Episode Transcript:
Christina: Hi, and welcome to another episode of Life Conversations with Christina Chartrand.
David: And David Chandler. How are you Christina? I'm doing well. We're coming up on the holidays. What plans do you have for the holidays?
Christina: Well, I'm definitely gonna spend a little bit of time in Baltimore to spend some time with my mom and have a little holiday cheer with her. And then I will be home as well to spend time with my family here and my extended family here in Florida and a little bit of rest time after that. So I'm excited, how about you?
David: Yeah, we can all we can all be a little jealous of you in Florida. What is your weather going to be like for the holidays?
Christina: It's different when you're putting lights on palm trees. I'll have to say.
David: Yeah, I'm based in Houston, so I remember a few Christmases that we've had down here where I've been in shorts and a t-shirt, but it's been a little cooler recently. We're only in the 50s today, so that's cold for Houston. Ha ha ha.
Christina: Well, we're kind of chilly today at 65. 70, 70 maybe.
David: Yeah. And I'll be, I'll be having multiple dinners with family. And I was out in Baltimore recently with, with my family that lives out there. And, uh, so today I noticed some things that I even had some conversations with my parents about some safety risks that they have there in their home and things that I was nervous about. So today we're going to be talking about what does it look like when you are going to visit.
Christina: Really?
David: Mom or Dad or somebody in your family that's a senior. And you notice that from year to year, things are a little bit different than maybe when you visited during the last holiday season. And when you notice that, how do you respond? What do you do with this information that you're taking in?
Christina: It's not easy. Believe me, I've been there and then, you know, we see this at Senior Helpers on a regular basis. And I'm sure that we have people who are listening out there who talk to their aging parents on a regular basis. And what I find is, is what you hear on the phone and then you haven't seen them in six to nine months and what you see can be very different. And it can be upsetting.
David: Yeah.
Christina: You know, to walk in and to see your parents, your mom, your dad, or aging loved ones, and maybe you walk in and it's not as neat and tidy as it used to be. And maybe they're more frail and they're not dressing the way that they used to be, or you're maybe noticing confusion or forgetting things. And then you're thinking to yourself my gosh, I'm here for a celebratory visit and You've got a whole nother thing to think about now and that's not easy.
David: Yeah, I think about things like walking in and you were mentioning the house that's always clean. They've got now dishes in the sink and you're like, this is not like mom or you open up the fridge and there's expired food items in the fridge and you're thinking, yeah.
Christina: Or not enough food. That happened to me. I walked into my mom's place and I was like, where's the food?
David: Yeah.
Christina: And she hasn't been able to get to the grocery store.
David: Yeah. Do you have any other examples that you can think of times that, that you've w that at senior helpers that you've walked in and seen something in the holidays that you were like, Oh my gosh, we, this family was really shocked or, or surprised by what they found.
Christina: Yeah, I certainly have heard and personally seen some situations myself. And one was a situation where I walked into, and this was a friend of the family's home and I hadn't seen them for a really long time. And I had this, obviously it was over a year since the last time I saw them and I had this mental picture of how they would be when I walked into the house and what I walked in and saw was someone very frail and the apartment was more of a pathway versus where things all used to be put away neat and tidy. A pathway is kind of getting through the house, getting through the kitchen and the bathroom and you could tell the one place that they were sitting constantly is where all a lot of the things were being you know gathered around in that place.
And I just knew and there was a noter. Like there was, I was like, wait a minute. And I knew at that point that this really needed to make some big changes. How about you?
David: Yeah. Well, and I'm thinking generally, I can think of a couple of specific stories that, that to summarize them together. And one of the big things that we assess for at senior helpers is for how, or how seniors are managing their medical condition. And so if you're going in and one of the, that's one of the biggest reasons why seniors have hospitalizations. And if you're going in and you're seeing that mom or dad has always been on top of managing their meds, taking their medications timely, and you go in and you see while their pill box is missing days or their medications, their pill bottles are running out or they're empty.
