Quiet No More

Uncovering Purpose Through Life's Unexpected Twists

• Carmen Cauthen

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What happens when life pulls you away from a high-powered career into the unexpected role of family caregiver?
 
I faced such a crossroads when diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, compelling her to retire early and embrace a new chapter filled with unforeseen challenges. I bravely shares my personal journey, navigating my daughter's severe staph infection and her parents' declining health, all while relying on disability insurance to maintain financial stability. My story highlights the importance of preparing for life's unpredictable moments and the peace of mind that comes from having a safety net in place.

My experiences didn't just stop at personal trials—it opened doors to personal growth and community involvement. Early retirement became a blessing in disguise, allowing me to deepen my connection with her children and discover a passion for advocating affordable housing. Through these transformative years, I found fulfillment and purpose, illustrating how life's unexpected turns can uncover hidden strengths and opportunities. 

Listen in to gain valuable insights into balancing family caregiving with personal growth, and learn how I, Carmen Cauthen, turned adversity into a means of supporting loved ones and making a meaningful impact in my community.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin, and this is Quiet, no More. I retired in 2011. Now I wasn't 65 or 62 in 2011, but I was tired.

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I had been diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension in 2009, and I was on oxygen 24-7., and that spring my daughter got sick. She had a staph infection growing in her back after having had scoliosis surgery three years prior, and so she was in and out of the hospital for about six weeks weeks and home on medication that had to be administered literally directly into her heart three times a day, and so I was out with her for a while, and then I went back to work, and less than a month after I went back to work, I found out my mother had gout in both feet and my daddy was wheeling her around in a wheelchair I mean, not in a wheelchair, but in an office chair in their apartment and I, you know, needed to work with her a little bit, and I already knew that daddy had been diagnosed with dementia, even though she was trying to not really talk about it very much. So I was tired, and I heard a lady speak at an event that I was at, and she talked about coming home on disability and I never thought that that was something that I could do. I was just trying to figure out how to keep holding it together for another eight or nine years until I had my full time in to work. And she said you know, you can come out on disability. You'll probably be making the same amount of money take home money that you were. It won't be taxed the same way. And I thought, hmm, that's a thought because I was really tired. I was really tired and I wasn't going to come home for long. I just wanted to come home long enough to kind of catch a breath.

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And so I decided to look into it and found that I had purchased disability insurance. And, by the way, if you're working and you have access to purchase disability insurance, get it, because you just never know, I never would have thought I'd be on disability. I never would have thought I'd have been on oxygen. You just never know. So if you have access to disability insurance, see if you can afford to buy it, because it will be well worth your getting it. That I was paying for and I figured out, even if that payment had to come out of the money that I was going to get. I was only paying that quarterly. I could pay it and still have it. It would still be in addition to whatever income I had coming in. And so I had a conversation with my husband about it and I guess he just didn't believe me.

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But I went to work the next day and I decided to go on disability for six months. And I was, but I needed the break. What I didn't know was that when I left work on Friday and told my mother I was going to be out for six weeks six months and she said to me I have a doctor's appointment Monday, would you go with me? And she said that I mean, my mother was the in control woman of the world. She was not giving up control, she was not asking anybody to go to the doctor with her or do any of that kind of stuff. And the fact that she asked me to go said a lot to me. She was concerned and she wanted somebody else to be there with her and I was willing, oh so willing, to do that for her.

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But it turned out I went to an appointment with her on Monday. We had went to three, three doctor's appointments the next week and she had cataract surgery coming up two weeks later, and the fact that she was letting me go to these doctor's appointments and now, mind you, the doctors had to be talking directly to her. I'd had to correct them a couple of times because, as she said, I am the patient, she's just here with me. But I started to hear things about her health that were concerning to me and things that she had not been telling me because she was in control, and so I realized that I needed to take a little closer attention to the things that were going on in her life. And then, when she had the cataract surgery, unfortunately a little piece of the cataract broke off in her eye and she started to lose her sight in that eye, and that was another cause for concern, because then she couldn't drive, and that was another loss of control for her and that was an issue. So what occurred was that for all of her appointments, there would be three of us going, because daddy was going and I was going, and so we'd have to have a doctor's office big enough for three people to sit in plus the doctor. But I was able to be there and to see what she needed and see how I could help, and to see also that my father really depended on her for everything that he did. Now he was still delivering Meals on Wheels Meals on Wheels but he would tell me sometimes that he had gotten lost.

