Daryl Sirota, a devoted caregiver to four family members with different forms of angioedema, reflects on changes he’s made to better support his loved ones.
Transcript
I’m very much a take-charge kind of a person. I like to be in control of things. And so the assumption that I made that we can handle this without a whole lot of introspection and a whole lot of asking questions was completely wrong.
So I approach it differently by asking questions and observing behaviors. And because I can’t see, you know, a bleeding finger, it has to be listening very carefully, looking for emotional impact, emotional responses.
We had a flare-up a couple of weeks ago. That was a bad day kind of an attack. It wasn’t overt swelling. We didn’t have to go to the hospital, but it was all of a sudden the emotions were upside down. And I had to understand that this wasn’t against me. It wasn’t anything that I did. It was simply a result of a flare or swell that I couldn’t see.
And so I have to ask a whole lot of questions and extend a lot of grace.