Taking Care of Yourself is Part of the Job

The job of becoming the primary caregiver for your aging parent is universally recognized as one of the most difficult transitions we will go through. To start with, it’s hard to go through the reversal of parent and child. All your life, mom or dad were the strong ones. They were the ones you ran to for help and who were always there to tell you, “It’s ok. Everything will be all right.”

But now as your parent ages and you have to witness their demise mentally and physically, you realize that everything may not be all right especially if your parent is going through a slow decline of a terminal illness. When the only outcome of what you are dealing with in your parent’s life is death, that makes it tough to stay upbeat, creative and proactive about how to handle life’s daily challenges.

The task of caring for an elderly parent is overwhelming. You have concerns about their finances, their medications, the progress of their disease if they are battling something terminal, their mental state, their diet and their emotional state as well. It’s easy to begin to “hover” your senior citizen in an emotional attempt to block any more harm coming to him or her. This is a parenting instinct and one that your dad and mom probably won’t resist because they want to be cared for.

You feel the anxiety of your parent and the fears they face as the months and years ahead hold uncertain dangers and a certain outcome. So there is an instinct in caregivers to give 100% of your time, your energy and your resources to caring for that elderly loved one.

The problem is that you, the caregiver do have other obligations other than caring for your loved one. You may have a job, a family and your own health and upkeep to think about. So it’s a good idea for you the caregiver, the family of caregivers and event he one being cared for to keep your eyes open for caregiver burnout to help the one who is trying so hard to take care of Grandma or Grandpa to also take care of themselves a little bit so they will last a lot longer.

Underlying much of the intensity of effort many caregivers put out to help their aging or align parents is guilt. Guilt can be a powerful force that feeds on itself in an unhealthy way. The outcome is not only does the primary caregiver feel guilty that mom or dad are even having to go through age related illness, they feel guilty for any time they take for themselves or to care for their own needs or the needs of their family.

Caregiver burnout can result in decline in health in the caregiver and eventually may lead to changes in attitude about the task of care giving and in some cases a nervous breakdown. Symptoms include poor sleep and eating habits in the caregiver, a possible increase in drinking to help “settle the nerves” and an inability to think about anything else than what mom or dad needs.

If you see these symptoms in yourself or someone you know and care about who may be suffering from caregiver burnout, act fast to get them some help. They need to realize that taking care of themselves is part of the task of caring for their aging parents. It may even be a situation that calls for a talk with the caregiver along with the one being cared for. If that senior citizen can see that they need to encourage their caregiver to go be with family, get some rest, see a movie and forget the responsibilities of care giving for a while, that respite from the stress can do a world of good for that important person in their lives.

Senior Citizens Bill of Rights

Sometimes when you and your elderly parent are partnering for their care, it seems like an “us against the world” situation. But since the senior citizen you are caring for has little fight left in them, it seems it’s up to you to make sure that your elderly mom or dad get all they have coming. Just because a person becomes a senior citizen, that doesn’t mean their fundamental rights go away. They deserve and should expect to be treated with respect and for those serving them to live up to expectations.

But just as it was before your parent became a senior citizen, a right must be claimed to be a right. So while there is no formal “Senior Citizens Bill of Rights”, there are laws on the books about how nursing homes must treat senior citizens. And even if your mom or dad is in an assisted care facility and not a nursing home, there are some basic expectations that were in that contract and that are fundamentally assumed that the facility will live up to. And its up to you as the caregiver to make sure they are living up to what is expected of them.

First of all, the facility your senior citizen lives at should be reliable to provide the basics of safety and cleanliness. Look at the evacuation plan for the facility in the event of a fire or another emergency that would mean getting your parent out of the building. Is it a plan that is clear and is it workable considering the entire facility is full of elderly people who may not move very quickly? And what about emergency power? In the event of an emergency where the power goes off early, is there emergency backup power to operate elevators and automatic doors so everyone can get out?

If the facility offers food service as part of their package of services and if there is a charge for that service, there is a basic expectation that there will be meals made available three times a day, that it will be healthy food and that your parent will never be denied service. It is also not out of line to expect that the food could be delivered to the senior citizens rooms if your parent is ill or injured. And your parent should be able to get some variety in their diet. If they are not doing a good job of making foods that your parents likes to eat, they shouldn’t be making that additional charge for food service.

