I was with patients last Tuesday when my husband walked into the office in tears.
“Oh my goodness, what’s wrong?”
“Dolly Parton died.”
I was a little surprised. Steve isn’t a country music fan, but he’s always been a fan of Dolly’s humanity — as we all have. What struck him even more, I think, was this: Dolly and her husband Carl had been married nearly 60 years, and she followed him in death less than 18 months later.
The Widower Effect
This is called the widower effect — when long-married couples die within 12 to 18 months of each other. I explained this phenomenon to Steve years ago, and told him it would probably happen to us too, since we’ve been together since we were 16 and 17 years old.
But there’s a deeper story here, and it affects far more than long-married couples.
The Cost of Caregiving
Dolly cared for Carl for years at the end of his life. Like 63 million Americans, she was a caregiver. And studies have shown that caregivers often become seriously ill during — and especially after — the death of the person they spent years caring for.
Why would that be?
Dolly said it precisely, right after Carl died: “I am worn out.” She’d put her own health aside to take care of him, and never got caught back up.
So what’s actually happening in the body that makes giving so much of yourself to someone you love this detrimental — sometimes even fatal — to your own health?
The chronic stress of caregiving, whether at home or in a facility, keeps your HPA axis activated. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis runs your stress response, and it was never designed to run constantly. When you’re a caregiver, you’re on call 24/7. You rarely get relief. You’re often doing things you were never trained for, which is mentally exhausting. You miss sleep. You forget to eat. You cancel your own health appointments so you can keep every one of your loved ones’ needs met — and you put yourself last.
My Own Caregiving Season
I became acutely aware of this almost 20 years ago, when I found myself caring for both my mother-in-law and my husband’s grandmother at the same time.
Steve’s mom had been living with and caring for her mother (Gran) when Gran fell seriously ill and needed hospitalization. We took Gran in afterward, and I provided her elder care. She was nearly 90, still fairly functional, but needed help bathing, safely getting to and from the bathroom, eating, and staying mentally stimulated. I was doing all of this while seeing patients full-time, running another business, and while my adult children — still needing my help — were in college.
Then my mother-in-law got out of the hospital, and we took her in too. She needed intensive care: wound care, bathing, ambulation, dressing, help with toileting — on top of everything Gran already needed. Steve was working full-time, so it fell almost entirely on me. As a nurse, it was sort of expected by my family that I’d be the one to step in if anyone got sick.
Honestly, at least 10 years before this, I’d already advised my elderly family members to plan ahead for home healthcare in their later years, because I did not intend to spend my own retirement caregiving — and there were a lot of elderly relatives on both my side and Steve’s. My mother-in-law hadn’t planned well, since she’d been Gran’s caretaker herself. So when the time came, I was the one who stepped in for both of them.
My husband is one of three brothers, and none of them were comfortable with — or able to provide — the level of care these two elderly women needed. And there was no way they were comfortable with the boys helping them bathe or use the bathroom. This happens to a lot of daughters-in-law in families with sons. I know I’m not the only one.
Under the Oak Tree
I’ll never forget the day both women were doing better physically, but my mother-in-law was a little cranky, and I was worn thin. I needed a break. Steve wasn’t home — thankfully it was my day off — and I found myself sitting under my oak tree, crying, asking for some kind of divine guidance on how I was going to handle what felt like a never-ending situation.
Then I remembered the advice I’d given my patients for years: if you don’t take care of yourself, how can you possibly expect to take care of others?
I hadn’t been sleeping well. I’d been missing meals. I hadn’t been able to exercise, which had always been a huge support for my mental health. So I walked myself back inside, sat down with my mother-in-law and Gran, and explained that I needed to start taking breaks from their care — breaks I’d arrange with people who had genuinely offered to help but that I hadn’t taken them up on, because I hadn’t figured out what I actually needed.
Here’s the thing about full-time caregiving: figuring out how someone can help you is one more job on top of everything else.
So I asked for respite. I asked friends and neighbors to sit with my loved ones while I took a walk or rode my horse. That was enough, for a while. And the following year, when the same kind of pressure built up again, I made sure I had help lined up ahead of time.
If You’re a Caregiver — or You Know One
If you’re caring for a loved one, please don’t hesitate to ask for help. And when help is offered, take it, in whatever form it comes. When you have a little bit of time and aren’t at your most frustrated, write down the kinds of things that would actually help you: someone cooking a meal, giving you respite, running errands, or just sitting with your loved one while you do something for yourself.
And if you know someone who’s caregiving, don’t wait for them to ask. They probably won’t. Bring a meal in disposable containers so they don’t have another dish to wash. Offer to sit with their loved one while they run errands or make it to their own doctor’s appointments. Check in with your caregiving friends. Show up, and be willing to sit with their loved one so they can take a break.
Why This Matters for Your Health
Most caregivers are untrained, unpaid, and under chronic stress — and that stress can lead to real illness and early death. A constantly activated HPA axis drives inflammation, damages the cardiovascular system, and suppresses normal immune function.
Thankfully, I had Genesis Gold®, which I took daily and increased during that especially stressful season. It helped support my hypothalamus and immune system, kept inflammation down, and allowed me to stay healthy through it. It can help you too, or someone you love who’s caregiving right now.
If you know a caregiver, please consider gifting them the support they’re not giving themselves.
More than 63 million Americans — 1 in 4 adults — are family caregivers providing ongoing, complex care for older adults, people with serious illnesses, or disabilities, a number that has grown nearly 50% over the past decade.
Sources:
1. Caregiving.org — America’s Caregivers Report, 2026
2. Caregiving as a risk factor for mortality — PubMed, National Institutes of Health
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