Caring for a loved one with Alzheimers often leads to such symptoms as denial, anger, social withdrawal, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and irritability.  It can be an all-consuming 24-hour-a-day, seven-day a week grind.

What can you do?  At Expert Home Care, we suggest the following:

• Manage your stress level. Use various relaxation techniques to ease the stress and consult your doctor.

• Take care of yourself. Don’t ignore your own health, or you’ll suffer burn out.   Watch your diet, exercise and get plenty of sleep.

• Join a support group. There are many others out there like you and there is support in numbers.

• Do legal and financial planning. There are issues that need to be discussed – make sure you take care of these sooner rather than later.

• Give yourself a break. Bring in a home health aide to assist with the activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, toileting and feeding) or to help around the house.  This can help you recharge your batteries several hours during the day or, by choosing respite care, for a long weekend.

• Don’t be a martyr. You are not expected to do it all alone.  Seek the support of family, friends and community resources.

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors has been providing senior care, home care & live-in care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when you need help at 800-848-2336. Click for a Free Home Care Consumer Guide for selecting the most appropriate home care agency for your loved one.

Posted By: Frank

What does it mean to become empowered? NFCA defines empowerment as a sense of confidence in your ability to bring about positive changes in your circumstances and to rise above the day to day challenges you face in your caregiver journey. It’s the optimism we strive for to take a positive approach in an effort to achieve a better quality of life for ourselves and our family. Sometimes it is the tiny changes we make in our lives which can have the most profound impact towards a much healthier and positive outlook.

Four Principles to Live By Include:

Believe in yourself and take charge of your life.
Protect your health
Reach out for help
Speak up for yourself and stand up for your rights

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Just a few years ago, workers were likely to need time away from work for parent-teacher conferences, running kids to medical appointments, and staying home to nurse sick children.

Today, workers are more likely to miss work because of the needs of their parents. “Elder care has begun to rival child care as a workplace issue, and companies have started to realize that such support props up not just workers but also the bottom line,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

The National Alliance for Caregiving estimates that one in six American workers cares for an older relative. Caregiving usually adds 18 hours to the 40 hours most workers clock at the office. That means that those workers are working a job-and-a-half. Some companies are now hiring geriatric care managers as resources for employees bewildered by the demands of parents who are no longer capable of living independently. Estimates are that one in five caregivers quits or looks for a less demanding job. And that makes businesses’ responsiveness to employees’ caregiving needs more than a nice thing to do; it makes it an essential thing to do

Just a few years ago, workers were likely to need time away from work for parent-teacher conferences, running kids to medical appointments, and staying home to nurse sick children.

Today, workers are more likely to miss work because of the needs of their parents. “Elder care has begun to rival child care as a workplace issue, and companies have started to realize that such support props up not just workers but also the bottom line,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

The National Alliance for Caregiving estimates that one in six American workers cares for an older relative. Caregiving usually adds 18 hours to the 40 hours most workers clock at the office. That means that those workers are working a job-and-a-half. Some companies are now hiring geriatric care managers as resources for employees bewildered by the demands of parents who are no longer capable of living independently. Estimates are that one in five caregivers quits or looks for a less demanding job. And that makes businesses’ responsiveness to employees’ caregiving needs more than a nice thing to do; it makes it an essential thing to do.

 

Caring for aging parents or ill relatives brings out the good and the bad in sibling and family relationships. Caregiving can be a time for siblings to come together and provide support for each other or it can be a time for stressful transition, causing strained connections and painful conflict.

A source of friction between adult children carries the existing legacy of family dynamics. Demands of caregiving bring up old patterns, unresolved issues, and tensions. Old family wounds are reopened and rivalries reemerge. Siblings can find themselves replaying their historical roles in the family, recreating old dynamics of competition and resentment as they vie for mom’s and/or dad’s attention and affection.