As we mentioned earlier, your parent didn’t lose his or her rights as an individual when they move into an assisted care facility. If your parent is paying to use that apartment, they have a right to live as they please in there. Within certain constraints because they are in a community setting such as keeping noise down after bedtime and the like, your parent should be able to do what he or she wants to do in the privacy of their home without the interference from others in the community or from the staff of the complex. This includes receiving guests, allowing family or friends to sleep over, how the apartment is decorated and what kind of music your parent enjoys.

A right that really cannot be detailed but can be felt dramatically is your parent’s right to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect. This is an intangible but how the staff of the facility treat the resident’s means a lot to your parent when they see these people every day. Its not out of line to expect the staff and management of the facility to know your parents names and greet them warmly when they come down to eat or go to a social event.

If the staff of the facility have to work directly with your parent, it should be done respectfully and pleasantly. If your parent reports verbal or emotional abuse going on by the staff, that is cause for you to investigate it and hold that facility to accountability for that problem.

Remember the old saying that the squeaking wheel gets the oil. So if the facility needs to be reminded of their responsibilities, you be that squeaky wheel. Squeak loud and squeak often so your parent can live in a place where they enjoy their days and feel that this is a place they can genuinely call home.

Quality of Life for your Senior Citizen

When you were growing up, your parents were your care givers. They made sure you were safe, well fed, clothed had medical care and that the money was there for the things you needed. But being your caregiver for your mom and dad was about more than just giving you the basics of survival and health.

Now your turn has come to be the care giver for your parents. They need you now as they move into their older years and they are less able to attend to those basic needs of life. But you can assure they are safe and that they have the right food to eat for their diet. You can make sure their clothes are clean and that their medications are there for them every day. You also can look after their finances so there is plenty there to take care of the necessities of life and none is wasted or taken from them by scam artists.

But just as growing up in your family, there is another element of being a care giver and that element can be boiled down to the phrase, “quality of life.” That is a good phrase because if your childhood had times of joy and happiness because you were part of a loving family, that was because your mom and dad went beyond the physical basics and made your life fun, full of love and laughter and good times that you would remember forever.

Perhaps you sit and remember those times with your elderly parents even today. But as you remember those terrific vacations or all the wonderful, Christmases and the many funny things that happened in your family when you were growing up, two people made sure your life was rich and full that way. And those two people are these same two people you are now charged to care for – mom and dad.

So how can you do all you can to enhance the quality of life for your parents in their retirement years? If we can find ways to give them happy times, time of laughter and love, that will be a fitting pay back for the loving household they provided to you all those years. Here are just a few things you can make happen to make their lives happier…

. Dinner every week. If you have a routine time when you either come to your parents home and bring dinner or have them to your place to enjoy some family time, that will become a favorite night of the week for your elderly senior citizen.
. Lots of family time. The real value of being in the same town as your parents is they can have lots of time with your family. So let them be part of many of the family things you do such as church, school activities and fun outings during the spring and summer as well.
. Make the holidays festive. What would the holidays be without Grandma? And if Grandpa makes a good Santa Clause, you are all set.
. Make their house a home. As a caregiver, sometimes the chore of cleaning and maintaining your parent’s apartment falls to you. But don’t just “settle” for a nice clean look. Dig out those great things that mom used to have on the walls and shelves at home when she had her own place. Try to give that room at the senior retirement center as much like home as possible so she will feel comfortable and happy among the things that mean this is her place and hers alone.

If you can create the same joy, the same fun and the same sense of “home” for your elderly parent that they were able to create for you and your siblings growing up, then you will have taken one more step toward giving back a little of what was given to you.

But there is a real value to giving your retired parents the same love and good times they gave to you. Laughter and love and happy times are therapeutic and can do a lot for the health and well being of your retired parent. So put that extra creativity you have into really giving to your parents the quality of life they gave to you and they will blossom where they are planted, just you and your siblings have in life.

Managing Your Senior Citizen’s Medications

“Old people need a lot of pills.”

That was an observation the grandson of my adult parent observed about his Granddad. And while that may be a bit of a crude way of making that observation, it is certainly a correct observation. The truth is that senior citizens sometimes to find themselves taking a vast array of pills and medications. Sometimes the diversity of medications can become hard to keep track of. That is why so often your aging parent may have a pill dispenser kit which allows him to measure out the drugs for an entire week to try to keep it all straight.

