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ROKU AppA World Forever Changed: Caring for Elderly Parents
Written by Karen Meeker
An estimated 795,000 strokes occurred in the United States in 2010, often during sleep. The victims awoke to a world that had forever changed. So had the lives of their loved ones.
When Margaret awoke that morning at her sister Irene’s house, she didn’t realize that her life had forever changed. Sure, it was more of a struggle to get out of bed, but was that so unusual for a 91-year-old? She’d accepted the fact that her body would not always cooperate as it once had.
Finding her slippers, she started down the hall to begin her morning rituals. Only that day something was really different. One leg would not do what it was supposed to do, nor would her arm. And her speech was slurred.
Margaret had suffered a stroke.
My mother-in-law, a gentle, industrious person who was always busy doing something with her hands, found herself first in the hospital and then in rehab for three months. She obediently worked with therapists, stubborn in her determination to regain her mobility and her speech—but most of all, her independence.
Her efforts paid off, and she was able once again to return to her sister’s, albeit with the aid of a walker and therapy on a regular basis.
Then life threw her another nasty curve. Her beloved sister suffered a fatal blood clot on the brain, and Margaret found herself facing a moment she had dreaded. She could no longer live on her own. Accepting the inevitable, she came home with us and lived out her remaining years with dignity and grace.
While the end of Margaret’s life came slowly and gently without multiple trips to the emergency room or prolonged hospital or nursing home stays, not all people are so blessed. Families can find themselves having to make major decisions and assume responsibilities for loved ones for any number of reasons: strokes, heart attacks, accidents, the onset of major illnesses or simply the aging process. And many feel overwhelmingly unprepared.
Help for the unprepared
Author Jane Gross shares just such an experience in her poignant and helpful book, A Bittersweet Season (2011). Although her widowed mother did not suffer a stroke, she did have mounting health problems. Gross and her brother found themselves facing the task of overseeing their mother’s medical treatment and seeking ways to help her remain safely independent for as long as possible.
This often required time-consuming research (they both had full-time jobs) and on-site visits. Feeling their way along, they learned by trial and error. Gross, in particular, faced the frequent frustrations of bureaucracy and its accompanying paperwork. Following are some of the challenges she encountered:
- The need to locate a primary care physician for her mother.
- Learning how insurance policies work regarding trips to the emergency room, consulting with specialists, in- and out-of-network charges, deductibles and pay-outs.
- Understanding the differences between a will, a living will, a power of attorney and a health care proxy.
- Obtaining and furnishing a health-care directive to appropriate parties.
- Getting a list of medications and dosages, if any, and making them available to each new practitioner.
- Navigating through the maze of Medicare and Medicaid with all the accompanying rules and paperwork. Gross noted that at least 13 supporting documents were required when her mother was applying for Medicaid (p. 211) and that it can take upwards of a year for an application to go through.
- Managing finances.
- Investigating nursing homes and finding the right fit.
- Providing for transportation to various appointments.
- Being an advocate at all times.
Resources
If one chooses not to read A Bittersweet Season in its entirety (I warn you—it’s long but engaging), the “Resources” chapter alone in the back of the book (pp. 323-331) makes it an invaluable aid.
In this chapter, Gross categorizes numerous web addresses she has collected over time: government sites (e.g., Administration of Aging, https://www.acl.gov/programs); general information and research (e.g., National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, www.n4a.org); housing; caregiving; legal and financial concerns (e.g., American Bar Association, www.abanet.org); end of life; and Alzheimer’s disease, just to name a few.
She also began a blog, “The New Old Age” (http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/), that addresses the topics of aging, health, finances and relationships between parents and the adult children caring for them.
I’m forever grateful that my mother-in-law was able to be with us, rather than in a nursing home, until the end of her days. But if that had not been the case, I would have been so appreciative of such a source—one that could have given us the guidance, encouragement and experience that Jane Gross shares in her book, A Bittersweet Season.
Over the years Karen Meeker has seen friends thrust into the responsibility of seeing to a loved one’s affairs, often with no warning or with little preparation. She is thankful for resources that can help to alleviate their frustration and offer encouragement.
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