LTS Caregivers and Their Stories

Here at Long Term Solutions, we support caregivers and we are caregivers. Many LTS employees are the primary caregivers for an ailing or aging loved one. They have first-hand experience with caregiving, and know what about the different emotions involved with caregiving.They've experienced the joys that come with caregiving, and they've also endured the hardships. Meet four of our employees below. Click on their names to read their full stories.

Click here to meet Brenda.
"What I really love about working on the administrative side of Long Term Solutions is that at the end of the day I know the work we do is helping someone," explained Brenda. "At the other end of the phone or on the other end of the assessment is someone who we’re helping. There’s a person behind every claim number." Caregiving is something Brenda has been doing full-time since 2000, and, because of this, she is really able to relate to the adult caregivers she talks to on the phone every day.'"

Click here to meet Karen.
"The greatest joy is watching him smile, when he smiles," said Karen about her father-in-law. "I tell my husband – I just live for that."

Laughter is one thing about caregiving that brings joy to Karen. Another is taking her father-in-law out to eat fried clams at Red Wing Diner just down the street from her house. The third is having conversations with him.

Click here to meet Debbie.
 "Where’s the nurse?" demanded a young and visibly stressed doctor. Debbie was in a hospital room with her mother and two other nurses. Her mother had developed the flu and pneumonia simultaneously, and they were at the ER for the second time.

"No, where’s the nurse? The family member who is a nurse," he insisted.

 The nurses looked at each other, confused. Debbie was the nurse he was referring to, but she remained silent.

Click here to meet Nancy.
"She was just sobbing. She walked down the hall of her nursing home and told every nurse and patient ‘my husband has died… did you know my husband died?'" remembers Nancy. Nancy and her brother had just told their mother that their father and her husband had died. Nancy's mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease five years ago, and her husband had been the primary caregiver for almost four years. But in September 2011 he fell ill and within four months Nancy lost him to renal failure.

Flu Outbreak is Incredibly Dangerous for the Elderly

In Massachusetts, the Mayor of Boston has declared the flu outbreak a public health emergency. According to the release, there have been 700 cases of the flu since October. This is ten times the number of individuals diagnosed with the flu at this time last year. Sadly, the release goes on to say that all four of the individuals who have passed away because of the flu were elderly.

For the elderly population, the flu is incredibly dangerous. Often times, senior communities and elder care facilities will have to quarantine their residents during an outbreak. The reason the flu is so dangerous is because they are at a much higher risk for flu related complications. Anyone over 65 is considered in the high risk category because the immune system weakens with age. Additionally, individuals with chronic illnesses are also considered to be at a higher risk for complications. Many elderly individuals are also dealing with chronic illnesses, so this puts many of them at an incredibly high risk. When these high risk individuals develop the flu, it can result in serious complications such as:

 - Pneumonia
- Bronchitis
- Respiratory infections
- Respiratory failure
- Death

The best defense against the flu is the vaccine. Encourage anyone you know who is over 65 to get the vaccine. Additionally, early recognition of flu symptoms in any elderly loved ones is one of the best ways to prevent complications. If your elderly loved one starts complaining of the following symptoms, they may be developing the flu.

 - Fever
- Chills
- Fatigue
- Loss of appetite
- Muscle aches
- Sore throat

If your elderly loved one starts experiencing these symptoms, contact their doctor immediately. Aside from complications from the flu, colds in general can cause dehydration. Be sure to keep your elderly loved one hydrated with drinks and nutritious soups.

If you are a caregiver or interact with any elderly on a regular basis, be sure to follow several precautions to keep yourself and your loved ones safe from the flu.

