Planning Ahead for ElderCare

I've received more requests than usual recently for assistance with planning ahead for aging parents. This is an indication that more people are seeing what is happening around them with long term care. The general population has no idea what services are available, appropriate, affordable to alleviate stress and improve quality of life as we age.

Take a look around. Talk with your friends and neighbors. Notice how many people are engrossed in the task of caregiving. Tell them there is hope. There are resources. And there are experts in the field that can guide and assist them through their journey.

Make sure you are educating yourself about what your parents need, what they have, and what they do not have. Where are their finances? Who are their doctors? What hospital do they prefer? What legal documents have they updated (healthcare Powers of Attorney, financial POAs, Trusts, Living Wills, etc.).

Don't wait for the crisis. Plan ahead. You will be much more prepared and experience less stress if you take your head out of the sand and look around to prepare.

Phobias

October 7, 2010



People love their phobias. Withn the anxiety and the trepidation, there is something that makes us hold on to them.

For example, just now, thinking about really trying to desensitize myself with regard to my arachnophobia, I actually felt kind of … sad. Like I would miss the drama, the attention that I make to myself of this inordinate fear of spiders. I would actually miss the fear?

Or am I just talking myself out of trying to desensitize myself.

I truly am afraid of spiders. No reason, really. No memory of a traumatic event. Maybe it’s a past-life thing. Actually, yes, come to think of it, there is an early memory of being in bed, waking up sleepily, and with every stuffed animal I owned having a sleepover that night. A spider. Small but large to my young eyes (4 year old, maybe? 6?), crawling relentlessly, and rapidly – startlingly – across my bed, and under my bunny rabbit. I could not save my bunny rabbit. Stuffing 12 other beloved toy animals in my two little arms, screaming bloody murder for my other - is my next memory. And my mother, so calm, so comforting. I will always admire mama for her lack of fear and the chivalry of her nestling it into a tissue to set it free outdoors.

Today, they get in my house, they're dead. Sorry. Outside, i avoid you, spider. Inside, you weren't invited and you scare me!

Spiders are always running, rapidly, startlingly, across one’s vision. Often towards me, it seems. Coming right at me. Relentless. Purposeful. Driven. Because it knows I’m afraid of it and is coming to scare me.

I really don’t think they’ll bite me – unless I provoke them, of course, the spiders “are just afraid of you as you are of them” (yeah, right). It’s just that they startle me, and they seem to do it on purpose. "BAH". “I am in front of your face you stupid human and you didn’t see me coming and I might TOUCH you.”. Their tickling touch – ick!

Okay, I’m changing the subject now. Thanks for listening.

Rantings of an aging baby boomer.


Happy Halloween, everyone.

2009 -- it was a very good year

I must have been very busy this year since I haven't blogged since January! Business is still supporting me; new referrals come in every month. I love counseling seniors and caregivers and I love helping adult children with their aging parents. I have a dog now, having had cats all my adult life and no dog since my first marriage in Wichita! Zelda is 9 months old now, a German Shepherd, Schutzhund quality sable coated brainiac. She's smarter than I am!

oh, and i'm married again. Yes, again. But this time, three's a charm, right? Martin Roidl and I have known each other through Taoist Tai Chi(r) for over 8 years. We were both married to others when we first met. Things happen for a reason, and at the right time, and we married on August 15th in Columbus at the Columbus Tai Chi Center. We honeymooned in the Upper Peninsula and now know what a Yooper is.

I've broadened my interests, focused my energies, and found that what does not kill me actually does make me stronger. Just call me Wonder Woman.

Aging Parents of Adult Children

Yes, I know; the topic is usually the other way around: how aging Baby Boomers are dealing with their aging parents.

But think about it from your parents’ perspective. Just for a minute. Look at your own child to whom you gave birth a mere 10 to to 20 or even 30 years go, and imagine having THEM in charge of YOUR life.

No matter the mental age of a person in winter life stage, their children are still their children.

However, the mental age of a person in winter life DOES have to do with how much they can understand and/or retain of what they need to know to remain independent. They begin leaning on you, calling you, guilt-tripping you into taking them to their physician appointments; regardless of your being in trouble with the boss already in this job-risky economy.

And you DO want to do those things for your parents. Even if they have been less than perfect parents (show me a perfect parent, I’ll show you a Ph.D. study topic). Society expects, and we expect of ourselves, that we will care for our aging parents whether we are good at it or not.

