Are you a caregiver, an aging adult, or a care receiver who is throwing up your hand saying, I wish someone told me that caregiving would be like this. I wish someone told me that getting old would be like this. It's not what it's cracked up to be.
Here we share a few unexpected crazy things about caregiving that you may or may not know. You may be new to caregiving and all of this caregiving stuff that happens may be quite a shock. You may be an aging adult who is seeing your health decline realizing that you will need care and you're not sure who will be that caregiver.
As an aging parent you may tell your children I don't need any care I'm fine. The reason this happens is that as we age, things happen, our health declines and it gets worse. Maybe we can't drive anymore. Our world is getting smaller because we've lost friends.
Maybe we can't go out as easily as we once did. We feel like we're losing control and our families want to swoop in and just take over. Adult children see role reversal here in a sense. Your parents took care of you as a child. You have a responsibility now to care for your parents but you can't just rush in and take over.
Again caregiving conversations are important. Mom or dad how can I help you? Mom or dad I see that you might need help with this. Would you like some help? How can I help you? And caregiving should be 50-50 with equal participation. The caregiver shouldn't do everything.
The older adult should not expect to be waited on. Next there is the financial shock of caregiving. Medicare does not pay for everything. Medicare private insurance doesn't pay for the help that most aging adults need to stay at home. That's your retirement savings.
If you have long-term care insurance it pays for that. Otherwise you are on your own. If you're low income Medicaid can help. These are conversations that it's important to have. Adult children your aging parents might not want to talk to you about their money. That's very common. So what do you do? You talk about costs of care.
Time to talk about this now rather than later when you're shocked that there is no money to pay for care. Which brings up the next one. No one wants to go live in a nursing home. My mother would shake her finger at us and say don't you ever put me in a nursing home. I will come back from my grave and haunt you.
Fortunately we never had to do that. For older adults to stay at home you have to remain active. Physically active. Falls are the number one reasons older adults leave home. I call it falls, fractures and death. You break a hip fracture.
The chance that you will die in the first year. 12% if you live at home. 20% if you live in assisted living. 30% if you have dementia or live in a nursing home. Must remain physically active. Must be able to continue to bathe, dress, walk around, take your medications, do all of those things.
Staying at home is like having a part-time job after you retire. It takes work. It just doesn't happen. We have memory loss, Alzheimer's or dementia. Behaviors that go around with that. Why don't we talk about this? It's because as family members, we don't recognize the signs of memory loss.
Aging adults who go to the doctor, they forget to talk to the doctor. They don't remember the list of things that they were going to talk about.
They don't remember that they forget. 50% of older adults over age 85 have memory loss and are undiagnosed. What are the signs? Forgetting to take medications, poor hygiene, sticky notes all over the house.
You have a conversation with someone in five minutes later. You don't remember what you talked about. Memory loss is common in older adults. It's important to go to the doctor to get a diagnosis so that you can be preventative.
For younger adults with dementia, and Alzheimer's, the signs happen 10 to 20 years before a diagnosis. What are they? They begin with circulatory issues. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, anything that affects your circulation, vascular dementia is a high probability for you.
The health care system is not your friend. If you are an aging adult, you have to be able to advocate for your care. As an aging adult, as a caregiver, you have to know your health better than anyone else and you have to stand up and advocate or you will be refused care by the health care system who favors the young, not the old.
It's important to have a backup plan. If you are a spouse and you are a power of attorney for each other and one passes away, who is your power of attorney? Is it child number one, child number two, child number three, or a friend of yours?
We all need a caregiving backup plan. It's important, believe it or not, families don't get along. Usually one person in a family becomes the primary caregiver and they end up doing everything and they feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, angry.
They worry that they can't keep going on. There are days when they throw up their hands and say, I don't want to be a caregiver anymore. Why is this? Because they don't ask for help. Which leads us to the next case.
Caregiving support is important. Whether you attend a group in person, online, take a course, becoming more knowledgeable about all of these crazy things that happen in caregiving can avoid the unexpected. They can avoid many of the things I've talked about but not if you don't gain the knowledge.
So what are the benefits of groups? You learn new caregiving skills, you share information with others, and become more confident in making the right decisions for your loved ones and in advocating.
You also share stories with other caregivers who are in similar situations. Many people outside of caregiving will judge and say, oh, it can't be that bad. Of course, you should take care of your parent. They have no idea what you're going through on a daily basis.
Caregiving support groups and courses help you gain hope. The helplessness, the worry goes out the door. You feel better, you feel more confident, and you won't say hardly anymore. I wish someone told me that caregiving would be like this. I wish someone told me aging would be like this.
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