- Wash your hands regularly and thoroughly
- Keep your hands away from your face, especially your eyes, nose and mouth
- Cover your moth when coughing
- Avoid any friends who may be suffering from the flu

If you want more information about the flu, take a look at the CDC’s website dedicated to the Seasonal Flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

Preparing Your Elderly Loved One for the Winter

Every year, we write about winter safety for the elderly. Why? It’s an incredibly important topic, for a couple of reasons. First, the harsh storms and cold weather associated with winter can be very dangerous for the elderly. Secondly, there is a lot of preparation work that needs to be done in and around the home to prepare for winter. This work can be physically taxing and difficult for the elderly, and they may not be able to complete it before winter sets in.

Tips for keeping outside walkways safe and clear: 

 • To avoid falls, put canisters full of kitty litter, sand, salt and gravel at the top of each set of outside stairs. This way, your elderly loved one can easily throw the mixture over any icy patches.

• Contact your elderly loved one’s neighbors. If you can’t be there following a snow storm, have their phone numbers handy and ask them to check on your senior. In addition, pay the neighbor’s son to shovel your ailing or aging loved one’s walkways after a storm.

• Go through your elderly loved one’s home and check all outside railings. Make sure that they are sturdy and that your elderly loved one can easily grab on to on them while walking on anything slippery.

Tips for preparing the house for winter:

• Give your elderly loved one extra blankets, scarves, hats and mittens. This way, if the heat goes out they will still remain warm.

• Check carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, and replace any old batteries.

• Have a professional check the heating system in your elderly loved one’s home. In addition to that, clear any clutter away from heating vents to prevent fires.

General safety tips:

• Stock up on non-perishable goods, and have at least a few gallons of water in an easily accessibly place.

• Make sure that all batteries in flashlights have been replaced, and make sure that candles and matches are easily accessible.

• Lastly, ensure that your elderly loved one has an extra prescription of any necessary medications available in case they get snowed in.

The most important thing to remember is to stay in constant communication with your ailing or aging loved one!

Why is caregiving especially important to employers during the holidays?

As we’ve discussed before, it’s nearly impossible to separate work life and personal life – especially when you are a caregiver. This becomes even more apparent during the holidays. For caregivers, this time of the year can be especially stressful. For employers, this translates into lost productivity, absenteeism and decreased profits as caregivers face emotional upset, stress and physical exhaustion.

Emotional Upset

How does it affect caregivers? Any caregiver can tell you that they’ve experienced guilt, and this can become worse during the holidays. Many caregivers experience guilt about disrupting the schedule of their ailing or aging loved one, not spending enough time with their family, and guilt about taking time to themselves. In addition to that, family events can bring up sadness and old wounds. Having all family members in one spot can remind people of how much has changed, and cause them to wish for the “good old days.” The holidays can be a very emotional time for caregivers.

How does it affect businesses? The caregivers who are feeling all of these difficult emotions need to feel supported by their employers during this difficult time. In an unsupported work environment, caregivers can easily feel overwhelmed, and this can result in absenteeism.

Stress

How does it affect caregivers? With holidays, there seems to be a never-ending list of to-do’s. For caregivers, this can be an issue because many caregivers have a strict schedule that they follow while providing care for their ailing or aging loved one. This schedule helps them to fulfill all of their caregiving responsibilities as well as their responsibilities to their employer, their family, and their friends. The holidays quickly interrupt to this schedule. These disruptions in this schedule cause stress for the caregiver and for the person they are providing care for.

How does it affect businesses? Employers are impacted because these high stress levels can result in presenteeism. Presenteeism is when an employee is physically at work, but they are not working at their highest potential. This is common among caregiver employees because they have an incredible amount of stress in all aspects of their life. Caring for somebody can be incredibly difficult, and during the holidays this stress is increased.

Physical Exhaustion

How does this affect caregivers? With all of the commitments around the holidays, caregivers can become physically exhausted. It’s exhausting for caregivers to maintain their responsibilities to their ailing or aging loved one, their employer and their family.

How does this affect businesses? Once again, this physical exhaustion can result in abseenteeism and presenteeism.

