Home care services was not something that I thought about for my mother or father. When you’re growing up, your parents are the strongest people that you could ever hope to know. Of course, as you get older, they’re not as special, but in time you begin to respect them for what they know, and do.
By the time that my father needed the assistance of an in-home care provider, he was in his late 70s and my mother was unable to provide the right level of care for them. We sat down and talked about the prospect of hiring a caregiver for him, and at first he wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then he began to realize that caring for him was placing too much strain on my mother, his wife of more than 50 years.
So we began looking into home health care services and found the right in-home care provider who would meet his needs. We were only interested in having this caregiver stop by every few days, for a couple of hours at a time, to check on my mother and father, and to assist with whatever they needed.
One thing that the caregiver mentioned upon her first visit was that nighttime safety was a concern for her. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she explained that just like many other adults, seniors sometimes have trouble sleeping, or need to use the bathroom at night. As we age, though, our eyesight, especially at night, is not as acute as it once was, and that can lead to difficulty seeing. Walking into objects, slipping on the floor, or something left on the floor, like a shirt, can be extremely dangerous for an elderly individual.
She urged me to think about nighttime safety and to discuss some things that we could do in order to make my parent’s home safer at night.
One thing was to install more lighting. She suggested that I add lighting controls by their nightstand so that they could remotely turn on the bathroom light, hall light, or any number of lights. We also set up a clothes hamper that would collect anything that would normally go on the floor. Finally, each of my parents got a Life Alert-type security system to keep with them. If they fell or became injured at night, they could signal emergency services, rather than wait, potentially injured, on the floor until their spouse awoke.
Home care services were great in helping me understand nighttime safety for my elderly parents.
About Joan Cisneros LPN
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