The real concern with that much medication being used at the same time is medicine interaction. If your retired mom or dad takes five, six, seven or more pills at a time, it’s easy to imagine that one of those medications might get into conflict with another. This is not an idle concern. Many drug related overdoes or interaction problems happen to senior citizens every year because they combined their many prescription medications with over the country drugs or with alcohol and the chemical reaction in their bodies became explosive.

So because you are the caregiver to your aging mom or dad, it’s up to you to come up with some strict rules that you have to insist become the law of the land for your mom or dad to assure that there is little or not possibility of a drug related reaction which could lead to hospitalization or death.

Knowledge is power when it comes to managing your senior citizen’s medications. And the two key people you should turn to for that knowledge are your parent’s doctor and pharmacist. Sometimes the problems that arise of medicines that conflict come from the influence of many doctors in prescribing drugs. So be sure there is one doctor who is in charge of your parent’s health in general. Have him or her review the current crop of medications, their frequency and ingredients to assure that there is no potentially dangerous interactions.

Your pharmacist can perform the same function as he is trained in understanding the way drugs work. So, as with the doctor, it’s good to pick one pharmacist for all of your parent’s drugs and schedule a time to go over the entire medication picture with the pharmacist to look for potential problems.

The next important area of focus to avoid potential medication mistakes is the home. There is a lot you can do to prevent your aging parent from accidentally taking the wrong medications or the wrong dosages, either of which can cause potential problems. If the medicine cabinet where the meds are kept is full of similar looking bottles and the only way to tell them apart is fine print on the bottles, do your part to make them unique.

You can buy multicolored bottles to transfer the drugs into. Then you can write out your parent’s medicine schedule in clear understandable terms like, “3 p.m. take 2 from the blue bottle, 1 from the pink bottle and 1 from the green bottle.” You can even take the next step of using a label maker to mark each bottle in clear, large print type so there is no possibility that what is in that bottle could be misunderstood.

Take proper care to keep track of medicines and their expiration dates and stay ahead of reorder cycles. A great way to save money is to use online pharmacies or reorder services that can provide you with generic equivalent of prescription drugs. But make sure the medication provider is legitimate so you know you are getting exactly what you ordered.

By staying on top of the senior citizen you are taking care of and his or her medication situation, you are being the brains of the operation. Your retired mom or dad may no longer have that kind of attention to detail and poor eyesight and mental fatigue can cause him or her to fail at staying on top of a complex drug situation. So you fill in that gap for your parent and in doing so, you will the peace of mind that they are getting the medications they need and only the medications they need.

Making a Difference Together

There is something very self absorbed about the caregiver to senior citizen relationship. By that we mean that most if not all of the decisions you make and subjects of concern focus either on the senior citizen and his needs or on the caregiver and the senior citizen and how you will work together to address his needs.

It is small wonder then when we think about what your elderly parent talked about all day, it’s usually all about his or her physical or emotional needs. The way the caregiver relationship works naturally encourages the idea that the senior citizens world revolves around the needs and issues of the senior citizen himself.

But we know from raising children that if a person is completely focused on themselves, that is very unhealthy. That is how one can become a hypochondriac and become overwhelmed by obsessive compulsive habits because they think everything must begin and end with their problems and there is no chance to see the world or get some perspective by being with other people.

So a bold step you as a caregiver can do is to suggest that you and your elderly parent get out of the apartment and do something of value to others. By getting involved in volunteering or at least going out and making a difference together, you provide a way for your elderly parent to get some self esteem from making someone else’s life better. It gives them chance to get out in the fresh air and break up the constant thoughts about themselves by thinking about someone else or something else for a while.

At first you may get some resistance to the idea and you may have to be downright stubborn about giving it a try. The knee jerk reaction that your elderly parent may have when you bring up volunteering together might be, “what does that have to do with my needs?” By explaining the value to him or her, you ca help your elderly parent remember that life was better when it was about others and that a life of service is a healthy life.

You don’t have to get really ambitious to find something good to do with your energies. And if your senior mom or dad is disabled, there are still things you can do. Some simple things you can do at first that gets the ball rolling are…

. Go to the park and pick up trash on a slow walk so you make the park a prettier place.
. Go visit someone else in the retirement community that he or she knows is lonely and would enjoy being dropped in on.
. Help stuff envelopes or make phone calls for your church or a charity organization. This is something you can do from a wheelchair if that is the situation with your elderly parent.
. Read to disadvantaged kids at the local library.
. Become a big brother or big sister and take a young person to a ball game or to the zoo every so often.

