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Caregiver burnout and my Dad who I have been caring for 24/7 fired me
Caregivers | Last Active: Oct 27, 2025 | Replies (27)Comment receiving replies
My heart goes out to anyone caregiving for a Viet Nam vet. My husband is one too and has severe Parkinson’s from Agent Orange exposure. I became exhausted trying to care for him and to top it off he began threatening to kill me and became violent. In our nearly 50 years of marriage he had never been that way. Our son lives with and he saved me. He insisted on an intervention, so the next time it happened we called the police and an ambulance. He was given the choice of a jail cell or the emergency department. He eventually chose the hospital and was transferred to a lock down psych ward for a couple of weeks. He was stabilized on medication and was himself again when he came home. His violent, nasty behavior was the result of PTSD that was never treated. He’s not perfect now but he’s struggling with a lot physically. Thanks to my son’s hard work and his perseverance, my husband is now covered a hundred percent by the VA and we have a wonderful team helping us. If it becomes necessary the VA will provide long term care. This is available to all service injured veterans under the Pact Act. There’s no need to keep struggling and suffering abuse. I encourage anyone who is enduring abuse as I was, to seek psychiatric help for your loved one and support for yourself. May you be blessed for all you have done and still do. We give up our lives to serve others mostly with very little appreciation.
Replies to "My heart goes out to anyone caregiving for a Viet Nam vet. My husband is one..."
Thank you for sharing! I really thought I was the only one dealing with this. I am in the process of getting counseling and support group. I was hoping family therapy but I know him so well. He’s stubborn, thinks it’s all me with the problems and always bad mouthed mental health support or any kind of counseling.
@jojok My father is also Vietnam vet with Parkinson’s from agent orange. I also navigated the VA for 2 years and he was award 100% disability. It was a hard road to navigate but it was worth it. I don’t know how we would manage without those benifits. His medical is covered and prescriptions. He also gets a nice allotment that we use toward help caregiver. My mom has been on hospice and she needs 24 hour care. The last two weeks she can’t stand or walk. Dad has Parkinson’s Lewie body which has a lot of the mental challenges like hallucinations and delusions. He still has no balance, freezing legs and tremors of Parkinson. His speech is very slurred and quiet. He has diabetes and CHF as well. I am the main caregiver. We pay our hired caregiver for 35 hours a week. At $700 a week. That’s why the VA PACT money is appreciated so much. My father gets in his military moods a lot. He was a captain and was used to giving orders. He has night mares still every night. Now with the hallucinations and delusions you can imagine they are always about people in the days of Vietnam. The ones he lost or his superiors. One time in the middle of the night he was upset because the Germans were not negotiating like they said they would. He took me to a spot in the room & said here he is. You tell to negotiate like he is supposed to. I told dad I can’t make him negotiate it I can tell him to leave and not come back until he is ready. So I asked the imagined German to leave our house. Dads said thank you. He back to bed. He also is very paranoid about people taking his stufff, his money etc…even me sometimes.
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Wise words from someone who has endured so much!