Other things arise such as denial over a parent’s condition. Siblings who are unable to accept the reality of a parent’s illness and refuse involvement may be protecting themselves from facing a parent’s eventual death and their own loss. This causes the active family caregivers to react with resentment, bitterness, and anger.

What is seen in families is that discord surfaces from the unequal division of caregiving duties. Usually, it is one adult child or sibling that carries the primary role of caregiving for mom or dad. This may be because he or she lives closest to a parent, is perceived as having less work or fewer family obligations, or is considered the “favorite” child. When this situation occurs, it can lead the overburdened primary caregiver feel frustrated and resentful and other siblings to feel uninformed and left out.

Go to http://www.caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=868

For help when caring for an aging relative at home go to Expert Home Care and call 800-848-2336.

*Better Business Bureau – BBBOnLine Participation Confirmed For Expert Home Care, Inc. meets all BBBOnLine participation and Better Business Bureau membership standards and is authorized to display the BBBOnLine trustmark.

Continued from our posting date August 13th – Estate Planning for New Jersey Seniors

The place seniors should start is with a complete financial inventory. This includes taking not of income, assets, expenses and even liabilities. Talk about what the senior is interested in long term. Is retirement living an option or will the family home be sold. These are important questions that should be worked out early on before a situation arises. Finally, determine what kind of insurance the senior will have as well as how much money for retirement.

Also, discuss a senior life settlement. This is an option for seniors who want to sell their life insurance policy for more than the cash value the life insurance company would give them to cash out. This means seniors can sell life settlements and get money to live their retirement on and the individual who bought the insurance policy will simply cash it out upon death.

Before making any of these serious decisions it is important for seniors to discuss their options with a professional. Lawyers well versed in senior matters or financial planers are two great resources for seniors to have their legal questions answered and to receive the help they need planning their retirement. Most of the time using an expensive attorney will be expensive in the short run but it will result in major savings down the road and is worthwhile.

Michael FitzPatrick reminds us why women need to pay close attention to planning for their future.. the long term care future.  He asks a provocative question…  ”When visiting nursing homes in America, what do you see? More specifically WHO do you see in nursing homes?”

Thinking back when visiting my dad living with Alzheimer’s, I remember seeing more women.  “Why do you suppose that is?”, asks Michael FitzPatrick. 

We can only assume why there are more women in nursing homes is because women out live their mates, and we don’t plan for our on future. “Men”, as Michael shared, “don’t plan for their future…, why do you think?” Michael believes it’s because most men KNOW they will be taken care of by their family.. usually the wife first, and then the adult children.

Reasons there is a disproportionate number of women in nursing homes -

• Women live no longer
• Family is no longer close to provide care for aging relative
• Increasing number of women remain single and childless
• Women have no financial plan in place

2008 Statistics on Long Term Care for Women

• Average life expectancy is 84
• Social Security provides 40% of all retiree’s income
• 12-15 million Americans need long term care now
• Between 65 and 70% of women work outside the home
• Divorce rates are on the rise – 1 out of 2 marriages end in divorce
• 25% of baby boomers don’t have children
• Family members can live across town & the country

Expert Home Care invites women in New Jersey to learn how better care for themselves in the future. Call Michael FitzPatrick at (973) 394-0053 or visit THE LTC Partnership at www.theltcpartnership.com.

 

Expert Home Care in New Jersey wants adult children to pay close attention to the early signs of Alzheimer’s and take proper action if you see a parent displaying one or serveral. Consult with a neurologist who specializes in dementia. A neurologist or an medical doctor who specializes in geriatrics will do the proper testings and evaluations to uncover Alzheimer’s or dementia early on. They will prescribe the right medications that help delay the progression of the disease. Hopefully the medications will help your aging parents and potentially keep them in that early stage for a longer period of time.

Memory loss that disrupts everyday life is not a normal part of aging – It may be a sign of Alzheimer’s disease, a fatal brain disease that gets worse over time and causes changes in thinking, reasoning and behavior. Although the disease is more common in people 65 and older, it can also strike those in their 30s, 40s and 50s.  Alz.org.