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And with our Meals on Wheels office, wherever you were going, you had directions, from leaving the office where you picked up the food to every stop that you made it told you every turn which way to turn. They had all of that written made. It told you every turn which way to turn. They had all of that written down. And I think maybe there was a Garmin system or something called a Tom Tom system out at that time, and so eventually I bought one of those for him, but he didn't exactly know how to use it well and pressed too hard and broke the screen. So I realized that they both needed my assistance.

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And one of my friends said to me if you're not going to go back, when you said you're going to go back, you have to let them know that like three months early. So if you were out for six months, then within three months you need to tell them that you're going to be out longer because it will mess up your money. Well, we were already strained with finances, so it was a learning time, and when I made the decision to not go back, it was not a happy time at my house. There were perks that I had with my job. In fact, when I made the decision to come home, to begin with we missed going to a conference in Texas. That my family had been looking forward to, because that's generally how we had our family vacations was. Whatever conference I went to, the whole family went. The girls would generally have a children's portion of the event and I would be in my meetings and my husband would do the spouse portion. And so I messed up summer vacation that year. But actually for me it was good, because it was the first time I had been home with my kids for any part of the summer and my oldest child was in the 10th grade. I was thankful to have that period of time with them.

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But I realized that my parents needed me and they had planned. They had purchased long-term care insurance. They had done the things that they thought that they needed to do. We had had a Christmas family meeting a couple of years prior to that. They had taken care of wills, health care, power of attorneys, power of attorneys, all of that trust stuff. They had done all of those things and that was good because we had all of those pieces put into place. But they needed me and fortunately I was able to stay home and continue to take care of them. They had made it plain that at some point they were going to move into assisted living because my mother, within a couple of years, ended up on oxygen. My father's dementia was getting a little bit worse and it was just important for someone to be there to help them, and we ran into all kinds of issues.

Speaker 1:

Mama would go to the doctor at one point and just find out that things weren't going well. In fact, when I first started going to the doctor with her and realized that there were so many things going on, I asked the doctors every doctor that we went to, because she had specialists to tell me all the diagnoses that she had. And by the time I finished getting all the diagnoses, she had 25 things wrong, according to what they said, but some things. They had just made that decision and they hadn't tested her to be sure that those were the things that were wrong with her, and so we began to unravel that tape and whittle down some of these diagnoses that she had. One of the things that she was diagnosed with was pulmonary hypertension, and it had taken almost five months for me to get into a doctor who specialized in that. So one day for one of my appointments, I took my parents with me to my appointment and had my specialist to see my mother, and so we realized that that wasn't a primary diagnosis for her, but it was something that we had to keep check on. But it was something that we had to keep check on and my father.

Speaker 1:

Once they made the decision to move to an assisted living facility, my father's doctor said he couldn't drive anymore, and so then I became the primary driver for both families, so I was taking my parents to places that they needed to go or doing the shopping for them. I was taking my children to the places that they needed to go. If my husband was sick, then I was making sure he got where he needed to be, and so I was fortunate that I was able to take that time and to have that disability check come in and that was not federal disability, that was state, because I had been a state employee. Now in the North Carolina State Employment Office. You have to go on short-term disability for one year before you are allowed to go on short-term disability, for one year before you are allowed to go on long-term disability, and that means that your check, the amount of your check, gets dropped almost by two-thirds. And so that was why it was important for me to have that disability insurance, so that we would have enough money coming in to pay our bills, to continue to pay our mortgage. And so after a year I went to long-term disability and that increased my pay. Still wasn't necessarily enough to pay all the bills, but it was enough for us to do the things that we needed to do.

Speaker 1:

What I want to say is that I was so fortunate to be able to take care of both of my parents until they passed. You just never know what you're going to have to do. Know what you're going to have to do, and so that was why my retirement came early. I did continue to do some volunteer work. I still was active in both children's PTA and their school activities, and I think it rounded out some of the time that I had not spent with them when I was working such crazy hours at the legislature.

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But you know, sometimes you have to do things that you did not plan to do or that you did not plan for.

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So think about those things as you're moving forward with your life, about those things as you're moving forward with your life.

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Think about the other people that you might have to help take care of and figure out what the best way is to move forward. I will say that had I not done that, some of the other roads and the other paths that I have been able to come through would not have opened up for me, I would not have done the research, I would not have been an advocate for affordable housing in the same way that I was, because I wouldn't have been able to have the time to do that work. And so I'm thankful for for the opportunities that I had, even though they came through completely unexpected doors. One of the other things that these unexpected activities created for me was the opportunity to be able to speak to you and to share with you and to teach those who are around me about ways to stay quiet. No more You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey. So you can be quiet. Let's connect at wwwcarmencoffincom.