How to Make a Home Safe For an Elderly Person

Howcast.com has a useful how-to tutorial on making a home safe for an elderly person. Some of their ideas include replacing knobs and faucets with levers, non-skid carpets, install brighter lighting, and installing hand rails and grab bars in bathrooms. Although these precautions can do wonders for elderly safety, it is always important to understand when it may be time to get professional home care.

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Home Care Assistance offers the highest quality 24/7 live-in home care in the Region of Halton (Oakville, Burlington, Halton Hills, and Milton), Region of Peel (Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon) and Hamilton.

Home Care Assistance Case Study: "Taking the Stairs"

CASE STUDY: TAKING THE STAIRS

SUMMARY

• Client A suffers from Parkinson’s Disease
• Struggled with mobility after returning from hospital
• Our lifestyle plan helped client regain motor skills
  

Client A is in his late 70′s and has always prided himself on being independent. As a journalist for most of his career, he was used to a fast-paced lifestyle that kept him on the go. When Home Care Assistance was asked to care for Client A by his concerned family, he was suffering from the challenging symptoms of mid-to-late stage Parkinson’s. A sudden trip to the emergency room for heart failure only made his Parkinson’s worse. To help his transition back home from the hospital, the Home Care Assistance Director of Nursing met with Client A’s wife, family, case managers, and social workers. Working with Client A’s close family, Home Care Assistance supervised the retrofitting of their own home and the installation of an electric stair lift to help with mobility. Seeing how his health had deteriorated during his hospital stay, Home Care Assistance was determined to give Client A some of his independence back. Settling him into his new home, the Director of Nursing developed an intensive program of diet and exercise, and, most importantly, a plan to help Client A get his life back, all based up on the unique Balanced Care Method of holistic care. Every day, when Client A would make a request for assistance with a movement related task, the aide would respectfully urge Client A to try to do it on his own. Gradually, with close supervision and help from the aide, Client A had a major victory: he did the laundry himself, and then, to delight and surprise his wife, did hers, too. It was a moment of joy for the entire household, as he began to regain some of his independence once again. Eventually, the wheelchair sat, unused, in the corner, while Client A walked confidently with his walker. When the Home Care Assistance Director of Nursing visited Client A’s home after the record snowfall of this past winter, she asked how his electric stair lift had survived the cold. He replied, confidently, that he didn’t know because he never used it. Indeed, he explained, the stair lift was no longer needed now that he could walk up and down stairs on his own. If not for Home Care Assistance, he said, he would still be in the wheelchair that now sat in the corner.

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Home Care Assistance offers the highest quality 24/7 live-in home care in the Region of Halton (Oakville, Burlington, Halton Hills, and Milton), Region of Peel (Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon) and Hamilton.

Hispanics Presumed To Have Higher Risk of Developing Alzheimer’s

The New York Times recently published profiles of Hispanic people with Alzheimer’s providing a real perspective on the disease, how it affects families and a number of important facts. According to studies, Hispanics develop Alzheimer’s earlier in life than other ethnic groups. They are not genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s, but have other risk factors such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, stroke and hypertension, which put them at higher risk than other groups for developing dementia. The Alzheimer’s Association said that about 200,000 Latinos in the United States have Alzheimer’s. This number could increase to 1.3 million by 2050.

Antonio Vasquez, a 60-year-old with Alzheimer’s is highlighted in the slideshow. One time he once wandered away during a family visit to New York and returned to his home in Philadelphia nine hours later. He boarded a Philadelphia-bound bus, giving his driver’s license to the bus driver, as he did not know where he was going.

Another woman, Teresa Mojica, 63, also suffers from dementia. The disease makes her delusional, causing her to occasionally strike her husband. Interestingly, she has diabetes and hypertension which she developed earlier on in life due to stress. Both are risk factors for the disease.

Courtesy of Home Care Blog

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Home Care Assistance offers the highest quality 24/7 live-in home care in the Region of Halton (Oakville, Burlington, Halton Hills, and Milton), Region of Peel (Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon) and Hamilton.

