Carol Stanley
Carol Stanley was the Family Caregiver for the last five years of her father’s life. She discovered that she had to learn to navigate herself and her father through home and community care, doctors’ appointments, transportation, medications, and specialist appointments. It all took time, consumed energy, and cost her money. In the beginning she tried hard to stay positive by writing. She wrote ‘Am I Just Spam?’ a humorous appeal for a day of action for family caregivers. Nothing happened until she’d gained enough confidence to put on the first ever, and only, Family Caregiver Day in Powell River, British Columbia, Canada. Her father was a WWII RAF Bomber Command Engineer who saw many of his young friends lost or grievously injured in the bomber raids. After a long and courageous battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, dementia, and bladder cancer he decided at age 95 it was time to go. He stopped eating. He died peacefully on December 12, 2014.
