The Care Girl Podcast
The Care Girl Podcast
Laying the Groundwork for Elderly Parent Care
When the reality of caring for an aging parent suddenly dawns on you, it can feel like navigating through a maze without a map. As Alexandria the Care Girl, with over a decade of experience in the home care industry, I've seen firsthand the turmoil that unpreparedness can bring. This episode is your beacon through the fog, packed with heartfelt guidance and professional advice to help you preempt the care challenges that come with an aging loved one.
Listen as I recount a family's story of being caught off guard, emphasizing the critical need for a proactive approach. I'll walk you through the essential steps for managing your parent's well-being, from the importance of family discussions to the benefits of a comprehensive care assessment by professionals like my team. You'll gain practical advice on initiating those tough conversations about care needs and discover how to create a robust plan that includes managing financial and medical arrangements. I offer actionable strategies to ensure you're providing the best care possible, all while maintaining the family bond and respect for your parents' autonomy. Join me for an episode that could change the course of your family's journey, offering peace of mind and a sense of control in the twilight years of your loved ones' lives.
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Hello, hello, hello everyone. It's Alexandria the care girl. I am coming on to talk about how to prepare for the care of an aging parent. For those who don't know me, I have a home care agency located in Atlanta, georgia. I've been in home care over a decade and I'm just coming on to kind of give a little bit of advice on how to prepare for your aging parent, because there is a lot of confusion on what to do and how to do it, and I've seen families go through a lot of different issues and problems from not preparing, go through a lot of different issues and problems from not preparing. So I thought I would be uphill and I'm coming on to just talk about those things. So I know people will be trickling in.
Speaker 1:Once again, I'm the care girl. So I just want to start off with a little bit of a story, because I think that some people don't believe that their parents will age and that is not the case at all. Some, you know, sometimes it happens sooner than later. Even I've even seen parents age and they're very well until age like 99. And then, you know, then they may have some type of issues. But I'm here to kind of just answer some questions, if anybody dropped any questions in the chat, but also to give you a take on what I have seen in the industry and how to really really see your parents off to a great start when it comes to them aging. So I recently went into a home and the family didn't understand the need of care and they didn't understand what to do because the parents had apparently been out of touch. So sometimes you do have family where the kids or the adult children they're not in good relationship with the parent and that is understandable. But in the event where you are the only person left in line to actually care for that person, I just would advise that you kind of really be closer to them or you appoint maybe a care agency like mine to oversee the care, because what we can do is we can actually bring a registered nurse in and assess the need and a lot of times family caregivers or the adult children they're busy, you know, in their life just doing different things and they don't understand the severity of the situation until you know there is, you know, death or you know God forbid, you know hospitalization or you know rehab or situation to where they're like, oh wow, like you know they really can't live on their own. So what I want to do today is kind of reverse engineer how we can handle a situation like that.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that I want to say is that there always should be some type of meeting of the minds when it comes to an aging parent. You know, this could be 65 plus, this could be 50 plus. Parent, you know, this could be 65 plus, this could be 50 plus 55 plus. It just really depends, because if your loved one already has a diagnosis such as, you know, cancer or you know, chronic diabetes like for me it was my grandmother my grandmother had multiple sclerosis and she needed, eventually need, total care. So my mother was spearheaded you know the meeting of the minds of that and she was. She ended up, you know, bringing in a care agency and different caregivers to help her as, as she went along the journey of multiple sclerosis, which could be very trying and, you know, debilitating, right. So you know, god forbid that there's a diagnosis of some sort that earlier than 65. And then you have to take over the parents financial bank accounts, you have to take over the actual care of the doctors, arranging doctors, because eventually my grandmother wasn't able to use her, use her hands, so. So that means that you have to have somebody there from start to finish in order to receive the care that you need.
Speaker 1:So let's say that there's no diagnosis of any kind and you're just going to have a meeting of the minds of all the children inside of that parent's home, right? So this could be Thanksgiving, this could be just a normal, you know, family reunion of the children, and you come in together and the way you start the conversation is you say, hey, you know, you guys are aging and you just want to be ahead of things. We would like to know can we, you know, create some type of Google Doc that you share with all of us, or you share with, you know, with Sherry? Sherry's the oldest Like. So Sherry is going to take on the responsibility of keeping ahead of different things, such as you know, hey, when is your last doctor's appointment?
Speaker 1:Because a lot of times, our parents are not going to the doctor.
Speaker 1:It just really depends on, you know, they could be living out in the country, or they could just not believe in the doctor because, because that they are, they lived in a different time than us, where they had all these different remedies and you know they could be afraid of the doctor doctors such as a lot of older males that I've seen like they don't want to deal with doctors because they may have had a bad experience or they think that it's just a rip-off, um.
Speaker 1:And in that case, you know, there there are different practitioners that may be willing to come into the home, um to do some type of um of medical workup, so you can get a baseline, which a baseline means like the basis of of you know their health. You know, because you may discover high blood pressure and they're not taking anything for high blood pressure. You may discover something that's high cholesterol. That way, you know, if you discover these things early enough, it doesn't cause a heart attack and you can say hey, mom, I saw that on your doctor's visit that your cholesterol was high, your blood pressure was high, so you're not on any medications for either of these things. So I think that we need to discuss getting on a medication for these things. That way, you know, we can combat it causing.