help—another caregiver, family member, or friend—to support you during the crisis.
4) Focus on Basic Needs: Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—if you don’t have your basic needs met, you can’t effectively care for someone else. Take care of food, shelter, and safety first, so you can be emotionally and physically ready to handle caregiving.
Faith in the Storm
This episode also offers spiritual encouragement, reminding caregivers that God is present even in the storms.
Lizette reflects on Job 37:9-13, which speaks to God’s control over the natural elements. This offers hope and perspective, helping caregivers remember that they are not alone in facing these challenges.
Are you prepared for an emergency as a dementia caregiver? This episode offers valuable insights on how to be ready, both practically and emotionally, for whatever may come.
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Read More:
Talking About Caregiver Burnout With Michelle Gordon
Check the other podcasts: https://dignicarebydesign.com/category/podcast/
Transcript
[0:00] Hey Christian caregiver, welcome to our Kingdom Focus Dementia Caregiving Podcast, where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to make caregiving easier today, as well as help caregivers reimagine a brighter tomorrow. This episode is 183, and we are going to talk about reflections on Hurricane Helene and its impact when dementia caregiving. I don’t know how many of you guys actually know or realize, but I live in the upstate of South Carolina, which was moderately impacted by Hurricane Helene a couple of weeks ago. And it was fascinating to me because even though we were not a direct hit like Florida or we weren’t as significantly impacted as.
[0:51] Say, Asheville and the western North Carolina, this hurricane actually did impact my life directly, and I did not anticipate the response that I personally had throughout this hurricane. So I wanted to start by reading to you Job 37 verses 9 through 13, because as I’ve been reading my Bible after this particular hurricane, I see it in a different way. I read it in a totally different way. But Job 37 verses 9 through 13 talks about out of the south comes the storm and out of the north the cold.
[1:31] From the breath of God ice is made and the expanse of waters is frozen. Also with moisture he loads the cloud, he disperses the cloud of his lightning. It changes direction, turning around by his guidance, that it may do whatever he commands on the face of the inhabited earth, whether for correction or for his world or for loving kindness, he causes it to happen. And so my takeaway from that passage today is, whether for correction or for
God’s Providence in the Storm
[2:07] his world or for loving kindness, he causes it to happen. So the Lord ordained and caused these particular storms at this particular time in history, in his particular world. So I wanted to set a stage today related to Hurricane Helene that this too is God’s providence, and he was and is in the storm. So take that as an encouragement today if you have been physically and financially and emotionally impacted by one of these hurricanes, because as I’m recording this, Florida has now had episode two, a second verse same as the first related to Hurricane Milton.
[2:53] And so I wanted to just start today’s podcast with some encouraging words. God was in these storms. He is still seated. Jesus is still seated at the right hand of the Father and is upholding this world. And we have nothing to fear, even though we may have been significantly impacted by these little storms. So as we were not preparing for this hurricane.
[3:19] I attend a local networking event, and we were very strongly encouraged by people in my networking to prepare for the storm, to, you know, put put gas in the car to do all of these kinds of preparatory things. Well, the reality is we live so far away, a coast, I live four and a half hours from the closest coast and eight plus hours from the coast where this actually came from. And so when I came home, I expressed to my husband, we need to care for Hurricane Helene. And he kind of left and he’s like, well, no, not really. It’s not going to impact us at all. So we had no gas in the car. We had no extra food. And on the Friday that Hurricane Helene came through our area, we woke up to the storm, the wind blowing, the rain coming down.
[4:07] About 7.30 in the morning, we lost power. I called my parents, who I primary care give to, even though they don’t live with me, and they still had powers.
[4:17] So I was kind of like, phew, dodge that bullet. I don’t need to worry about my mom and dad. Well, they lost power within an hour after that. But I remember standing at the window in my bedroom and it was dark and dreary and the wind was blowing something fierce.
[4:33] Now I live in a house that has a lot of trees around it and we started hearing all of these big trees around us just one after the other fall. And it was very overwhelming to stand there and see all of these trees fall and start to pray, Lord, don’t let one of these trees actually hit my house that I live in. But like I said, my husband and I, we were very minimally impacted by this. We lost power, we lost internet, we lost a little bit of food, but at the same time, we were impacted by the storm. And so it made me start to really reflect again on a principle that I’m familiar with that was called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Reflecting on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
[5:18] And I’m going to kind of unpack today a little bit my observations. We’re going to look at it today in three sections. What actually worked with well, what didn’t work well. We’re going to start with what didn’t work well, what did work well, and what I learned from this. So very, very briefly, I’m just going to express to you guys real quick what Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are, because at the end of this, I’m going to kind of unpack it related to what I’ve observed in this storm.
[5:47] In this hurricane, and in the response and the impact on caregiving, because I think that really nailed it for me when I truly start to think about it in that way. And the first thing is the first, the bottom, it comes up as a pyramid. The bottom level is the physiological needs, food, shelter, clothing, right? The stuff that we need to just basic needs, stay alive. Then after that, the next level of needs are safety needs, things like being protected, you know, making sure that life and limb are safe. And then after that come love and belonging that looks at relationships and social connections and self-esteem, which looks at things like respect and recognition.
