Wisdom Wednesday: Aging Wisdom's Podcast
Welcome to Wisdom Wednesday, a short, bite-size podcast offering weekly wisdom and insights for aging well, caring well, and living well.
You’ve tried everything to help your parents, and nothing has worked. Sometimes you must wait for a crisis to happen before you can make changes. Geriatrician Leslie Kernisan refers to this as “watchful waiting.” In the meantime, you continue to monitor the situation. You stay engaged with your parents but pull back on suggestions.
If your parent is experiencing memory loss, it’s unlikely they have insight that they need help. It’s probable they won’t accept support and are unwilling to make changes as a result. Lack of insight or awareness is common with cognitive change. This is where you need to shift your perspective and determine if your parent can make that decision anymore, or if this is a decision you’re going to have to make on their behalf.
A Care Manager is an essential tool in a client’s resources toolbox. Care Managers are experienced, knowledge navigators, providing tailored options for living, caring, and aging well. We can connect you to appropriate community resources, services, and supports. A home safety assessment provided by a Care Manager can be an important preventive measure; In addition, having your vision and hearing checked regularly may also reduce risk for falls.
From our experience as Care Managers, we know how important it is to schedule regular check-ups, especially as we age. There can be a ripple effect if we aren’t careful. Vision, hearing, and foot care all play key roles in health maintenance and fall risk prevention. Our eyes, ears, and feet also support our ability to get regular exercise. And regular exercise can contribute to so many positives: strength, balance, overall well-being, appetite, mental acuity and cognition, a good night’s sleep.
Our colleague Sheila McKannay, New Client Services Care Manager, offers insights and encouragement about partnering with your health care provider and pharmacist to address overall health, any concerns we may have, and how to engagement them in assessing and lower our risk of a fall.
There are several health-related issues that might concern you, be it blood pressure, poor balance, medications and their side effects, use of assistive devices, knee, and foot pain. But your primary care physician can help ease concerns and help with a plan forward.
Falls are also the number one cause of visits to the emergency department by older adults. Fortunately, falls are not a normal part of aging and most falls are preventable. In this 4-part series, we’ll explore why falls happen and how we can mitigate risk.
Picking Your Battles: We cannot wrap our parents or others we care about in bubble wrap to keep them perfectly safe nor can we sit by idly allowing dad to put others at risk by driving beyond the point of doing it safely. How can we best help them?
Caregiving is hard work. Managing it all can be challenging, on top of everything else: work, other family relationships, personal commitments, and finding time for yourself. In the midst of it all, we need to remind ourselves to take time to engage in a mood shifter that can become a mood lifter. These are the little things we can do throughout the course of a tough day to help put it all in perspective. Not burn out. Lift our mood.
It’s not uncommon for family caregivers to experience depression, isolation, and increased rates of chronic health conditions. This is why recognizing and addressing caregiver burnout and setting healthy boundaries are priorities. As a family care partner, it’s essential to recognize the warning signs of caregiver burnout, as well as healthy and effective strategies for managing caregiver stress before it turns into burnout.
Have you ever tried talking with your parent or partner about concerns you have regarding their health or memory? Were your concerns dismissed, minimized, or completely shut down? As Aging Life Care professionals, we address this issue frequently: the person you care about may be experiencing “lack of insight.”