What can employers do? Employers can support their employees with programs such as WeCare+. At Long Term Solutions, we know how to work with caregivers and we are experts in eldercare. We will work with any caregiver employees you have and help them develop a plan of care and support them during their time as a caregiver. To learn more about WeCare+, visit our website by clicking here.

How does WeCare+ help? Part I

Unless you have experience dealing with an elder care situation, it can be hard to completely understand just how complicated and overwhelming these situations can be. Here at Long Term Solutions, we work with caregivers on a daily basis. We understand how to support these caregivers, and guide individuals through these elder care crises. How can WeCare+ do this? Here's a story about Brian Smith, who's ailing mother is a plane ride away from him.

Brian Smith lives in San Diego, California, and far away from his elderly mother, Linda. She has mild dementia, and ever since his father passed away, he has been constantly worrying about her living alone. He wished he could be geographically closer to her, but that wasn’t an option with his career. Fortunately, she had been doing fine. She lived in a nice little apartment in Lantana, Florida. She had a part-time job at a little boutique downtown, and she had been able to independently manage everything from finances to grocery shopping.

Lately, it seemed like things weren’t quite right. Brian received several calls from her friends voicing concerns that she seemed slightly different. She had been missing lunches and not keeping in touch with them as regularly as she had; something was off. It seemed strange because whenever he spoke to his mom on the phone she said things were great. She admitted to missing a lunch or two, but she dismissed it as nothing more than that. Then Brian received a call from her employer, and he knew something was different. His mother had lost her job. She had missed work and was acting uncharacteristically. Brian didn’t have the freedom or time off from his job to fly out to Florida. He wasn’t quite sure that he would know what to do if he was there. He needed someone who was an expert in assessing and planning elder care. In addition to that, he wanted someone local. They needed to be able to visit his mother in her home. He looked for a solution, and he found WeCare+.

New Technology for Caregivers: Planning with Apps

Caregivers assume an incredible amount of responsibility and a majority of their responsibilities revolve around planning and keeping track of most, if not all, of their loved one’s care needs. Usually, this is in the form of tracking doctor’s appointments, managing their loved one’s medications, and keeping track of important documents.  Fortunately, with almost everyone using a smartphone, there are a lot of technologies out there that can help caregivers with this planning.

Keeping Track of Doctor’s Appointments:

It’s incredibly easy to lose those small business cards that doctor’s offices give out for appointments. This can be especially difficult for a caregiver trying to track multiple appointments with multiple physicians and specialists. Tracking all of the appointments in a day planner is an option, but remembering to bring the planner to every appointment can be difficult. However, planning applications, such as Google Calendar, can be a great asset. Appointments can be organized by color, so a certain specialist can be assigned a specific color. This calendar can be accessed from multiple platforms, and can be quickly pulled up while scheduling.

Managing Medications:

There are multiple medication management applications, and most app stores allow users to browse through screenshots and reviews before committing to one. There is a great application called RxmindMe Prescription. This is a perfect application for caregivers. The application allows caregivers to set up alerts on a daily, hourly, or weekly basis. The app allows caregivers to be as specific or as general as they want. For example, a caregiver could put in an alert that says “call mom to reminder her about heart medication,” or the reminder could be more specific and state “remind mom to take 15 mg of Doxycycline.”  The best part of this application is the “Prescriptions” feature. This allows caregivers to group specific medications in categories. For example, heart medication, could be broken down into Lasix and Advair. In addition to this, the caregivers can upload pictures of the pills and dosing instructions for each medication to ensure that they are providing their loved one with the correct medication.

General Caregiver Information:

Eldercare 911 is an app designed by Dr. Marion Somers who is a Geriatric Care Manager, and it’s an incredible asset to caregivers. This is an incredibly helpful app that is designed to provide caregivers with all of the information needed while in an eldercare crisis. There is information regarding what to do before the crisis occurs, at the hospital, while planning for discharge, post-hospital care and while in recovery at home. Under each one of these categories are several sub-categories with even more resources. For example, if a caregiver is preparing for the discharge of your loved one from the hospital, this app provides information on how to hire help for your home, dealing with feelings of being overwhelmed, understanding adaptive equipment and more.  It’s incredibly easy to navigate, and the amount of resources in this app is astounding.