Visit us in a day or two when we give more information of the signs of the disease.

Expert Home & Live-in Care for seniors and elders in New Jersey.

Call us for help at 800-848-2336.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced plans to implement a one  to five star rating system for nursing homes to help consumers in New Jersey evaluate a nursing home’s quality when selecting a facility. The ratings would appear on the agency’s Nursing Home Compare Web site.

CMS will base the ratings on government inspection results and the staff data and quality measures. It is yet to be determined – if the ratings will include patients with dementia or those on ventilators.

CMS Administrator Kerry Weems believes the public is hungry for this type of information. And he adds, “lower ratings will likely put nursing homes on the path to improvement . . . I don’t think we’re going to see many people who are very anxious to put a loved one in a one star home.”

But the new rating system was criticized both by consumer advocates and the nursing home industry, for different reasons.

A senior policy attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, Toby Edelman, said that two of three criteria CMS plans to use for the ratings like staffing data and quality measures are “self reported by nursing facilities and are inaccurate.” Edelman said, “Relying on nursing homes to describe accurately how well they are doing . . . just doesn’t make sense”

The president of the American Health Care Association, Bruce Yarwood, a long term care industry trade group, criticized CMS’s use of government inspection results as criteria for the ratings and said CMS should consider consumer and staff satisfaction.

If you want your elder or senior living in New Jersey to continue living at home go to Expert Home Care and call us at 800-848-2336.

Frank Esposito and David Goodman, owners of Expert Home Care in NJ are Certified Senior Planners, members of the Society of Certified Senior Advisors. The Society works very hard educating professionals, like us, to work more effectively with our senior clients. We believe that the right kind of planning, recommendations and referrals can make aging a state to be savored instead of a fate to be feared. For us it means understanding the key health, social and financial factors that are important to seniors, and how these factors work together. 

To our families of aging seniors, knowing when the need for caregiving arises is key. Usually, it’s defined by functional ability, not by the age of your loved one. In our experience working with New Jersey seniors for the past 20+ years, most wish to remain independent. Seniors also wish to remain in control of their lives as long as possible. We’ve learned not to make generalizations when it comes to age. 

Determining if your NJ senior needs caregiving assistance will demand astute observation on the family member’s part. Also, you will need to ask revealing questions and pay attention to the telltale signs. It’s important to look for patterns of consistent neglect within the following:

• Basic tasks: difficult in walking, dressing, talking, eating, cooking, climbing steps, or managing medications
• Hygiene: infrequent bathing, unusually sloppy appearance, bad body/mouth odor
• Responsibilities: unopened mail, unpaid bills, unfilled prescriptions, unreadable checkbook, phone calls aren’t returned, low food supply, laundry is piled up, spoiled food in refrigerator
• Health: weight loss, appetite changes, difficulty swallowing, fatigue, burns, bruises, hearing loss, incontinence, spilling or dropping things (look for stains), sleeping too much or too little, dehydration
• Isolation: Lack of interest in friendships, hobbies, or activities; curtains drawn day and night, no access to transportation
• Attitude: sadness or talk of feelings of depression and despair, abuse of alcohol or drugs,  paranoia, refusal to communicate, unusual argumentativeness, verbal abuse
• Cognitive functions: consistent forgetfulness about where things are, getting lost walking or driving, confusion, loss of reasoning skills, difficulty answering questions, inability to find the right  word or complete a sentence, repetitive words or phrases, wandering, loss of sense of time or  season, forgetting how to use ordinary things like a pencil, consistently forgetting to turn off stove, close windows, or lock doors.

Pay attention to these signs – these are the telltale signs that give you information that you seek. Visit our next posting when we give tips on “how to bring up the home care help talk”.

If you need more help determining whether your loved one needs caregiving at home, please call us at 800-848-2336 or visit Expert Home Care New Jersey.