Elderly patients who have a caregiver caring for them at home are often using multiple medications or are using a medication or two and in the process of adding several more medications to their daily list of things that have to be consumed. Especially when starting a new medication, there is reason to be excessively careful with both the old and the new medications. For elderly patients with multiple prescriptions, it is especially important for caregivers to talk to the pharmacist and get all the information that you need. Continue reading →
Is Adult Day Care A Valid Option?
If you or someone you love is a full-time caregiver, there is an option that you should know about called Adult Day Care. Perhaps it’s an option that you had heard about in the past, but hadn’t considered pursuing for whatever reason. If you haven’t given it a very good look before deciding not to go ahead and do it, now just might be a good moment to take a closer look and see what adult day care options are available in your area and what they have to offer both the person coming for day care and for the primary caregiver taking care of that person.
An adult day care facility can either be geared toward medical health services or it can be geared toward socialization services. If you live in a large metropolitan area of the country, it’s surely the case that there are multiple options of both types available to you; however, if you live in a more rural area, it may be the case that only one or the other is available in your region. Check out the options before you get too deep into the decision-making process of deciding if it’s a good option for your situation. Continue reading →
Your Caregiver Role – How to Handle an Uninvolved Sibling When You Need Help
Acting as a caregiver for a sick parent is difficult enough in and of itself, but one thing that often increases the stress is the way different siblings deal with the crisis. Too often, one sibling ends up shouldering the entire burden, which causes bad feelings all around. The siblings who are not helping with the caregiving task might feel frozen out and separated from their parents. The person who is actually delivering the care is likely to feel resentful that they are carrying the entire weight themselves.
These feelings are natural, and you can usually avoid them, or at least mitigate the damages, with proper communication. Usually, simply making sure that all siblings are involved in the decision making process when it comes to the care of a parent can be all that is needed to keep everyone actively involved and make them feel like they have an important and valuable role to play. And yet… Continue reading →