Currently, all of these applications are free in the iTunes store. Caregivers may have to try a couple of applications before finding one that works for them, but, in the time that they will save in the long run, it’s worth adopting these technologies.

Caregiving and the Importance of Balanced Eating

Caregivers, you need to take care of yourself! One of the first steps towards doing this is maintaining a nutritionally balanced diet. Unfortunately, eating can be one of the first thing affected by caregiving. Eating an imbalanced diet can lead to malnutrition, erratic blood sugar levels, fat storage, fatigue and more. There are a couple of pitfalls that can impact how and when you eat. Be sure to know how to recognize these and avoid them.

First, most caregivers are guilty of skipping meals. A jam packed schedule and a never-ending to do list can quickly push meal time to last priority. The demands of the feeding schedule of the person you are taking care of can also impact how you support your own eating. When preparing meals and shopping constantly for someone else, it’s easy to forget your own nutritional needs. Try not to fall into the habit of forgetting yourself. It may not be easy, but do try preparing your meals ahead of time. If you can cook several meals for yourself on the weekend, you’ll be stocked and prepared to have well-balanced meals during the course of the upcoming week.

Secondly, eating and emotions are very closely linked. Light stress can induce extra eating, while extreme stress can cause one to avoid eating all together or eating too much. It’s safe to say that caregiving can include varying levels of stress. As a caregiver, you need to learn how to identify when these emotions are impacting your diet. Once you’re able to do so, you can avoid the emotional eating trap.

Remember, you have to take care of yourself in order to fully provide care for the one you love. This is not selfish, it is prudent. By taking care of yourself, you’re able to provide the best care for the one you love.

Work-Life Balance and Doctor's Appointments

There has been a lot of discussion about work-life balance for mothers, but does work-life balance exist for all caregivers?

One responsibility that caregivers regularly assume is bringing loved ones young and old to medical appointments. For caregivers caring for an aging or ailing loved one, these medical appointments can happen extremely frequently. This can cut into work hours, and the commute can sometimes be the least distracting part of the trip. Caregivers have to figure out how to transport their aging or ailing loved one, how to get them ready for the medical appointment, how to assemble all of their medical information,  think of questions to ask the medical staff, determine how to navigate any inaccessible buildings, and more. Caregivers have to juggle all of these concerns in addition to working full-time. What can be done to help? 

•  Keeping an open line of communication between the caregiver employee and their manager

• Flexible hours

• The option to work from home

• An eldercare support program 

• Supporting them with access to resources and support

Here at Long Term Solutions, we understand that even with these options, caregivers are still stressed. We help working caregivers achieve this balance. Through our signature program, WeCare+, we will work with families to assess their situation, develop a plan of care and guide them to resources that will support their needs.

Do you know anyone struggling with work-life balance as a caregiver? What kind of support and advice can you offer to them?

5 Tips for Saying 'No'

As a caregiver, you probably have a natural inclination to say yes to every request for your time and assistance. This blog post is going to serve as a friendly reminder that you don’t have to always say yes, and it is okay to say no. Here are some tips for saying no:

1. Appreciate how much time you’re dedicating to caregiving, and accept that you are very busy. Once you acknowledge your jam packed schedule, it will be easier to say no.

2. Take time to think about a request. It’s okay to tell a friend that you need to check your schedule and get back to them. Avoid impulsively saying yes to everything.

3. Accept the request, but reschedule it to fit into your schedule. Practice saying things such as “I’m sorry, I can’t help you on Friday, but I could give you a hand on Monday.”

4. Practice saying no. Start with little requests, and eventually you’ll feel more comfortable saying no.

5. Quiet that voice in your head and stop feeling guilty. People won’t think you are rude or selfish if you say no.