Uh, that's, that's something else to really watch for and maybe have those conversations just to check in on, Hey dad, how are you doing with your taking your medications? Are you keeping up with it? Are you, if they're diabetic, are you keeping up with checking your blood sugars? Uh, are you, how's it going? I had that conversation with my dad. Um, when I was just up there last week, we're like, Hey dad, how are you doing with checking your blood sugars? How have they been? You know, especially around the holidays, we were eating some dessert. He was like, well, this is gonna make my blood sugar go up, but it's the holidays. So.
Christina: You know, it's so hard because I think once it's what's shocking when you walk in or it's kind of jarring to yourself and now you're thinking, what do I do? And I think what do I do is the hard part is the next steps. You know, how do I, how do I have that conversation? How do I, you know, make, you know, how do I start the conversation with my loved one? Who do I reach out to, to make any changes into the home? And that's something that we do here at Senior Helpers is what we look as we evaluate their level of what independence looks like. And I think it's really interesting to look at what independence looks like. What are some things that we talk about, David, when we think of what it takes for someone to stay independent in their own space?
David: Yeah, so there are some things that people may not be thinking about commonly. So something like getting their bills paid. How or if, if mom or dad is used to writing checks and still balancing a checkbook, then we may need to have those conversations with them about getting their bills set up for a lot electronic bill pay or, or having a, a caregiver take over that for them. Another one I think of is, we've talked a little bit about tidying up the house, keeping the house clean, also getting groceries. So we talked about in the fridge, do they have enough food?
Christina: Oh my God. Getting groceries in and then actually eating it and making healthy meals.
David: Yeah, yeah. And there are some things that we offer for suggestions with that too. So have you looked at getting a grocery delivery set up? If mom or dad is going to have a hard time with getting those, even getting those groceries put away once they're delivered, then you may need to look at bringing in some additional support, uh, just to help put those groceries away for them and organize their, their cabinets, put away, have it organized in the fridge, go through and make sure that there's not food that's expiring in the fridge. What are some of those other areas?
Christina: So there's some little things that we think about, small things, which I think are big things, and they end up being bigger things. And they would be things like getting dishes done, getting the laundry done, getting outside of the house, getting to the mail. Those are all things that we take for granted on a day to day, we don't even think about them, right? At all. But for someone who is having some health issues during that time, maybe some weakness, some mobility issues, those simple tasks in our mind could be very difficult for someone. And that's one of the things that we evaluate because those simple little tasks are part of being independent.
David: Right. And so that may be part of what you do when you go in and is to consult an expert in that area. Find someone that is knowledgeable and works with seniors and once you're seeing these changes, a lot of times for people, that's the first time that they're dealing with this. You're seeing mom or dad start to get older.
And this is not something that you've experienced before. So bring in somebody to help identify and coach you through this. Uh, at senior helpers, we have what we call our life profile assessment. We can come in and help you identify. How is your loved one managing their medical condition? How are they doing with their independence? We can give them an independent score on what their risk of hospitalization is going through and identifying their safety risks. What do you do with, like for example, Christina DME, you wanna talk about durable medical equipment a little bit? And when we talk about what do you do, maybe what are some of those common DME items that we might see?
Christina: We do evaluate, we do take a look at DME. And that's something that's so simple to put in place that can reduce so much risk in the home and risk of a fall. So we think of things like a tub bench. Means seams, why a tub bench? Well, we really believe in these because when you're taking a nice warm shower, for most people, your blood pressure is gonna drop anyway. And if you're feeling weak and a little tired that day, that is a great potential risk for a fall. And so we always encourage, you know, is to have some type of bench in which we have a very specific bench that we like to talk about, to have inside or to have having the shower. So that's like one piece that I think about. The other thing I worry about so much are stools. They just freak me out. People who have stools and they're reaching up for something. And so one of the things that we'll always encourage is to use for items that you use on a daily basis or frequently, you want to have them in a place that they're easy to get to. Because if you see step stools in your loved one's home, I would say just take them out. I need to.
