My personal experiences with disabled and elderly people prove my communication skills, patience, and understanding proficient enough to take care of these types of people while volunteering in the Poland study abroad program.

Holding a conversation with somebody who can’t talk, write, and has control over only the movement of his eyes is a difficult task. I was faced with this task while volunteering at a day center for adults with learning disabilities in Glasgow, Scotland. There was a young man, Scott, who had cerebral palsy and a

On my return from Scotland I decided to use my newly learned skills in communication and patience, so I became a Caregiver. My first assignment was with an elderly man, named Jim, who was suffering from lung cancer and emphysema. He had no close family to take care of him, and he absolutely wanted to stay out of a retirement home. My hours with Jim that summer were six 24 hour shifts per week. That is only one day off, so the rest of my time was spent living with Jim. In the beginning Jim only needed me to cook him meals, drive him to doctor’s appointments, and make sure he took his medication. As time progressed, along with the tumor in his lung, it was decided he would need to start chemotherapy. Unfortunately, chemotherapy didn’t do much but make Jim really tired and lose weight, so we decided to take Jim off of it. It was obvious at that point that he was going to die soon. I have never dealt with any close friend or relative dying, so death is a foreign experience to me. Jim kept up his usual cheerfulness and optimism as best he could. He did a good job at making me feel comfortable, but his spirits were noticeably dampened. He was staring death in the face, the most vulnerable time in his life. I was with him the whole way, talking him out of suicide, trying to find some positives about dying that weren’t depressing. I don’t like to say I was marching with him toward death, but deaths hand affects everyone. There were instances where I rushed him to the Emergency room and sat next to his bed with him, both of us thinking he could go any minute now. Because of intimately working with somebody so close to death I can now understand elderly people better. While we never know how close to death we are, elderly people are affected by its eminence more.

In the past, it

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