Most cities have a volunteer coordination agency that can match up your physical abilities with volunteer opportunities. Once you get your elderly parent involved in doing something for others, don’t be surprised if their enthusiasm takes off like a skyrocket.

The great feeling of making a difference for others can literally turn his or her life around. And on the way home as your parent chatters about the people you met and the things you are doing, you know that this idea was a hit. And when they can’t stop talking about the next thing you are going to go do together, you will know that your parent has gotten the bug for service projects. And his or her life will never be the same again. And that’s a good thing.

Listening to Your Parents even Now

Have you ever had that aggravation that you go over to your aging parents apartment or house to help with the housework and get some serious “care giving” done and the senior himself seems to be bent on stopping your progress? You no doubt came over with a list as long as your arm of things to do at the apartment to help your parent live a clean and healthier life by getting the place into shape.

You know that part of your job as caregiver is to take care of chores and do the things your aging parent cannot do any more or just doesn’t do because of fatigue or general lack of attention to detail. So when your parent wants you to forget all that work and just sit and talk, what is aggravating to you may be very important to your parent, maybe even more important than the apartment getting cleaned up.

It’s good for you to think about your role as caregiver because you really are not just called to be a maid, chauffeur and cook. Anybody could do those things. The reason you are perfect for the care giving role is you are close to the heart of your aging parent and you are the one that will understand when she talks about things she is thinking or feeling that day.

So don’t downplay the value of just being a companion to your parent during your visits. The emotional and family support you provide to your parent is central to his self esteem and feeling of who he is in the world. He will be storing up dozens of little anecdotes and stories to share with you when you come over. So in order to let him get all of that sharing “out of his system”, its important for you to be a good listener.

A good listener doesn’t just let the other person talk and say “uh huh” every so often. If you are just tolerating your parent as she shares little things with you, that will become apparent and be worse than if you didn’t talk to her at all. The best way to fit your fellowship and relationship time around work time is to start out each visit with some time together just to talk.

Perhaps you might make it a habit that every time to come over, you and your parent will sit down and just talk about a half hour over coffee, a snack or tea. That is when you can focus all of your attention on what mom or dad have to say. Listen with focus and attention so when something is funny, you laugh and you can ask questions and explore the concept or situation being discussed in some depth.

Then at an appropriate time, you can say, “Gee Mom, I would like to tidy up those dishes. Can you sit at the table and we can keep talking while I do that?” That is a nice easy transition to starting your work and keeping the lines of communication open. And you can continue to let your mom or dad “follow you around” as you do chores chattering away the whole time.

Don’t censor the topics or insist that what you talk about are only the important things. You should know from talking to your kids that you have to be ready to talk about the trivial things in their lives to prime the pump of communication about the hard issues and ones that will take some mature understanding to deal with. So be patient and open with your aging mom and dad and once they know you have good listening ears, they will open up about important things going on in their lives. And that is when your listening skills will really pay off.

Keeping it at Arm’s Length

Sometimes when you have a very consuming problem, it can so take over your life that you forget the rest of life’s responsibilities and relationships. That is certainly a danger that caregivers are faced with. It is easy to become so wrapped up in the demands of being a good caregiver for your aging parent or loved one that the rest of the world seems to disappear.

This is never a healthy way to take on the challenge of care giving. Not only would it be terrible for your family, job and friends to see you vanish into the task of care giving and never be available for anyone else, its also a bad idea for both you and your elderly parent for you to obsess that much.

This is a formula for caregiver burnout which can lead to medical problems, loss of sleep, eating disorders and maybe even a nervous breakdown. So the healthy approach to being a caregiver is to keep the demands of that part of your life at arm’s length so you can establish a balance between your life with your senior citizen and work and family life as well.

One way to begin laying the groundwork for keeping that balance in right ratio to your life is to have an honest talk about the issue with your elderly parent who you are caring for. Sometimes the force draws you in to want to give it all to the task of care giving is coming from them. But if you talk about it in a rational way when both of you are rested and thinking calmly, your parent will see that she does not want you to give up your life to be her caregiver exclusively. Oh sure, sometimes when she is sad or lonely, she says things like “I wish you could stay here all the time.” But that is not rational and she knows you need to be a mature adult and take care of your job responsibilities and your spouse and children as well.