Preventing Wandering Among Seniors With Dementia

An article in the San Jose Mercury News discusses Alzheimer’s disease and how it has changed over the past 20 years. Since 1980 the amount of Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease has doubled from 2.8 million to 5.3 million. Currently, 42 percent of those over the age of 85 will develop Alzheimer’s.

This article opened with a story about a son who came home to find that his mother had escaped the house and was wondering around the neighborhood. Police agencies are now training officers how to detect and search for wanderers with dementia, as wandering is one of the most common behaviors associated with the disease.

About 60 percent of those that have dementia have wandered and about 20 percent wander repeatedly. Many people with dementia do not recognize objects and try to go to a place from a past memory that many times no longer actually exists.

The man featured in this story said that he changed his sleep schedule to follow his mother’s, even if it was in the middle of the day. He also sought advice from experts who told him to hang a curtain over the window at night to disguise and hide it. Other advice offered was to put a medical bracelet on his mother’s wrist with his home phone number on it in case she was to wander out of the house.

As more people are living longer, dealing with dementia and recognizing the signs are becoming more and more important. Learning different ways to decrease wandering behavior among those with Alzheimer and Dementia will be imperative to their safety and your peace of mind.

Courtesy of Home Care Blog

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Home Care Assistance offers the highest quality 24/7 live-in home care in the Region of Halton (Oakville, Burlington, Halton Hills, and Milton), Region of Peel (Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon) and Hamilton.

Dementia's Crippling Effect on the Canadian Economy

The global cost of caring for the 35.6 million people worldwide with dementia is $604-billion - equivalent to the revenues of Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil combined - as it is fast becoming one of the world's biggest health challenges. Its prevalence will increase at an "alarming rate" for at least 40 more years according to a study by Alzheimer's Disease International, a London-based consumer group. By 2030, the report estimates that the number of people with dementia will nearly double to 65.7-million with annual global costs totalling $1.1 trillion (US). In Canada, dementia costs the economy about $15-billion a year and is expected to grow to $153-billion by 2038 while case will jump from 500,000 to 1.1 million.

"The figures are cause for great concern, and we hope that this report will act as a call to action for governments and policy-makers across the world. It is vital theat they recognize that the cost of dementia will continue to increase... and we must work to improve care and support services." -- Marc Wortmann, executive director of Alzheimer's Disease International

Currently, the cost of caring for dementia is split between direct medical care ($96-billion), residential and nursing care ($255-billion) and unpaid labour by family caregviers ($253-billion). The costs of dementia equal roughly the economies of Turkey and Indonesia making it the world's 18th largest.

Dementia affects developed and developing countries alike however there is a stark discrepancy in costs between high- and low-income countries. The average cost of caring for a person with dementia in a high-income country like Canada is $32,865 annually compared to $868 for a low-income country like Bangladesh. Low-income countries which account for 14% of global dementia cases make up only 1% of the costs whereas high-income countries have 46% of the cases and 89% of the costs. A major difference is the lack of accessibility to professional medical and nursing care in low-income families where the burden typically falls on family members. This is expected to become a serious problem for developing countries where dementia is expected to grow at a faster rate than developed countries. For example, in the next 20 years dementia cases are expected to increase 63% in North America compared to 117% in East Asia and 146% in Latin America.

The report recommends developing a national strategy to deal with dementia with policies that explicitly focus on supporting family caregivers and to reorganize health systems so that they better meet the needs of patients with chronic conditions such as dementia.

Source: Picard, Andre. "'Alarming' Rise in Dementia Comes with a Crippling Price Tag." Globe and Mail. 21 Sept. 2010. A1-A2

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Home Care Assistance offers the highest quality 24/7 live-in home care in the Region of Halton (Oakville, Burlington, Halton Hills, and Milton), Region of Peel (Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon) and Hamilton.