Identity Crisis

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and I feel like I am losing my identity, or at least changing it.

Since 1981 I have been the Sports Information Director (SID as we are commonly referred to) at Rider University, an institution with a Division I Athletics Department in New Jersey.

Not as large as a Penn State or Nebraska (although we do compete with them and other institutions of their size in some of our sports), we have 20 varsity teams, 10 for men and 10 for women, so we have a sizeable staff.  In the athletics department only the wrestling coach has been here longer than I have. And he’s been here long enough to rank first in Division I in career wins among active coaches.

All of my friends know me as the Rider SID, probably because almost half of my wardrobe has a Rider logo on it.

When you work at a small university as long as I have you get to know a lot of people. Even if you never formally meet them you see them on campus enough to where you say hi to them and make small talk. And if any of them go to any of our athletic contests they see me there.

When we have alumni events I always try to attend so when the former athletes come back they see a face they remember. Some of them have even used that expression to me, that I am the face of Rider, at least to them.

The last year or so, when I would go home every day at lunch time to take care of my wife, I started doing some math and figured that I have made that drive from home to work over 10,000 times.

Well, I am afraid that is all coming to an end.

This week I gave my two weeks’ notice.

Being the caregiver for my wife Terry, who is now in the middle stages of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, has become my new full-time job. I can no longer do it on a part-time basis. I can no longer do my job at Rider on a part-time basis.  One of them had to give, and it sure wasn’t going to be my wife.

Leading up to my resignation/retirement I was scared. Scared that I could not afford it. And for good reason. I can’t.  But what I really can’t afford is not being with Terry. These days she needs help with just about everything. Someone has to be with her.

Our son gave up a great career and job in DC to come home and live with us, to help in the caregiving. And I could not have made it through September without him.   But he is working again, and even though he is still living with us and helping us a great deal with everything, there are times when he and I are both at work, and Terry is alone.

And Terry no longer handles being alone very well. I don’t either.

Despite the long hours, despite all of the personal things I have missed over the years because of my job, Rider has been good to me. Very good to me. It allowed me to put my three kids through private schools and college. It allowed me to buy a house almost 30 years ago. It allowed me to put food on my table and beer in my fridge. And it allowed me to write. That is the part of my job that I will miss the most, writing the game stories after the contests and putting them on our web page.

Although sometimes that got me in trouble. There have been a few times when I would get a call at night telling me to take down the story I wrote.

About 10 years ago football player Michael Vik went to jail for his role in a dog-fighting ring along with several cruelty to animals charges.  About that time we played the UMBC Retrievers in men’s basketball and we defeated them by almost 40 points. So my lead to the story was “The last time a Retriever was beaten this bad it was owned by Michael Vik.”

That lasted on the web page for about an hour.

But on the other hand there have been some stories that I was really proud of. We played a basketball game during a raging blizzard one time and we won by making 18 of 20 foul shots. So the lead to my story was;

Oh, the weather outside was frightful,

but the foul shooting was so delightful,

and since Rider led with no time to go,

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

In two weeks I will no longer be writing these stories. I will no longer be keeping track of the team rosters, schedules, statistics. I will no longer be taking the team pictures and head shots of the athletes and posting them on the web. I will no longer be hiring workers to announce the games, work the scoreboard, keep the scorebook and stats. I will no longer be asking the TV stations and newspaper reporters to cover our events.

I will no longer be doing the things I have done for the last 38 years, 35 of them at Rider.

And I am going to miss that very much. I am going to miss my old identity.

But now I have a new identity. I am the caregiver. I am the guy who gave up everything to take care of his wife.

People say I am noble. No I’m not. I’m in love. I’m in love with my wife, and the only thing that matters now is her quality of life.

When I am not with her, her quality of life is not very good. My kids help a lot and she loves seeing them and being with them. But they have their own lives to live. This is now my life.

This is my new identity. I have been an SID for 38 years. I only wish I could be a caregiver for 38 years.

But for however long I can be a caregiver, it will be my full time job. My old job was 60 to 70 hours a week. My new one will be even more hours, it just won’t seem that way.

Leaving my job at Rider is one of the toughest decisions I have ever made, but in time I know it will be the best decision I ever made. It is going to be tough. It is going to be hard. But as Jimmy Dugan once said, “it is supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great!”

Until next time, hope you keep your identity without a crisis

Bud

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and boy am I out of shape.

But that is about to change, soon, I hope.

