Little nurses: what happens when children take care of sick and disabled relatives?

About 5 million US minors tend ill relatives due to gaps in our health infrastructure

When my mother experienced a botched spinal surgery 25 years ago, she was discharged from the hospital to her 11-year-old child waiting at home. Me.

After weeks in a rehabilitation facility, she was sent home in a neck brace and with a prescription for pain medication. She could no longer drive, and her long recovery prohibited her return to work as a registered nurse. When she was discharged, no one asked who would be living with her at home. She could not raise her arms above her head, yet no one asked who would feed, bathe or dress her. There was no one else in our family home but me. Ferrell, my 19-year-old brother, was away at college, and my parents divorced in my early childhood; my father lived thousands of miles away in Germany.