Kimberly Schlapman spends her nights on stage rocking alongside her bandmates in country band Little Big Town. Her fans also know her as an avid home chef, frequently posting videos of her latest kitchen creations — she even has her own cookbook! But when she’s not on stage or whipping up something delicious, she’s caregiving for her mother, Barbara Bramlett, who is living with Parkinson’s disease.
“My mother was diagnosed 21 years ago with Parkinson's, and at that time, our family really had no idea what all was involved with the disease,” Schlapman said.
At that point, her mother was living a really normal life with just a tiny tremor and a couple of other symptoms that the family has since realized were connected to the disease. Her mother’s hand tremor developed around the time that Schlapman’s first husband died unexpectedly of a heart attack, so the family was quick to brush it off as stress from the grief. But, then her mother began to notice that her left arm stopped swinging while she was on her regular three-and-a-half-mile walks with her best friend.
Looking back at her childhood, Schlapman recalled her mother having night terrors. “And now we know that that is the REM sleep disorder that comes along with Parkinson's.”
Schlapman was in the studio with the band when she received a phone call from her mother who told her that she thought she had Parkinson’s. “I was like, what? Parkinson's?"
“And she said, ‘Yeah, I've been studying it a lot.’”
Bramlett went to a neurologist and her suspicions were confirmed.
“Her diagnosis at first, while it was surprising to all of us, really didn't affect her life that much,” Schlapman said. “But as it has progressed in the last seven to eight years, it's really reached another level, and her life is much, much different.”
Worsening over time
Schlapman said her mother was just like her prior to her diagnosis, “Just go, go, go all the time, working a lot, and taking care of everybody around her … Now the disease has really, really changed her life. It kind of takes over everything at this point, as this disease does as it progresses,” Schlampan said.
Bramlett pushes hard in physical therapy and is always working diligently to manage her symptoms. In addition to physical therapy, she tries to adhere to a healthy diet and keep up with exercise.
“She’s on Parkinson's medications, which help manage the symptoms,” said Schlapman. “Her case, though, is very progressed. She's very much down the road with Parkinson's. So there's a lot of things that dictate her day, which she has no control over. But her spirit is just amazing.”
The importance of early diagnosis and communication
Witnessing Parkinson’s firsthand has taught Schlapman the importance of catching symptoms early. “I think early detection is so important because there are things that you can do physically to kind of put off the effects or the progression of the disease,” she said. To spread awareness, Schlapman has partnered with AbbVie’s “Changing the Tune of Parkinson's Disease’ campaign to help empower both patients and caregivers to advocate for themselves and explore treatment options that meet their specific needs.
Since Parkinson’s has many different symptoms, it is important to bring any new health changes to your healthcare provider (HCP). “And that's why this campaign encourages people to just talk to their doctors … there is no symptom that you shouldn't mention,” she said.
Schlampan has seen how modern treatments, like her mother’s medication that helps with tremors, can make a meaningful difference. But the first step in managing symptoms is to clue your HCP in. “It’s never too early and it's never too late to talk to your doctor about new symptoms and whether they are connected to Parkinson’s … Because Parkinson's is so individualized, doctors are able to formulate a plan that's just as perfect as possible for that particular person living with the disease.”
Finding balance as a caregiver
In addition to being a daughter, Schlapman is a musician, a chef, a wife and a mother of two. Juggling everything and caring for her mother, she admitted, is definitely a lot. But she’s grateful to be able to be so involved with her mom’s care.
“Like women everywhere, mamas everywhere, we have a lot going on. We spin a lot of plates in the air, and it's just what we do. God made us multitaskers and so we try to take the best care of ourselves as we can while taking care of everybody else,” she said.
Schlampan thinks it’s important for caregivers to find ways to care for themselves. Personally, she keeps up with her passion of cooking, often creating meals for her mother and having her assist in the kitchen.
Schlapman’s brother and sister are also very hands-on, and the siblings work together to make sure they stay on top of their mom’s symptoms and treatment protocols. “I think it's so important for caregivers to have someone that they can share everything with, that they can download on,” Schlapman said. She stressed that there is definitely a level of grief involved in caregiving because the person you're taking care of is not the person you've known forever; they’ve changed.
“And so I realized that I grieve who I've always known my mother to be, but yet I celebrate that she's still here and such a little fighter,” she said. A big thing that has helped Schlapman is being in constant communication with her siblings.
“If mama has a bad day and we're with her, we call each other and say:
‘This is what happened today.’
‘This was really hard.’
‘This was really sad.’
‘This was really frustrating.’
Schlapman wants caregivers to remind themselves that they’re human and it’s OK to feel frustration: “If a caregiver out there feels frustrated, they shouldn't feel alone because it happens to everybody,” she said.
Schlapman recognizes the struggles of the sandwich generation as they care for aging parents while raising children. No one ever talked to her about these challenges, and she thinks it’s a topic people should talk about more so they can prepare each other for what might come. “Even though my mother cared for her mother with breast cancer, she really didn't talk about it much,” she said. “And so I think it's really important that we all talk to each other — and don't forget to take care of yourself because you can't take care of anybody else if you're not in good shape.”
Watching her mother battle Parkinson’s has inspired Schlapman to make changes with her own health. “I'm watching my mother and what she's going through. And I want to prepare my body as best as possible in case I have to walk that same road or another kind of difficult road.”
Schlapman has been focusing on strength training to help protect herself against falling down, something she’s seen both her parents struggle with. “And I've realized how important being strong is as you age,” she said.
In the meantime, she continues to advocate for her mother. “I was just with my mother at her neurology appointment this week. And we mentioned a few things that were new. And so the doctor indeed made a small change,” she shared. “That's the thing with my mom's doctors. They make really small changes and we see if they are effective and then we can make a bigger change once we see the effect of the small change. And it's all about trying to make her quality of life a little bit better.”
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