I want to share with you my unexpected story of suddenly being a Caregiver. 

As you will see from past photos and videos, I’m happily married to my wife Kanlaya. She is from Thailand originally and I am from a small town in CT and thankfully a online dating site connected us. We instantly fell in love and got married in Central Park after just a couple months. We eventually moved out to a small fixer-upper home in Westchester County and eventually had our son Ty back in 2017. 

We were a happy family and everything seemed to be perfect. Kanlaya was finally able to stop working and become the most amazing mom to our son. Things at my job were going great as I just about to be promoted to an Art Director. Our son was thriving in pre-K. We even were just about to try and have another our second child.

But on May 15th, 2020 our world came crashing down on us. In the height of COVID, Kanlaya had a massive stroke in front of my son and I. This is the day that our lives Derailed. The day that opened my eyes to another side of life, Caregiving for a loved one. 

Kanlaya had a massive stroke on the right side of her brain. She was rushed to the hospital and had to do a procedure where they go up an artery in her leg to unblock the clot. They were successful. Doctors were puzzled why this young healthy mom, had this stroke, was it COVID? This does not make sense. Unfortunately two days later she had another massive stroke in the same area, there was nothing they could do, it was too risky to operate, her skull had to be removed to relieve the swelling in her brain from the clot, otherwise her spine would collapse and she would die. She was paralyzed on her entire left side due to the stroke.

They found a 10 cm mass in her abdomen, we were sent down to Lenox hill where they removed this mass which ended up being cancer, clear cell carcinoma. A cancer that is known to clot your blood. And high among the Asian culture for some reason.

While all of this was going on, I had a three year old at home, my parents who are in there 70’s helped when they could, my job gave me leave and were supportive at the time. A lot of people ask how I did it during that time, and I like to give them the analogy, the mother who lifts the car up to save her son. I became something that was focused on a goal of getting my family back the best I can.

After 3 months in the hospital, in and out of surgery’s and rehab, she was finally able to come home. She had to wear a helmet most of the time to protect her head as she did not have a skull. She was in a wheelchair, needed help with everything, shower, cut up food, cleaning  wounds, exercising, so much more, things that I never thought I would have to do to someone, let alone my wife, again all during covid.  

It was incredibly hard to balance suddenly being a caregiver, working a crazy job and being a parent. I needed an outlet and a way to express myself and that outlet was social media. 

The Power of Social Media

When this all started in 2020, during COVID, I could not have felt more alone, There was no one around and I felt so alone taking this all on, Kanlaya was the person I leaned on and to not have her there was a nightmare. I heard of TikTok and I already was a user of Instagram. 

I then decided to share my caregiving story on both platforms and most importantly document the progress that we make as a family and Kanlayas rehab progress. 

I filmed our journey and explained our story, from chemo dancing sessions to silly dances to try and cheer her up to her successful rehab sessions.

But my content is not always happy. There were times where I needed to share my struggles. I even had some very emotional videos where you can see me screaming in my car.

The more real i became the more of a following I seemed to get.

Juggling Full Time Job with Caregiving:

I did everything I could to hang on to everything I worked so hard far, attended meetings while in chemo with Kanlaya, worked late hours to catch up on work, whatever it took. But it got to a point where I just got too burnt out, I was not able to keep up as they expected me to return back the way it was. The reality is it was never going back to the way it was for me. I had to take care of my family first and for most. I think its fair to say my company did not know how to go about my position at the time and I found out that it was just not doable for me as much as I wanted it to work.

So unfortunately I am no longer working and I rely on donations and payments from social media posts to get me by. I’m passionate about Caregiving and my hope is that one day I can continue to help other caregivers like myself. 

UPDATE: I am now want to use my experience that I have garnered to help others out, I want to do this by partnering with people/companies with a similar passion. I would love to share my expierence with you or your team so that together we can help eachother and caregivers out there.