Stefania Shaffer, Profile

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Do you know the realities in caring for an elderly parent?

WOCM host Bulldog asks, “What are the 9 Realities in a nutshell?”

You’ve answered the call to come home and care for your elderly parent until the very end. These 9 Realities will answer your next question, “Now what?” In case you want to hear it LIVE, here is the link to my interview on the Bulldog Show.

Reality 1- The House is a Wreck, Inside and Out. Being there is most important for the adult child to assess the safety of the home, and the wellness of your parent.

Reality 2- Fiercely Independent but Can’t Cook, Drive, or Bathe. There is a lot a senior can do to put up pretenses that everything is fine. There are criteria for making sure your elder is not suffering from neglect.

Reality 3- Getting Your Physical Home and Your Financial House in Order. Purging vs. preserving memories, and how to set up a filing system for finances that are in desperate need of organizing. These are motivating pages that have readers squaring away their own homes today.

Reality 4- Managing Health–Both Medical and Financial– is a Second Full-Time Job. Knowing what medication your parent takes, along with dosages, is critical for every doctor appointment. How to create a prescription chart for doctors and ease of renewals is covered in this chapter.

Reality 5- When Your Home and Your Parent Begin Falling Apart, Get Prepared. Warning signs that your parent is at the beginning of the end can no longer be ignored. And such is life, when everything is going downhill, the decades old home is also in decline. Know where your assets are held. Expenses are coming.

Reality 6- A Birth Allows us Nine Months to Prepare; Death Has No Timeline; Act with Urgency in All You Do. A death march will take its toll on the caregiver. While you nervously watch your parent wrestle against an illness, this begins your gut-wrenching experience, as if everything leading up wasn’t hard enough.

Reality 7- The Critical Role Bowel Movements and Bed Sores Will Play in the End. Going home….it’s all she longed for. Straddling two worlds as patients get ready to cross over leaves them busily preparing before they feel ready to be un-entwined from this life. The secret of what she saw on the other side was never revealed. But I now know what death looks like in the final weeks, days, and hours.

Reality 8- A Preplanned Funeral Is a Gift to Your Family; Binders, and Lots of Them, Are an Executor Trustee’s Gift. The funeral playbook and how to establish a binder system for Communications, Estate Assets, and Legal Documents will make this your indispensable guide.

Reality 9- Do Everything You Can To Self-Sooth, but Include Grief Counseling; You Need It More Than You Think. Compartmentalizing grief seems the easier route. When the crying jag ends, we think we’re over the loss. This is not true for the frontline caregiver for whom it will take years to process the experience.

Who will be taking care of Mom or Dad?

 

Still Got Your Head Stuck In The Sand When It Comes To Senior Care?

Have you been avoiding the nagging thought of what will happen when your mom or dad can no longer care for themselves? This is a question plaguing more than 45 million of us this year, according to AARP in an article from November 2012.

As more people live into their nineties, most of us will face caregiving responsibilities, or need caregiving ourselves. This can include meal preparation for older or impaired adult relatives or friends. Maybe you are the thoughtful neighbor taking lasagna to the woman who lives alone at the end of your block. Do you know how she is eating the rest of the week? Maybe you are the friend who takes her to the grocery store once a week because she can no longer drive. Do you know how she is preparing meals?

Maybe you are the adult child who lives nearby, popping in twice a week. When you leave, do you know if she has a tendency to nap while the kettle has been left abandoned on the stove to melt all over the burners again? Who will be taking care of your elderly mom or dad? Sadly, this is not a job for the faint of heart. Or the neighbors. Or even the best friends.

There is a lot that goes on behind closed doors that neighbors and well-meaning friends cannot see. Most adult children cannot even recognize when their parent’s needs require a different kind of care. We are so accustomed to our parents fixing everything for us there is a sense of denial taking over. We don’t want to “see” the condition that our parent is living in if the cats they love so dearly have become more  than they can manage, as evidenced by the little piles of defecation hidden in corners of the living room. If we become aware, then we need to be part of a solution, and this is scary because our lives are about to change dramatically.

These nine realities come from my new Memoir, 9 Realities of Caring For An Elderly Parent: A Love Story Of A Different Kind,  released August 2013 and taken from my personal experience in caring for my mother during the last five years of her life. They are the bits of advice no one prepared me for in this undertaking that I learned the hard way. I share them here with you in a funny and compassionate account of what you can expect from your daunting role if you are the adult child coming home to care for your elderly parent until the very end.

Blog question: What was your first clue your mom or dad needed care?