Let’s face it. Some of us are not good at taking care of our own parents. And the long term options, bureaucracy, and lack of continuity make it a more than part-time hobby. Surgeons do not operate on their relatives; counselors cannot counsel their own relatives, so what makes people think they’re obligated to become sudden experts in the face of audacious and meandering system of unrelenting menu choices on a doctor's office's or insurance company's telephone service.

So, we need to flesh out several topics from the above:

*No matter the mental age of a person in winter life stage, their children are still their children.

*The mental age of a person in winter life DOES have to do with how much they can understand and/or retain of what they need to know to remain independent.

*Some of us are not good at taking care of our own parents. And the long term options, bureaucracy, and lack of continuity make it a more than part-time hobby.

*Just who IS going to take care of US? And who do we want helping us take better care of our oldest generation?

Passionate about Helping Families with Seniors

I just read something amazing about how to help more people in my business. According to Dr. Symeon Rodger (Dr. Symeon Rodger [MemberServices@MindsetBootcamp.com]), who sends wonderful tidbits, and teaches marvelous full courses in the Law of Attraction (you know, "The Secret"(r)), instead of focusing on what I WANT, I need to be focusing on what makes me passionate. What I am passionate about is helping people in a unique way. When family members call me, and they tell me, "Why didn't I know about you 6 months ago!" When I am able to help them with problem-solving, with finding the right housing location, with advocating for a long term care facility not to discharge their parent without a viable discharge plan. I get very passionate about that. I love it.

I'm going to start focusing on this passion, and appreciate the fact that I do help people in a way that no one else really can except for other trained Professional Care Managers who see the big picture, and work specifically for the good of the client and not for a facility or insurance conglomerate.

I'm smart. I'm intelligent. And, by golly, people like me!

Seniors: Safety versus Denial

I sat with a brother and sister last week who needed to vent about their widowed, childless aunt. Aunt Edna, we'll call her, was supposed to attend the meeting as well, but she conveniently decided to go shopping with her grand-nephew when he came over earlier to see how she was getting along. "It's nice that your son helps out when he can," I observed. "But that's just it!" lamented the niece, "We offered to take her shopping yesterday, and she refused. She knew we were having this meeting and didn't want to be here, so when he came over she rooked him into taking her. She takes advantage of us and we have to find a better solution than this piecemeal kind of scheduling!"

I was visiting as a home health social worker in this instance, I contract with several agencies in town, making up to two visits to help people find resources and educate them about long term care issues to keep them out of the hospital as long as possible. This scenario is typical. Grown "Sandwiched Boomers" have become caregivers for their parents and other aging relatives. They still work fulltime, have grown kids and grandchildren of their own in many instances. And sometimes the senior just isn't interested in changing anything about the situation. They helped create it. As I told this brother and sister, "She's trained you very well." They rolled their eyes exasperatedly.

One of the primary referrals I wanted to make for this 90+year-old woman still living in her own home, alone, was for an Emergency Response System (ERS). I had offered it on my first visit, and she had refused. This time, when she returned from shopping, she agreed to the referral and I had her niece and nephew as witnesses. An ERS (remember: "help, I've fallen and I can't get up") is one way to increase a senior's safety and successful retention of their independence. Even if they do fall, if they receive help within an hour the chances of returning home are around 80%. If they lie on the floor for hours, there is an 80% chance they will spend the rest of their lives in a nursing facility.

So, I made the referral, to the relief of the caregiver family members. Two days later I received a call from the ERS company: she politely refused to have them install the system. Two days after that I received a call from the nephew: "Aunt Edna is in the hospital. She fell and no one found her for about 4 or 5 hours. We need some help with planning for the next stage."

I hope I can get her home with assistance. She'll probably need extensive rehab. She was dehydrated, of course. Had she had the system, she would have been rescued before dehydration had set in.

Some people just don't listen. It's frustrating. I keep trying anyway.

Time - where does it go?

When I first started blogging I intended to write daily, or at least weekly. Looking at the dates of my posts, it is evident that my life is busier than I expected. Where does the time go? How do we find the time, make the time, for our families and the things that are important in our lives?

My senior clients tell me that their grown children do not have time for them. The sandwich generation struggles with balancing time between their aging parents, their growing children, and their own careers and relationships. Time is one thing we can't reproduce. Once it's gone, it's gone forever.

Too many regrets fall from the lips of people at the end of their lives: "I should have seen my parents more often." "I should have spent more time with my children growing up."

Someone told me recently: "Things are not important. People are."

If we keep that thought in the forefront of our minds, perhaps there will be fewer regrets at the end of life.