The most important task you should do if you are ever faced with the issue of care giving, is to educate yourself. You will need to take a look at what it will actually take for your given situation; to take a look at your own health, skills and your limitations; to take a look at and review any and all the available financial resources; and to look at and identify any other resources available to you and the person you are wanting to care for and their needs.
This article will help you assess the care giving decision process, and it will give you some suggestions on some of the ways to make your care giving situation go smoothly for everyone involved.
1. You will want to start off by looking at and identifying the real needs of the person or persons in need of care. There are some basic questions you will want to ask yourself if the person you will be caring for is older or disabled.
Does the person need physical or hands-on care?
Can the person you are thinking about caring for call 911?
Can the person you are thinking about caring for remember to take their medication?
If the person you are thinking about caring for able to tell you when there is something wrong?
Is it easy for the person you are thinking about caring for to take care of themselves when using the toilet?
Is the person you are thinking about caring for able to leave the house alone?
Is the person you are thinking about caring for able to dress themselves.
Is the person you are thinking about caring for able to cook, clean, or balance their checkbook?
These questions will help you to clarify what you might have to do to take care of this person. Different people have different needs and some may even require you to check in only once a day to help them around the house. Others may need you to be there on a regular basis. You will need to listen closely to the person needing the care and be sure you include them as much as possible in the decision-making process.
It's essential that you get the input of a health professional who is familiar with the situation or the health issues involve and that the health professional can do a complete evaluation of the physical and mental health of the person needing care and determine what is required. You will want to contact doctors, social workers, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and even speech therapists, to talk to them about your own circumstances, because they work with care giving situations on a regular basis. There is another option you have and that is to consult with a geriatric care manager (GCM), this is a person who is trained in conducting assessments of potential care giving situations and they can give you the help you will need to prepare you for the role of caregiver. It's possible that there other public and private agencies that can offer consultations. These include your Area Agencies on Aging, your local hospitals or nursing homes, and your city or your county agencies.
Ask the health professionals to be realistic even though it can be hard to hear just how much care a relative or loved one may need. To make the best choice for everyone, it is important that you know a history of strokes, paralysis, the inability to talk, the inability to be safe when alone, and the inability to get in and out of bed or to the toilet without help. These things should be red flags as to the fact that the person you are thinking about caring for may need round the clock care.
There will be different issues if you are being asked to care for a child or children.
2. Step two is to assess your ability to provide the kind of care that will be involved. You will want to examine your own skills and limitations and determine how your arthritis might affect the care you are able to give. You will want to ask yourself some basic questions such as these:
What about my life, would I have to change it or stop doing some of the activities or could I modify it if I took on this new responsibility?
Am I in the best physical health possible to take it on?
Do I need surgery, such as joint replacement, first?
If caring for this person involves moving them from a bed to a wheelchair, should I be doing that?
If injections are needed, are my hands in good enough shape to give them without shaking?
Can I, if necessary, make my way up or down a flight of stairs?
Can I shuttle the person to medical appointments?
How tired does my arthritis make me?
Would I be able to continue with the self-care activities that are so important for managing my arthritis?
Could I do some of the care giving if someone else were willing to share the responsibility with me?
You will also want to consider whether there will be any kind of back-up plan, not just for the days when you are not feeling well but also to allow you time off to go out in the evening or to go on a vacation. Be sure that you are honest with yourself about what the impact of your arthritis will have on your care giving. Also, keep in mind that if you develop any physical problems as a result of the care giving, it could have a negative impact not only on you but the person you are caring for and on your family member who might have to care for you in the future.
You will want to get the opinion of your doctor on how much you are honestly able to do. To make care giving with arthritis a little easier, your doctor might suggest a specialist such as a physical or occupational therapists, who can recommend some exercises, techniques, and other various other self-help aids. You may, for example, be fitted for a hand or wrist brace to make it easier for you to give injections or an occupational therapist may also be able to give you some energy saving strategies to reduce your fatigue.
3. Now that you have assessed the needs of the person needing care and your own situation, you will want to explore the financial resources that are available. You will want to ask yourself these questions:
How much money is there?
How can the money that is available be used carefully to help both you and the person needing care?
Is there long-term happinesslifetime.com care insurance available?
Are there any resources that can be accessed, such as a real estate that could be sold?
Is there a possibility of a reverse mortgage?
