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.