David: Yeah, that's what I told my parents. They have this pathway of rugs that from the, from the moment you enter the door to going into the living room, the whole kitchen is just like a red carpet into the living room, because the whole kitchen is just a, and it's, I think it's three rugs and the, and the one has the corner. That's like it's, it's bent up and my dad was like, well, I trip over that at least once a day. I'm like, well, don't you think that's a good reason to get rid of it? There it stays.
Christina: I know. And you know what? These conversations can be hard to have. And that's why it's really nice to have an outside company like Senior Helpers to be able to come in and talk to you. Because, you know, my goal, though, I've been, you know, as a primary caregiver of an aging mom, there are definitely been, I've been going to more doctor's appointments and everything. But we put things in place like having Senior Helpers there and having a cleaning company that comes every couple of weeks and have a food service to be able to come and drop food off because I want to be a daughter, right? I work better being a daughter than, you know, and I do help out, but it's better for, it's a better relationship when I can go and just spend time with her, like I did at Thanksgiving and we spend a day together and, you know, do some shopping and have lunch, you know, versus running around, picking stuff up for her and telling her what she needs to do.
David: Yeah, and that's one of the things that I love about being at Senior Helpers. We actually have a family caregiver survey that we can share with family members to go through and identify, are there areas where you would like more training? Are there areas where if your loved one has a certain condition that we can help connect you with support groups? Are there other ways that we can help you get more quality of life in the community?
And that's one of the areas that we really focus on is how can we support family caregivers. And there are a lot of resources that we can help point to that families may not even be aware of. So I love being able to do that.
Christina: I do too. I think that is a very important piece with I do. Cause you just, you don't really pay attention until it actually happens to you. It just, it's not something that you have conversations about until it actually hits you. And everyone's going to have that experience at some time in their life. They're going to walk into their family's home and you're going to go, whoa, what happened? How did this happen so quickly? And what I always say at that point, versus being super reactive, take a deep breath, you know.
And know that there are companies like Senior Helpers out there who are willing to help you out and step back and kind of, you know, reevaluate the situation and go in slow because they've been, I think one of the things that we have to be really conscious of is they've been working hard to start to stay as independent as possible. And you got to commend them on how hard they've worked at it. And it's belittling to point out every tiny little thing to them right out of the gate. So that would be my advice is kind of step back and take that deep breath, enjoy your time that they're there and then begin to start thinking about small interventions.
David: Yeah, you know, I love that advice to take that time to enjoy it and then think about afterwards have that conversation. Yeah.
Christina: Well, awesome. Well, I'm excited about the holidays, and I know you are too. And we'll have more episodes coming up right after the holidays. I know we've got a lot of really interesting topics to talk about in the new year.
David: Yeah, and I would also recommend, we did an episode recently on when seniors are setting up decorations in their homes, ways to stay safe that ties in as well with the holidays. So I wanna just point out that we have a number of other episodes that if you wanna go check them out, that's a really good one to talk about helping, yeah.
Christina: I do like that one. And I like your one on medical condition management. I thought that was a good one too.
David: Yeah. All right. Well, we will we will talk with Christina. We'll talk soon and we'll talk with our listeners soon and we wish everybody a safe and wonderful holiday season.
As this episode comes to a close, we hope it has illuminated the path for recognizing and addressing the needs of our elderly loved ones during the holiday gatherings and in everyday life. Remember, the greatest gift we can offer is our attention, understanding, and support. Let's carry the spirit of the holidays in our hearts, ensuring that our aging family members feel loved, respected, and cared for, not just in this festive season but throughout the year. Thank you for joining us on LIFE Conversations with Senior Helpers, and may your holidays be as warm and comforting as the support we strive to provide for our seniors.