Already Toast
Caregiving and Burnout in America
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Narrated by:
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Siiri Scott
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By:
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Kate Washington
About this listen
The story of one woman's struggle to care for her seriously ill husband - and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.
Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad's diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.
Brad's cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors' appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: "You're already toast!"
Through it all she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly.
As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast - with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers - is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill.
©2021 Kate Washington (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“This is a timely and crucial appeal.” (Booklist, starred review)
“A biting critique of how America is failing its unpaid caregivers.... The result is a bracing antidote to ‘sentimentalized narratives’ that cast unpaid caregiving as its own reward when, the author makes clear, better Family and Medical Leave Act benefits would be far more useful.... A startling, hard-hitting story of a family medical disaster made worse by cultural insensitivities to caregivers.” (Kirkus Review)
“[A] wrenching debut.... Washington’s tale serves as both an evocative memoir and a strident call to action.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Say Yes to What’s Next
- How to Age with Elegance and Class While Never Losing Your Beauty and Sass!
- By: Lori Allen
- Narrated by: Lori Allen
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Women today are facing so much uncertainty - about life and the future. The need to pivot is stronger than ever, but many of us feel powerless to change or simply don’t know how to take that essential first step. For Lori Allen, business owner, breast cancer survivor, and star of TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, these vital life lessons are the inspiration for her new book. Say Yes to What’s Next is more than just a guide for our best tomorrows, it’s the beginning of a life-makeover movement for women of all ages.
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Every woman approaching her 50s and beyond should have this book in her arsenal!
- By Julie C. on 08-04-20
By: Lori Allen
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Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness
- How to Stay Sane and Live One Step Ahead of Your Symptoms
- By: Ilana Jacqueline
- Narrated by: Lori Prince
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you live with a chronic, debilitating, yet invisible condition? You may feel isolated, out of step, judged, lonely, or misunderstood - and that's on top of dealing with your actual illness. Take heart. You are not alone, although sometimes it can feel that way. Written by a blogger who suffers from an invisible chronic illness, Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness offers peer-to-peer support to help you stay sane, be your own advocate, and get back to living your life. This compelling guide is written for anyone suffering with an illness no one can see.
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Great Reference Guide!
- By Heather D on 03-21-18
By: Ilana Jacqueline
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
- The Path to a Better Way of Death
- By: Katy Butler
- Narrated by: Katy Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker.
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A better way to narrate a book about death?
- By MAUREEN on 10-21-13
By: Katy Butler
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Early
- An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human
- By: Sarah DiGregorio
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The heart of many hospitals is the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is a place where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways as parents, doctors, and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions: When does life begin? When and how should life end? And what does it mean to be human? Nearly 20 years ago, Dr. John D. Lantos wrote The Lazarus Case, a seminal work on ethical dilemmas in neonatology. He described the NICU as “a strong, strange, powerful place”. The
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Gripping read for this late preterm infant mom
- By R. Ash on 08-08-21
By: Sarah DiGregorio
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The Good Death
- An Exploration of Dying in America
- By: Ann Neumann
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying.
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Ugh, so boring
- By Maranto on 05-13-19
By: Ann Neumann
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Your Turn
- How to Be an Adult
- By: Julie Lythcott-Haims
- Narrated by: Julie Lythcott-Haims
- Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it mean to be an adult? In the 20th century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they’re all valid, but any one person’s choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.
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Not the book that was advertised
- By M. Rogers on 04-13-21
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The Four Things That Matter Most 10th Anniversary Edition
- A Book About Living
- By: Ira Byock MD
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Four simple phrases - "Please forgive me", "I forgive you", "Thank you", and "I love you" - carry enormous power to mend and nurture our relationships and inner lives. These four phrases and the sentiments they convey provide a path to emotional well-being, guiding us through interpersonal difficulties to life with integrity and grace. Dr. Ira Byock, an international leader in palliative care, explains how we can practice these life-affirming words in our day-to-day lives.
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A must read
- By Light Seeker on 03-14-21
By: Ira Byock MD
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In Pain
- A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids
- By: Travis Rieder
- Narrated by: Travis Rieder
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A bioethicist’s eloquent and riveting memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal - a harrowing personal reckoning and clarion call for change not only for government but medicine itself, revealing the lack of crucial resources and structures to handle this insidious nationwide epidemic.