Another person you should have a frank discussion about the demands you are going through as a caregiver for your elderly parent is your boss at work. In the modern world, businesses need hard working and well trained individuals like you. And this is a time when a lot of baby boomers are becoming “sandwich generation” people and have that additional demand of caring for an elderly parent along with home and work responsibilities. So your work will want to work with you to get through this rather than lose you entirely.

Your employer may be able to work with you to give you some flexibility so that if you have to have time during the day to take your parent to the doctors or attend to some other need in your parents life, you can make up the time or attend to your work in other ways. Many employers will even allow you to take work home with you and split your time between the office, your family life and your care giving responsibilities. There are even extended leave programs that some larger companies have where you can take a few months off to care for your parent during a time when you must give her all of your time. This is invaluable during time when you are moving her from her own home to the assisted living center or if your parent is terminally ill and you need to be constantly available in those last months of her life.

Above all, solicit the support and love of your spouse and kids. If mommy has to be over at grandmas every evening for a few hours, it may call on the dad and kids to whip up some macaroni and cheese or just get in the car and go get some fast food to cut mom some slack to take care of the needs of that aging senior citizen. Your family, your work associates and your friends can handle giving you that time if you are open with them about what is going on and they see the need. But do make time to see them and be with other so the job of being a caregiver doesn’t overwhelm you. You need them as much or more than they need you during this time.

Is Mom a Sucker?

Sometimes a caregiver is a combination of maid, doctor, spiritual advisor and amateur detective. It’s no secret that elderly people sometimes become more like teenagers and children then mature adults. So, while we wish they wouldn’t do it, your senior citizen mom or dad may be hiding a few things from you.

And one thing parents are fiercely independent about is their finances and how they use their money. But being independent doesn’t translate into being wise in how your retired parents use their money. And its one of your jobs as caregiver to look after your parents well being which means watching where their money goes so their limited financial resources can last a long time.

There are plenty of horror stories about senior citizens becoming victims of scams and clever sales people who sell them a hope and a dream in exchange for their very real money. We shouldn’t be too surprised that slick talking sales people will call or email our parents. After all, they try to get by you so why should your parents be immune to it? But the thing you don’t know is if or when your aging parents become a victim of a scam and get ripped off.

One thing is for sure is that your senior citizen parents are not gong to tell you they got ripped off. So you have to become that amateur detective to find out if mom is a sucker for a slick salesman and if you need to step in and start getting these shysters out of your parent’s lives. Some signs that your parent has become a sucker are…

. Watch your parent’s mail. If mom is getting an unusually large amount of junk mail and a lot of get rich quick schemes, phony contests or other scams, it’s possible your parent has become a victim of a scam or two.
. Spend a little more time at your parent’s house or apartment and answer the phone for her. If there are more sales calls for scam offers or charities, then your parent may have already fallen pray to these kinds of calls and their name got passed around to other scam artists.
. Are there a lot of junk items lying around mom’s house that look like the crap that are used for “amazing gifts” or junk products?
. Start paying attention to your parent’s budget. For one thing, if mom doesn’t want you poking around her checkbook, there may be some problems going on with her account. But if you see a lot of checks to scam artists, you know mom has become a sucker. Watch her credit card statements as well for similar activity.
. Watch her email and look particularly at her “sent items” folder. There you can see if she responded to any scam email schemes.

Its going to take some gentle convincing to get mom to let you see some of these documents and you can expect her to be defensive about her activities. Getting involved with scams, bogus contests and get rich quick schemes has an addictive quality to it and even though mom may have already been suckered out of hundreds of dollars, she still will fall for the next crook that comes along because of the addiction. So as you would with any addict, be loving and gentle in how you approach the problem but do not neglect the problem either.

The key to selling your aging parent on letting you take over her checkbook is convenience. You might start by taking over her taxes. Then once she feels comfortable with you being that close to her books, you can offer to take over bill paying and balancing the checkbook. Then you can gently begin to question expenditures that are questionable.

Don’t try to get her money back from crooks that have already victimized your aging parent. But you can begin making it very difficult for people to get money out of her account. Right away, cancel all direct debits that are not easily identifiable. Also, start getting control over the flow of junk mail, phone calls and emails. By making access to your parents accounts and to her to try to victimize her again, you can be both the detective and now the guard dog to keep bad people from getting to your parent’s much needed money.