[6:32] And then the very highest is self-actualization. So that’s just a very quick, brief overview of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And so let’s unpack this episode in these three points. The first thing, what didn’t work well, right? I had absolutely no preparation for caregiving through this situation and through this storm. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even consider it. And I didn’t even really consider how this would necessarily, and this is a terrible thing, impact people who are caregivers. It just never crossed my mind.
What Didn’t Work Well
[7:06] I was not at all concerned about the storm. I didn’t even think that it would impact us at all. It was life was going on like normal. And whatever also didn’t work well in this situation is because I didn’t prepare, because we didn’t prepare the house, because we didn’t have food, you know, pre-prepared, we didn’t really have water in the house. We didn’t really have things that we could like canned food or any of these kinds of things. We were scrambling. We were constantly scrambling. And I didn’t recognize how much the convenience of power, of internet, of cell phones.
[7:45] Of roads, of all of these things impacted me from a day-to-day perspective because everything that we did took forever to do. It took forever for us to get food on the table. It took forever for us to go to the store and find a store that we could, you know, get food or preparation or get gas, those kinds of things. Everything took three times longer. We didn’t have power for about seven days, six and a half if you’re really counting, and we didn’t have internet for about 10 days. And we were very, very, quote unquote, inconvenienced. And please understand and hear me well, we were just inconvenienced. Life and limb were safe. I didn’t lose any property other than a little bit of food. But also what didn’t work well was I was not able to support my clients and you as podcast listeners as I would have liked to, because for a week I didn’t have access to all of the normal conveniences that I do in order to record the podcast.
[8:43] To hop on a video call with my clients, to be able to support people to the level and extent that I wanted to, because I wasn’t able to. I didn’t have the emotional reserves to support other people, never mind myself. Was just taking care of me and my own and my husband and my parents, right? And so if you are a caregiver, this really, really should be something that we truly need to understand because if you cannot take care of your physiological needs, food, shelter, clothing, and your safety needs.
[9:20] There is nothing left for you to give. We have to start there. And so that was a recognition that I really had was that it really does start with the basics, right? And so if you are struggling as a caregiver, sometimes it is because those basics aren’t being met. There’s not a good structure or system in place. You’re struggling every day just to get food on the table because your caregiving tasks are so many that you really cannot take care of yourself, right? Your own physical body, your safety needs, those very basic physiological things.
What Did Work Well
[9:56] So that is one of my takeaways from this Hurricane Helene. The second thing that we’re going to look at is what did work well, because guess what? Some things did work well.
[10:06] One of the biggest things that was such a tremendous blessing to me personally was to see how the church stepped up to help. Our church stepped up, our denomination stepped up, our neighbors stepped up, we all stepped up and helped one another. The church, our particular denomination, was able to provide every family member in our congregation who did not have power with a generator in order to help take care of basic needs. I saw people pulled together in the churches, specifically up in North Carolina. I saw people from churches going up there to help. I saw people from our own congregation leaving their families and going up to North Carolina, to the western parts of North Carolina to go help. I live about an hour from Asheville, about 45 minutes from Hendersonville, and it was just very gratifying to see how many people stopped what they were doing and went to go help. And these were people, you know, how the church stepped in and helped one another. Another thing that worked well was I did have the ability to call my phone and support my people. Related to what was going on in their world via text and via telephone. So I really had to return to the basics. The internet is great. It is wonderful. Podcasting is great and wonderful. These are conveniences and business looks entirely different because people like me can support people like you via podcast.
[11:33] Via a video because of the internet. And that’s one of the reasons that I started this business was because I do have a recognition and a realization that everybody in the world mostly has a smartphone. And so we can now access parts of the world that we never were able to access before related to caregiving and dementia and the gospel just through using a cell phone. But what did work well was I was able to return to the basics and be able to call people and use text. And then other things that did work well was related to not having internet access, seeing people go back to playing cards or board games or reading a book or just, you know, sitting, visiting with one another. All of these basic things that did bring connection back to people. So that wasn’t a terrible part of this particular experience. So that did work well. There were lots of things that did work well. I had more time to read my Bible.
[12:33] Even though I didn’t really have the ability because I couldn’t concentrate super well. But that’s another conversation. It took me about two weeks to be able to get
Lessons Learned from Hurricane Helene
[12:42] back into being able to concentrate. So the third thing is, what did I learn? One of the biggest things that I actually didn’t learn is that how different it was between the difference between somebody who has no cognitive loss, who had an awareness of a greater awareness of what was happening in the world, understanding the power being off and the lack of internet and the lack of modern conveniences.
[13:12] And the person with no cognitive impairment was focused on the physiological needs, whereas the person living with dementia was not necessarily aware of what was going on around them and were more focused on emotional or higher tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because they didn’t even have an awareness necessarily that the magnitude of what was going on. And another observation that I had is, you know, people who were in the mild cognitive impairment range.