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An essential read in a time of crisis
- By Kelly Heuer on 06-25-19
By: Travis Rieder
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Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)
- A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying
- By: Sallie Tisdale
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.
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I thought I had more time...
- By Alyssa on 09-09-19
By: Sallie Tisdale
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Like a Mother
- A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
- By: Angela Garbes
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega, Angela Garbes
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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What to listen to after What to Expect.... A badass, feminist, and personal deep-dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and early motherhood that debunks myths and dated assumptions, offering guidance and camaraderie to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives. Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant. What exactly is a placenta? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? What are the signs and effects of postpartum depression?
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Microchimerism - interesting at first, then profoundly healing
- By Emily Virgil on 09-10-18
By: Angela Garbes
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The Desperate Hours
- One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines
- By: Marie Brenner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City. Before long, America’s largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. In The Desperate Hours, award-winning journalist Marie Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, and suppliers who tried to save lives across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and the northern periphery of the city.
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Way too much politics
- By Josh on 07-18-22
By: Marie Brenner
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The Problem of Alzheimer's
- How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It
- By: Jason Karlawish
- Narrated by: Jason Karlawish, Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. Sixteen million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their 70s and 80s, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis.
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A must read
- By kara kuntz on 05-20-21
By: Jason Karlawish
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Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen
- The Emotional Lives of Black Women
- By: Inger Burnett-Zeigler
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Black women are beautiful, intelligent, and capable - but mostly they embrace strong. Esteemed clinical psychologist Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler praises the strength of women while exploring how trauma and adversity have led to deep emotional pain and shaped how they walk through the world.
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Amazing!
- By charlene lindsey on 09-08-21
What listeners say about Already Toast
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J M Gordo
- 12-24-21
Lot of insight
Blunt, sometimes brutally honest portrait of the caregiver struggle in modern America. Refreshing that it wasn't glossed over, romanticized, or demeaning to have honest feelings.
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- John Klinsing
- 05-20-21
A Woeful Awakening
As a 6-year Caregiver to my severely diabetic husband, I was astounded at the similarities of emotions and anxieties shared with the author. Her words were my life and validated the emotions I have been struggling with for years. Now I recognize my trauma as real and am no longer guilty about my reactions. Lots of valuable statistics which enlightened my perspective. I keep hoping healing will happen and we can return to our normal life but now I know we are changed forever.
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- Harriet Redman
- 07-06-24
Honest story told by an on duty family caregiver.
Not only did Kate tell her story in an honest, direct manner, she did her research on the current state of gender inequality in family caregiving and overall dismissal of the caregiving profession.
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- Bruce Marquez
- 12-22-21
Who was it written for?
I learned of “Already Toast” from my wife’s Hematologist who is the same “Dr. T” mentioned in the book. Just to be clear, he had no opinions about the book. Maybe it was my mistake or misunderstanding, but I expected the book to offer utility to burned-out caregivers. In actuality, it’s mostly an account of Kate’s experiences as a multi-year caregiver for her husband “Brad,” peppered with mentions of her credentials, feminist ideology and weirdly white guilt.
I have just shy of two years of firsthand caregiver experience, most of it full time. My wife received blood cancer treatments at the same cancer center, administered by the same doctors and nurses as Brad.
Kate makes sure we know she didn’t take Brad’s surname, but she doesn’t explain why this is important. She doesn’t miss to remind us that she is very well-educated and equally well read. She rebukes society for undervaluing professional caregivers and then tells us she pays hers $15/hr. In a couple chapters Kate comments on caregiving during slavery and contemporary racism facing black and “Latinx” (whatever that is) patients in general. Slavery …ummm what? I can tell you one cancer center that isn’t racist and that’s UC Davis, where Brad as well as uninsured, Medicare, Medicaid and incarcerated patients all receive treatment. I have witnessed shacked prisoners (on two occasions), as well as the most vulnerable receive care.
Finally, the book ends with Kate discussing government assistance that should be provided to caregivers, along with a pitch to vote for democrats. Great, but this doesn’t provide any tools to assist me through my caregiver journey. The book left me with the question: who was it written for?
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4 people found this helpful