He sports a ponytail, speaks eloquently and deals with lawyers, accountants and C-suites. For fun, he used to get on a red-eye flight to Tokyo on a Thursday night and be back by midnight Sunday ready for work come Monday morning. "I miss my life, hanging with the boys and attending black tie events," Heron Khalid Goh reminisces about his life before becoming a caregiver to his 90-year-old dad (Alzheimer's) and 87-year-old mum (vascular dementia). Not many can give this all up - including coming back to Singapore after living overseas for 26 years.
"I am what I am because of my parents. They put me through school and made sacrifices for me," the 56-year-old with a law degree and MBA explains. His dad was an accountant and his mum a dental nurse; both have savings to see them through old age.
Discovering that his parents had dementia was hard. From being independent seniors who enjoyed travelling, driving and going places, Heron’s parents have become reclusive in the last few years. Prior to their diagnosis, Heron started noticing his parents “forgetting” their way home, falling, or asking strangers at the bus stop for directions to the hospital – a familiar route. Alzheimer’s disease also transformed his dad into a different person - aggressive, abusive, with erratic moods, and always berating him. But the jovial mid-lifer did not dwell on the situation: “Naturally I was in shock, I had a meltdown, but I got up and found help – you just have to do it.”
Heron found Caregivers Alliance Limited (CAL) through Changi General Hospital and recently graduated from the 8-week Caregivers-to-Caregivers (C2C) Training Programme for Dementia. At the graduation ceremony, he reminded his peers to “not take things for granted”. Every morning, Heron is up by 6am to wash, cook and clean. Breakfast run will be ready when his parents wake up at 9am. “They are waking up later and later. One day, they may just not wake up.” When not doing household chores or his consultancy work, Heron spends his day meaningfully with his parents. Sometimes it’s to nudge his Dad to read the newspapers, other times it’s to look at old family albums and letters together. When CAL visited him at home, he was providing pedicure services to his mum.
For this consultant-turned-caregiver, caregiving has become a tad easier now. He has since learnt to recognise the symptoms of dementia, and separate his parents from their illness, particularly when they are hurtful. Importantly, he prioritises self-care by cycling, enrolling in CAL’s Caregivers-for-Caregivers (C4C) Support Programme, and recently signed up for one of CAL’s engagement activities to visit PSA’s Pasir Panjang terminal. What drives Heron? The occasional lucid moments when his mum tells him: “Boy, I know I’m not well, I’m sorry and thank you.”
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