When the good doctors at the Loyola Clinical Center first informed my wife Terry and me that she does, in fact, have Alzheimer’s Disease, even though she was still in her early 50s, they told me that I was now a caregiver. And in addition to caring for my wife, they said I have to take good care of myself.

Alzheimer’s.org says that caregivers may find themselves with so many responsibilities that they neglect taking good care of themselves.

Apparently, these people know of what they speak.

Back in the late 1970s when my collegiate athletic career was over I became a runner. Okay, I became a jogger. Not quite running but faster than a brisk walk.  I even ran a 6:00 mile once. Once.

Running or jogging became very fashionable in the late 1970s, when Jim Fixx came out with his Complete Book of Running best seller. You remember, that red cover with his muscular, sculpted legs on it in a running position.

Colorful Nike running shoes were not just for the track & field athletes anymore. The average Joe and Joanne were now becoming joggers, filling the streets with short running shorts for those who could get away with it and warm-up suits for those of us who could not.

I never liked running, but after living an active collegiate life I had to find something to keep the weight off. Something to keep me in shape.  Plus, I found out the cold beer tasted that much better after a three mile run.

I guess I never did like running, but I loved having run.

When I was working as a graduate assistant in New England, having moved there from fun-in-the-sun Miami, I didn’t know anyone at first and had a lot of time on my own, so I began running.

When I met my future wife, Terry, she was the star of the college tennis team in the fall and ran on the track team in the spring.  Terry and I began our dating by running five miles together every lunchtime. Talk about your cheap dates.

When I left New England and began my current job, I continued the lunchtime running for years until my legs just couldn’t take it anymore. But I continued to work out midday, doing the old Stairmaster and playing around with the weights. Nothing serious, just something to give me a little tone.

That mid-day practice of working out continued for years, up until about a year or so ago. That is when I stopped working out and started going home every day for lunch.

It wasn’t to go home and eat, however, it was to take care of my wife.  A year or so after being diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, she could not go an entire day by herself. I had to go home and help her manage her day.

During the last year of not working out, I gained a considerable amount of weight.  The worst part is so did Terry. For the first 37 years that I knew Terry she was 5’2”, 102 pounds. The three times she was pregnant she went from 102 to 152 pounds, but always got back to her playing weight. Terry used to teach a 6am aerobics class at the YMCA so she knew how to drop the weight.

But over the last year, she has been unable to do much of anything on her own. I would take her for occasional walks, but she was so much less active now than ever before.

With our son coming home to live with us to help me in the day-to-day caregiving, I no longer need to go home at lunchtime every day. So I began working out again.

Boy am I out of shape!

The first day working out I lasted about five minutes on the stepper machine before I had to stop. I couldn’t breathe. I thought having a heart attack on the first day of working out again might put a damper on my regiment. I walked around the track for another half hour, but lasting just five minutes on the stepper machine really surprised me. I used to do that machine for 20 minutes, hard, and I was always soaking wet afterward. That machine always kicked my butt, but it didn’t hurt my legs like running did, so it was perfect.

It is still perfect, but I am much farther away from perfect. And I no longer worry about hurting my legs. It is my heart that I worry about. Wouldn’t want it to jump out of my chest like John Hurt’s scene in Alien.

Boy am I out of shape!

I think it was Lao Tzu who said “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

In my case, one stepper machine.

It is going to be a long journey, but I am going to get back in shape. But not if it kills me.

That is the whole reason why I am trying to get back in shape. My vain days are long one. Anyone of my kids will tell you that when they see what I wear to the store.

No, I am not trying to get back into shape to look better. To impress the chicks.  No, now that I have reached the BIG 6-0, I have to keep myself in good health, to stay alive, for Terry.

I am her caregiver. She needs me more now than ever before. If I died tomorrow who would take care of Terry? I don’t want to put that burden on my kids.

All three of my kids have really stepped up and helped in the caregiving. Our oldest daughter takes Terry for long walks in scenic places, trying to get Terry some needed exercise.  Our youngest daughter comes home when she can to make us nutritious meals. And our son gave up his career to come back home and live with us, to help take care of Terry.

But I am still the main caregiver. That is my job and I can’t let anything happen to me that would prevent me from fulfilling my duties.

So I am going to get back in shape, to prolong my life, to better take care of Terry.

I just have to pace myself. Like I said, having a heart attack while working out might put a damper on things.

So for now I will take it slow. So I can continue to take care of my wife.

Until next time, slow and steady wins the race, and hopefully will make me stronger rather than kill me.

Bud