Posts tagged with "seniors at home"

Were you a KGO caller during the Ronn Owens show about “9 Realities of Caring for an Elderly Parent”?

Did you get your KGO question answered on the Ronn Owens show about “9 Realities of Caring for an Elderly Parent”?

If you missed this radio show, here is the link for my interview on KGO NewsTalk 810: http://tinyurl.com/mnvwpve

Yesterday was an exciting day for me as the guest author on the Ronn Owens show. He has been the voice of SF Bay Area news for 39 years and his callers are loyal listeners. Their questions were intelligent and all included a sense of urgency wondering what we will all be faced with soon enough, “What to do when Mom or Dad can no longer care for themselves?”

I have received emails since the show that I will share here in case any other readers have the same situation. If you are aware of any other resources, please do reply to this blog so we can post your answer within. Additionally, I want to add a couple thoughts for callers who did make it on air, since radio moves so fast and my answers are limited before the next commercial break.

The first caller asked, “What can we do about the in-law who lives in a remote area with no family around?”

Answer: One of the biggest problems facing seniors is isolation. Their social circle is diminishing. They may be outliving their friends. They may not drive anymore and need to depend on others for rides to activities. As a senior ages, doctors’ visits increase. Even for a relatively healthy senior, there are many rotations for regular blood work, hearing checks, eye appointments (especially if macular degeneration is diagnosed), bone density tests (especially if falls are a pattern). Ailments progressing to specialists will only add to the constant running back and forth to doctors that becomes part of a routine in senior care management.

Does the remote area offer a good hospital, or would you need to drive two hours to get to the medical facility that would be treating the problem? If there are no relatives nearby, is there a good neighbor who is close enough to regularly check-in, or to notice the newspaper hadn’t been picked up in a couple of days. If your answer is no, and I honestly do not recommend putting the job of caring for your elderly relative onto a friend because of all that is involved, can you consider relocating to move in with your in-law? If a secure job would be lost, then have the hard conversation within the family, including the senior, of moving her into your home. Remaining with her own loved ones is less scary than moving into an assisted living facility, and a lot less isolating.

If you are raising children at home, you are part of the sandwich generation that is caring simultaneously for elderly parents while raising kids. That is a double whammy. There will be strain, but in the end, the privilege of caring for your elderly parent and knowing you did everything possible to keep her safe, healthy and happy will certainly help you sleep better at night.

An email I received after the show asked, “What can I do to help my alcoholic mother who refuses to leave her home, but cannot be alone because she keeps falling?”

Answer: This makes everything about caring for a senior doubly hard. An alcoholic in a fit of rage is not dissimilar to the Alzheimer’s patient who is throwing things and cursing at loved ones. Check Al-Anon in your area http://www.al-anonsf.org/ since they offer support to the family and loved ones of the alcoholic. They may even have suggestions as to how someone can spell you on your mom’s most difficult days. The email goes on to say how desperately son and wife need a break but are afraid to leave her. I know there are agencies http://www.seniorsathome.org/ that offer companionship to seniors on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. They will not distribute medications, but can oversee that the senior has taken her pills if the dosage is already set aside in a cup. They will never be allowed to do any injections, so diabetics requiring help with insulin shots will not be a good fit for their services. Sleuth carefully. This is not a resource I have used. Are there any friends, neighbors, or church members who can get on a rotation of visiting so you can take the break you desperately seek and most definitely deserve?

Finally, making sure all of those legal documents are in order will be critical if you are to ever have control over health decisions on her behalf or paying for medical bills because of a broken hip from a fall. Look into these four: 1)Will; 2)Trust; 3)Durable Power of Attorney for Health (the Advance Health Care directive; 4)Durable Power of Attorney for Finances. Without these in place, the court will be making the decisions for your mother, not you.

Your Checklist for Keeping Your Senior Safe at Home

How Do You Determine If This Is Forgetfulness or Something Much Worse? Know The Warning Signs To Keeping Your Senior Safe at Home.

When she flung open the front door to heartily greet me after a long period away from home, I did not need a professional to give me a checklist in order to know what was staring me in the face: my mother was no longer able to care for herself.

The thought registered like a blip on my radar, but I needed proof that these suspicions were correct.

I quickly gleaned from the tour of the house that all was not right within these walls. She was living in filth and clutter, and not just the kind that can be reconciled by making a bed and tidying a sock drawer. The term elder neglect came to mind.

But, I did not want to overreact.

I tried to talk myself into believing that maybe my mother was just unkempt today, an unusual departure from the years I remembered when dressing was a hobby she took seriously.

Other relatives had been coming and going and I never heard them sound the alarm. Aside from her appearance, and the neglect of the house, I witnessed that weekend what professionals will tell you are the first warning signs that your senior is not safe at home.

What I was seeing with fresh eyes was the lifestyle relatives had become blind to. Even friends weren’t privy to what went on behind that front door. I came to find out that my mom insisted on waiting for them on her front porch. People outside of the family just weren’t that close to the situation.