It might be a good idea to enlist the help of a professional such as an elder-care lawyer, an accountant, or a real estate agent. Not surprisingly, financial resources are usually the driving force of care giving decisions. Unfortunately, how much money and insurance coverage a person has is what is going to determine the type of help available. Checking for Medicaid eligibility can help if your finances are limited. It's a shame that finances play such an enormous role in any caregiving decision but the reality is, they do.
4. Educate yourself on the other resources that are available to you because they will play an important role in the care decisions. There are ways to supplement care that is given at home, such as hiring a part-time home health aide, or arranging for a physical or occupational therapists to visit. Classes are available from the Red Cross, hospitals and other organizations. You can get help from a geriatric care manager with putting together a plan for care, including advice on how to properly equip your house or apartment for care giving. You can contact a local hospital or Area Agency on Aging for more information.
Be sure to look into something called respite care, which is there to give you a break or a brief vacation from you responsibilities of care giving. When you have arthritis these breaks are very important and necessary. Respite care can be a friend or relative filling in for you for a couple of hours every day to a few days a month, but you also have trained respite care providers who can take over for you at specific, planned times. Also, there are centers where you can drop people off for a few hours; sort of an adult day care, this way you can spend some time taking care of yourself. You won't be neglecting your responsibilities, instead, you could look at it as taking the time to recharge your energy and reducing the stress that can come from care giving.
Learning about and visiting care giving facilities, even if you want to keep the person you're caring for at home can be a good idea. These visits can give you and your loved ones a glimpsed into the possible future resources available to you. You have many options, including the many different types of nursing home care, apartments for seniors and/or the disabled, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and Alzheimer units. The thing about some of these alternatives is that they have terrific facilities and they can be more fun than staying home alone.
Other resources to explore are your family and friends. You can coordinate a family-and-friend conference with a social worker to discuss how everyone might be able to help. If it's possible, make sure that one person ends up coordinating the efforts. There are so many ways that you can offer support to someone with physical and mental problems, even if you can't physically care for them and looking at a list of those possibilities with family and friends could get them involved as well. You, friends and family could do one or more of these things: shop, clean, or cook for the person, hire and oversee home health care aids, drive the person to the doctor, help to educate the person about their health issues, help to sell the person's house, or do the person's taxes. You can also offer companionship and support by being a regular visitor.
Legal responsibilities are another possibility but only if the person needing care gives you a durable power of attorney which gives you the right to make financial and legal decisions for that person, even if they become mentally incompetent. Or the person may make you what is called a health-care agent or "health-care proxy," which entitles you to make health-related decisions for someone when they become unable to make their own decisions. There are rules that govern power-of-attorney and health-care proxy documents that differ from state to state, so it would be wise to get an elder-care lawyer to draft them. Another role you might assume is an executor of a person's will.
In conclusion, when you look back on these activities, you can see that there are many different ways to help the person who needs care even though not all of these will be necessary, and many of then are less likely to put a strain on your physical health. You might even decide that it would be easier to keep a job outside the home and just hire someone else to help with the care giving.
It's not uncommon for one person to assume and even be expected to do all the care giving for other family members. It seems that it is traditionally a role that falls most often to the women in the family and sometimes, there will be people older and younger than you who need caring for. Most times you will have a family member who lives some distance away who are the not involved in the day-to-day activities that will want to have a say in how the care will be handled, be aware of these people, because they will have an opinion but they aren't really interested in helping. When these opinions seem like they are going to make your life harder, you will want to take a closer look at the idea and consider asking the person making the suggestion to lend a hand. There will some instances where you may just need to be firm and just say No. Keep everyone informed and on track as much as possible, and even though these communications can lead to some suggestions that will be unwanted, it will make it less likely that someone will feel left out or ignored. The person who is doing most of the work and has the most responsibilities, should be comfortable with the plan.
Feelings of guilt and family pressure can lead you to take on more responsibilities for care giving than you are really able to do, try not to let this happen. Try to think carefully and examine all your options. There are few people who can do it all, and whether you like it or not, how much you can do will be influenced by your arthritis.
Angela Carter is owner of Coastal Health Information Services in Savannah, GA. Visit her website at coastalhealthinfoservicedotcom.wordpress.com coastalhealthinfoservicedotcom.wordpress.com or her blog at chisarthritisinfo.blogspot.com chisarthritisinfo.blogspot.com
You should read as much as you can about your condition. If you want to know more about coping with a chronic condition.
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