In todays world, its very important to discuss about senior care planning, what you must know whether you are a single older adult or a married couple, widowed or divorced. We can talk about some obvious things about senior care planning but also we can share a real life example to help you understand why senior care planning is so important and why having a thorough understanding of your health, your health needs, being your own advocate or having someone to advocate for you is so important when you become older and you begin to have health issues.
So the obvious part of senior care planning is that it's a very emotional issue that many people are not prepared to talk about, don't want to talk about or don't see the importance of talking about until way down the road when it's a little too late and you're in a crisis. So if you are a parent or an adult begin to start thinking about what you want your life to look like when you're older and how to make those plans.
Part of it is making a care plan but part of it is also what is called the aspects of elder care planning or estate planning which are the legal aspects that we have to understand. So in care planning and getting care, the quality of the relationships that you have with your family members, your brothers and sisters, your children, friends greatly affects the care that you'll have when you're older because those relationships that you form in your earlier years usually indicate the people that you're going to rely on when you need to get a little bit help or when you have to call somebody and say hey I'm in the hospital, can you come meet me there?
So these are the reasons that it's important to know who will help you. If they will follow the directions of what you want and if they really understand the consequences of having that responsibility. And we can use a very simple example of hospitalization.
So let's say that you are hospitalized and you're still young and pretty healthy and you're able to talk to the nurses and doctors and tell them about what you want and it just works out really well. But then fast forward to 20, 30 maybe 40 years later when you are an older adult and you have a lot of health issues and you don't feel well maybe you even have a little memory loss or a little dementia going on.
You go to the hospital, you don't feel well and you're confused. You don't understand what the hospital staff is telling you, they're having you sign all of these admission forms and paperwork and you don't understand the consequences of signing an arbitration agreement or anything else that you're signing and that causes problems later or you have memory loss.
So let's look at a specific example of a person who has memory loss or even vision loss or hearing problems going into the hospital. The first thing is they show all this paperwork at you that you have to sign, consent to treat, all this other stuff, and if you can't see or hear, you may be embarrassed to say I don't understand what you want to sign and whether they have someone that can explain this to you,
Do you have someone that can actually take the time to explain this to you because many times if you're in the hospital emergency room they're rushed and they want to get you in and you got to sign all this stuff and you're confused and you have no idea what you just signed.
If you have memory loss, you're not going to be able to possibly remember what they're telling you or even understand the consequences of what they have you signing. This place puts you in a very vulnerable position. You need care, you have to sign all these forms because you need care yet you don't know what you're signing.
So then let's say you get into the hospital room and you're there for treatment and you have memory loss and they're giving you a menu where you have to check off what you want for your lunch breakfast and dinner.
If you have vision problems, you may not even be able to read that you may not have your glasses with you or if you have hearing problems you may have missed the fact that they said well we need these papers back by two o'clock so that you can have dinner then what happens your dinner doesn't show up or if you have memory loss your dinner shows up but you have a caregiver at home who reminds you to eat and reminds you to drink so your tray shows up and you don't feel well and you're sleeping and you don't eat and you don't drink and they clean up your table your food's gone, your drink's gone, you become dehydrated, you become malnutritioned, your blood pressure drops, you have more health issues.
It's because you cannot advocate or speak up for yourself in the hospital because you feel bad because you have memory loss, hearing loss, vision problems, you don't have anybody to advocate for you, and everything is so fast paced because the hospital is there just to treat your emergency medical conditions and get you off to the next place which could be a nursing home or home and if you don't have the wherewithal or the understanding to understand what that means or how you'll get care or who's going to pay for it, is it your insurance company, is it you.
A lot of times people will just refuse care and sometimes you're refusing care that you really need or sometimes you're agreeing to something like discontinuing a medication that you don't understand what the consequences are because the hospital staff doesn't have all the time to explain that to you
Senior care planning, Elder care planning, becoming your own advocate, learning about your health conditions and your health needs and making the right decisions may not seem like a big deal if you're healthy today but at the point where you are in that hospital, having to decide about treatment and you lack the ability or the support to do all of these things that's a very critical time in your life that could result in life changing decisions positive or negative so what do you do if you're in any of these kinds of situations whether you're planning or you're in the hospital and it's an emergency you're having to make decisions about nursing homes or in-home care or doctors or medications.
One is recommended to consult an elder care expert and there's a lot of information online but you can also schedule a one-to-one elder care consultation with an senior care planning expert to talk about your own care and decisions that you're having to make or if your children having to decide for parents or help parents make decisions. Those are things that can help because of having to make these decisions for ones own health and for whom the children are legally responsible are best evaluated by the parents or the children.
