CONTACT SARA BARTON: sarambarton@practicalcaregiverguides.org
As a college student, Sara Barton focused on “whole child” education and interacted with hospitalized children during her first teaching practicum in the pediatric department of a large city hospital, gaining insight into the value of play therapy and socialization during medical treatment. With minors in art and psychology, she later worked with adult patients in a psychiatric admissions hospital, disturbed adolescents in residential care, and special needs children with a variety of learning disabilities, behavioral issues, and disorders, including autism.
These experiences were invaluable when caring for her mother over more than a decade. Some of the many challenges her mother faced include rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, COPD, heart attacks, lung cancer, diabetes, and multiple surgeries.
She also was the full-time family caregiver for her elderly father for five years, who endured an epic battle with the Shingles virus in his sciatic nerve. He developed a foot drop, spent a year in a leg brace, but eventually regained his ability to walk, thanks to a lengthy regimen of physical therapy. He later was felled multiple times with spinal stenosis, gout, pseudogout, and nerve damage from the Shingles virus. Chronic pain is a difficult challenge for any patient. Pain management is critical in preventing further health issues, especially when one is also dealing with a heart condition. He recently passed away at the age of 93, just before the COVID-19 epidemic struck.
On the last walk they took together by the river, Sara captured this image.
Through the years, she has been a caregiver supporter for other people providing family care. She is also a cancer caregiver advocate and patient advocate.
“As someone with amazing friends in advanced stages of cancer treatment, I’ve learned that it is imperative that cancer patients and cancer survivors have the right kind of support to help them through the difficult challenges and complications they face over time. Fighting cancer is as much a psychological head game as it is an assault on the human body. Feeling optimistic about the future with cancer is critical for quality of life. We need to make sure that cancer patients have their palliative care needs met by experts, that they feel they still have something good awaiting them at the other side of the storm, and that they feel they are given every opportunity to live life out loud. This is especially true of the new cancer pioneers, who are well into Stage 4 cancers, willing and able to participate in cancer research that will yield new successful treatments.”
In addition to being a talented artist, she is also the author of several cozy mysteries, “cozy hybrid” thrillers, and dark and dangerous spy thrillers based on historical events. You can find out more by visiting her author site: https://smbarton.com
Copyright Sara M. Barton 2017-2020