If one or both of your parents or another aging loved one had not pre-purchased Critical Illness or Long-Term Care insurance, nor has the financial means for outside care at a professional seniors' facility, he or she might not be able to afford seniors' living quarters with the proper level of necessary assistance. In this case you may decide to care for the elder on your own. You certainly will be adding value to a parent's lifestyle, or another older individual when you take on caring for them daily. There will be inevitable stresses and strains, with the added life-responsibilities that attend this caring. Moreover this noble, caring work needs to be achieved in your same limited and pressing time schedule—every day. So let us examine the physical, mental, relational, and financial factors of caring for an elder, including:
• Security, welfare, and safety issues while having your elder about your home, or in an adjacent in-law/parent apartment while you may be at work, or out with your children or spouse
• You may want to entertain guests, while your mother or father innocently feels they would like to be included in your social entertaining, even when you may be single and dating
• You may feel it is courteous to include your elder at mealtime, but he or she may have different eating habits and food lifestyles, or conversely, he or she may insist on inclusion when you need privacy or time alone
• There may be needs for special diets as for diabetics
• Medications may need monitoring and administration; if your elder and you are coordinating medication, there can be natural memory failures and the elder may get over or under-medicated
• Seniors can be very demanding when aging, and they might request hours of attention, or need communication due to loneliness; and you may not be able to cope with what seems like a strain on your time, however blameless, when they just need love; and this can stress out an otherwise joyful relationship
• You may feel over-worked; especially if you work full-time and go home to care for another adult
• Housework may build up, doubling your workload at home
• There will be additional costs for utilities such as increased heating, fuel and/or electricity expenses
• You may need to transport the elder to doctors' appointments, shopping, church, or to visit friends, etc.
• You may need to attend to, and monitor their health especially if they catch a virus such as the flu or a cold, simple common diseases that could cause the death of an elder; or quarantine them to protect them from an illness you may have
• You may feel you can't find time to exercise, golf, ski, or go to the cinema due to the above time busters—in short your own life might feel like it is on hold
• You may need to balance the time you spend with your immediate family, such as doing homework with your children, or going to their hockey game, etc.
• You or your elder may have differing religious beliefs causing friction if there is not mutual spiritual appreciation, and tolerance for each other's religion. They will be living in the environment of your lifestyle; for example one of you may disdain smoking, alcoholic beverages, dance parties, rock music, etc.
• You may feel like a failure if you can't handle this second job as an ongoing caregiver and may feel you've let someone down, including yourself, when not being able to meet your own or another's high expectations, or needs, or you miss intimate dates with your kids, spouse, or another friend
• You may have increasing work to do as your elder becomes weaker, frail and less able to live independently; it doesn't get easier
• You may need to gather great reams of information and become informed as to medical conditions or locate resources for them, while seeking to keep them comfortably happy
• You may need to establish agreements, by negotiation if necessary, with others involved
• You'll need to get a living will in place in case the elder has a health emergency
• You may become the anticipated executor of this elder as they depend on you to know everything about their possessions; that now are stored, or on shelves in your home; thus you may have the added pressure of seeking an alternative executor (such as a sibling)
• Elder-care and healthcare decisions are not easily made; you may need to hire a lawyer; set time aside for meetings with siblings; thus decisions can be put off or made in haste under time constraints. If there is no health, Long-term Care or Critical Illness insurance to create money for medicine or to financially support your elder during an immediate unanticipated health crisis, you'll feel responsible—and perhaps guilty—because you did not have time to assess or deal with concerns
• There may be an expensive (and in some cases unaffordable) need for construction in the home to allow for a disability such as a stroke that necessitates wheel chair ramps
• Take the time to discuss these issues, as well as the financial resources or insurance protection they may own, when the elder is in good health and able to maintain a positive attitude about aging and their overall needs
• It may be overwhelmingly surprising when a health crisis occurs; the onset of needing to speedily learn about health resources, medications, surgery, new treatments, exercises for rehabilitation; and possible repeat trips to a hospital; and do all this on your current time and fiscal budget
• You may need to keep an aged adult from driving if they lose their license and encourage them if they get discouraged over certain losses of freedom they have been used to having all their life
• You may need to move to an alternate living arrangement, as your financial expenses may increase; thus arrange for any financial help from the elder as far as is fair and possible, and other relatives to fill the fiscal gap
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