[13:44] Their awareness of what was going on was there, but it was then people in a mild to moderate dementia range versus people in a severe dementia range who had no awareness at all, and they were being taken care of entirely by their families. But the people who really struggled in this particular Hurricane Helene event were the people who were in that moderate dementia range, that mild to moderate dementia range, where the person who they’re taking care of, the person that is receiving care, is physically still able to do a lot of things, but they’re really not as aware of the situation, the greater, bigger picture situation around them. The person who was the caregiver was so focused on taking care of just basic needs, but they were taking care of or they’re helping a person who had the inability to recognize that we were at that basic physiological level and the person with dementia, their perceived need was higher. They were looking for belonging. They were looking for love. They were looking for connection. And what that resulted in was disconnect and drama, right? So we ended up because nobody had power, nobody had internet, people were struggling to get food on the table on a daily basis. But the person that they were taking care of now didn’t have TV that could keep them engaged anymore, or they were not able to stay entertained in the way they were always like on their cell phone or whatever the technological solution was that.
[15:14] Them from having these behaviors or these responsive behaviors were things like people started pacing or asking repetitive questions or leaving and exit seeking and trying to go out the house and just causing a lot of friction in the home because there was a disconnect between reality, we didn’t have power, we didn’t have internet, we didn’t have basic needs, and their perception that everything was okay and they couldn’t understand necessarily the magnitude of what it was that we were facing. So there truly was a significant mismatch in priorities between the caregiver and the person living with dementia. So the person who is the caregiver, like me, I was so focused on immediate survival needs, right? This increased my stress significantly because everything took so much longer to do. It took me longer to prepare food. It took me longer to drive somewhere to go look for my, you know, make sure that my parents were taken care of. It took me longer to do just the basic things like laundry or take a shower, which was a cold one. And I did not deal well with that, but that is for another day. And this really resulted then increased difficulties between the caregiver.
[16:26] The person being taken care of. So this resulted in this disconnect, right? And then the second thing is the person with dementia was so focused on meeting their emotional needs, that this actually ended up resulting in frustration for the caregivers because they didn’t have time. And because they didn’t have time, this increased their stress. And because this increased their stress, this increased all of these responsive behaviors that we would see, things like wandering and repetitive questioning and agitation. And so I just wanted to take a couple of minutes today to really just unpack for you my reflections on Hurricane Helene and its impact when dementia caregiving. What would I do differently next time? Number one is I definitely would prepare differently.
[17:14] Number two is if I were a person who truly, truly was taking care of somebody in that moderate stage of dementia, that we knew this type of a situation like a hurricane, which you have several days advance notice on, I would definitely consider evacuating. I would definitely go somewhere where we could meet our basic needs or consider respite care in a facility so that you can focus on just taking care of yourself. I would be better prepared. I would try to remove myself from that situation. I would go somewhere else if I could, because the reality of the matter is if you do not, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. If you are in a situation where you’re not able to evacuate, albeit for financial reasons or physical reasons, whatever, I would try to find an additional person to bring into the house to help be a caregiver for you in that period of time, because you will be so focused in an emergency situation like this on meeting the basic needs.
[18:22] So either you need to be able to meet those basic needs or you need to have
Preparing for Future Storms
[18:26] somebody else be able to help you meet those basic needs so that you can take care of the person. So I hope this is a episode that is practical. I know most of us have never thought about being in one of these type of situations, But since I’ve just gone through this, I decided it would be a good opportunity to just let you know, you know, kind of my response to it, what I would do differently.
[18:52] What we could do, how I want you to think about it. I want you to remember God is in the storm too. This episode just will be airing about a week before my next opportunity for you to hop on the Ask the Dementia Coach monthly meetup. Our next one is October the 24th at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. And the link for you to sign up will be in the show notes. So I’m super excited. If you want to come have some coaching, if you want to be a co-creator of this podcast, I invite you to sign up and join me that evening. We’ll have a great conversation and I will help you solve a particular problem at a particular time, at a particular situation while we’re on the podcast recording. And so thank you for joining me today. I want you to remember that I pray for all family caregivers of people living with dementia. Every single day, and the Lord is in control. He is not surprised by the fact that we are navigating a dementia caregiving journey, and we serve a God of clarity. We do not serve a God of confusion. Dementia caregiving doesn’t need to be hard.
[20:15] Is for his glory and your sanctification. And it is possible to navigate this in a kingdom-focused manner. So thank you for listening to today’s episode of our podcast and listen to our next podcast on Wednesday. So I really know that this was a very valuable episode for you. If you haven’t yet signed up for one of our dementia audits where I will sit with you for 20 to 30 minutes and have a conversation and help you along your journey, then please go to the show notes and sign up for one of these free coaching sessions.
[20:56] I’m really looking for people who are willing to come and actually dialogue with me. There is no pressure. I’m just here to serve. So I really do hope that you will join me for one of these episodes so I can answer your specific questions and we can help other people who are navigating dementia in a different way. And you can message me on Facebook, the word audit, or you can message me on Instagram, the word audit, and that’ll send you to a place where you can register for one of these free sessions. So I really hope you take me up on that. I’m hoping to grow that part of the program. If I can get a couple of people who are willing to come on and can be extremely valuable in helping you along this dementia caregiving journey. So as I end all of my episodes, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and I will see you in our next episode.
