Lder Care, LLC, 8729 W 1700N, Elwood, IN (2025)

05/06/2024

The icky stuff!

A couple of months after Mom had her stroke, we made the decision to move her out of the nursing home so that she could live with family. As the time for Mom's move approached, the nursing staff went through the process of teaching us family members the basics of providing care. They covered a number of subjects such as fall safety, avoiding bedsores, wheelchair transfers, feeding and such.

Eventually the time came for us to learn "personal care". I remember the look on the nurse's face as she looked over our small group and said seriously "Anyone here who's squeemie (squeamish) should leave now!". I was, in fact, very "squeemie", but there was no turning back. I probably hadn't seen my mom naked since I was about five, and there I was learning how to bathe, toilet, and clean her up. Fortunately the staff was patient, and we learned the necessary skills.

Anyone taking on the role of caregiver is going to have to learn to deal with various icky body excretions, it just goes with the job. P*e, p**p, snot, vomit, it's a veritable cornucopia of grossness. Depending on the level of care your dependent requires, you may have to deal with any and/or all of these delights!

The good news is this: it's amazing how quickly we humans can adapt to situations! What at first seems almost unbearable quickly becomes routine.

One of the nurses taught me a mental "hack" that really helped me adapt, and I'll pass it on to you: imagine that you are taking care of a baby, not an adult. Surprisingly it wasn't too much of a mental stretch. After all, as an elderly person's mental faculties decline, they can often become quite childlike in personality. Something about thinking of a cute sweet cuddly baby while doing a "dirty job" makes me feel better about doing it. I hope it helps you too!

I hope this post doesn't discourage you readers from taking on the role of caregiver if you're considering it. It's a necessary part of the job, and once it becomes routine it's just not that bad. If I can do it, so can you!

05/05/2024

I put up a new post on the ldercare website today. I’ll post it here tomorrow.

04/21/2024

You can't pour from an empty glass!

Caring for a loved one can be exhausting and often frustrating. But we have to take care of ourselves first.
Have you ever ridden on an airline and listened to the flight attendant's safety briefing? He always tells the adult passengers to secure their own oxygen masks before assisting children with theirs.
This may seem like a harsh attitude, but when you think about it, it makes sense. Sometimes we can be so focused on meeting the needs of others that we end up incapacitated ourselves, rendering us incapable of helping those for whom we are responsible.
My elderly mother is a day sleeper, and so has difficulty sleeping at night. This creates a real difficulty for my wife and I who are on typical daytime schedules. When Mom is at our house she is prone to calling loudly for us at all hours of the night- for inconsequential matters such as asking us to pick up a dropped tissue, or asking how the stock market is doing (at 2am!). After several nights of this, we realized that this just wasn't going to work. Brenda and I were stumbling around like zombies all day, cranky and disoriented from sleep deprivation. Changes had to be made.
After some trial and error, and consulting with health care professionals, we adopted some new processes:
- We sit down every night before bedtime with Mom and remind her of the importance of allowing us to get a good night's sleep.We try to make her understand that we are available to help in case of a medical emergency, but otherwise please let us sleep.
-Background noise seems to help Mom relax, so we leave a TV on at low volume within her sight and hearing.
- Worked with Mom's primary care doctor to adjust her meds to give her the best chance to be sleepy during the night.
We still have some bad nights, but we have a lot of good ones too. Bottom line, these measures have allowed us to continue helping Mom while retaining our sanity.

04/02/2024

Who we are, and what we're about:

On April 25, 2021, our lives changed. My 77 year old mother (Monica & Lori's grandmother) suffered a severe stroke, leaving her unable to care for herself in any way. After an extended hospital stay, we tried moving Mom to a nursing facility. In short, the nursing home route was a disaster- remember, the world was in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. The facility was constantly short staffed and unable to provide adequate care, and physical therapy was unsuccessful. In a short time, it became obvious that Mom was not thriving, and we needed to make a change. Accordingly, we made the decision to care for Mom ourselves, as a family at the homes of my sister and I.

To say that we were unprepared for this responsibility would be a gross understatement, and thus began a learning experience which continues to this day. Thanks to the advice and assistance of many qualified health care professionals, we have somehow managed to keep Mom as comfortable and happy as possible given her circumstances. Along the journey we have learned a great deal about home health care, and we still have much to learn.

Lder Care, LLC
Through our dealings with various health care professionals, we learned that there are many families facing the same challenges that we have dealt with over the past three years, and few definitive resources for families to access. To address this need, the four of us have partnered to form Lder Care, LLC. Our purpose is to provide information, resources and products tailored to serve the needs of families learning to care for elderly and/or disabled persons. Much of our content will be free to use and share, because we understand the financial challenges that families face when undertaking their home care journey.

Thank you for joining us, stay tuned for much more coming in the near future!

Monica, Lori, Dave and Brenda

Address

8729 W 1700N
Elwood, IN
46036

Website

http://ldercare.com/

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