People inside the family just couldn’t see what was staring them in the face all along. In research I’ve read, passive neglect is not unusual; adult children of an elderly parent can be in denial that their parent needs as much care as she does.

To recognize that Mom or Dad can no longer care for themselves would mean you are responsible for providing a solution. If you don’t, there is CPS for seniors, known as APS, Adult Protective Services, an agency who will protect your parents if you can’t.

Here is the Home Alone checklist from the Aging Solutions website which you should monitor regularly, especially as changes begin to occur with your elderly parent. If your answer to any of these questions puts your parent at risk, it may be time to get more support in place.

1)Will your parent turn on the stove and forget to turn it off?

2)Does your parent understand how to leave home if necessary? Where the door is located? How to exit the building?

3)Will your parent stay home or near the house rather than wander off?

4)If your parent goes outside, do they know how to get back inside?

5)Can they identify signals, such as smoke from the kitchen or fire alarms that would alert them to potential dangers?

6)Do they know how to access emergency services? Do they know how and when to dial 911? Would they be able to communicate over the phone? Can they physically get to the phone no matter where they are?

7)Do they have frequent life-threatening medical emergencies that require immediate intervention? Do they know where their medication is located? Do they have the capacity to select the right medicines in the correct amounts?

8)Does your parent have the judgment to identify who they should and should not let into the home? Will they know to allow family, friends and emergency personnel into the home?

9)Can your parent get to the bathroom and use the toilet on their own? If not, have alternatives been worked out?

10)Are they afraid to be alone for an hour or more? Do they become clingy when caregivers depart and make frequent telephone calls if they are alone?

Too many of my answers during this first weekend visit convinced me my parent was a high-risk for living alone. So, we made the decision together that I would move back into my childhood home to care for our mother until the very end.

What I learned from this experience is the subject of my new book, a funny and compassionate account, with guideposts for the daunting role every adult child coming home to care for an elderly parent should know. 9 Realities of Caring for An Elderly Parent: A Love Story of a Different Kind, released in August 2013.

The Companion Playbook, is the workbook streamlined from the Memoir, chock-full of checklists and task sheets for the busy caregiver to begin doing today. June 2016. Both available at amazon and kindle.

Blog question: Which warning sign has you the most worried?

9 Realities of Caring For An Elderly Parent: A Love Story of a Different Kind

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You moved home to care for your elderly parent, now what? Your answer is here.

It became clear to me when I returned home for a visit with my elderly mother that there would be no escaping the question of what to do about Mom. The time had come, the signs were obvious. She could no longer manage to be alone in her big home. The chores, the mail, the bills, the lawn, the cats, the care of what needed to go into her, had all gotten to be too much for her to handle on her own.

After seeing the condition of each bedroom, four of them being used as attics, along with her Master which was a perfect picture in a “before and after” makeover scenario, hers being the “before”, it took me only a weekend of uncoiling messes left behind from ants, cats, and other critters to realize that I would be the one who would become caregiver for our mother.

We all knew her greatest wish was to remain in her own home for the duration. Looking into her worried pale blue eyes, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t give to keep her feeling safe in her home and well cared for the rest of her years ahead, so I gave up everything to move back into my childhood home.

My mind began racing with questions: How to purge a home filled with decades of clutter, while preserving childhood memories? How to make her money last and where are all her assets? What is this filing system of hers that keeps mail tucked under beds and stuffed into shoeboxes on shelves? What legal documents are still not in place? Is she being forgetful, or are we dealing with the warning signs of something worse? What are her wishes to be carried out beyond her death? What would make her happiest today?

And much later, I would be asking other questions. How can I make her comfortable? How much time do we have? How can I possibly say goodbye?

I wish someone had prepared me for what I experienced in this undertaking. I would have still said yes to the job, but I would have had a better idea of what the job entailed. Nobody says yes to Firefighting, or Nursing, or the FBI, or the Army without asking a few questions up front about what a typical day at work is like. Yes, it was stressful. Yes, it was also joyful. Yes, it was scary, and hard, absolutely the hardest bullet point I can now list under work experience. Yes, it was my privilege. Yes, I did it because I knew no one else could or would, and because I believed my father would have wanted to know his beloved wife of fifty-four years was not going to have to go it alone.

The realities of what I learned are chronicled in my second book, a non-fiction narrative called 9 Realities of Caring for an Elderly Parent: A Love Story of a Different Kind. Slated for release in August 2013, this is a funny, compassionate, and daunting account of what you can expect if you are the adult child coming home to care for your elderly parent until the very end.

Designed to be an indispensable guide, it will help you through nine chapters dealing with early topics like keeping your parent safe in their own home, to middle chapters centering on waiting for death and the important role that bowel movements and bedsores will play in the end. The final third of the book deals with the aftermath, including funeral arrangements that are pre-designed, and managing as executor of the estate. Grief counseling for the adult orphan is the last chapter.

I am so sorry you have to go through it. But, my intention in writing this is that it will be a support to you if you have no other.

Blog question: What do you wish you had known before assuming the role as caregiver to your elderly parent?