Aging in Place: How to Introduce Home Care, with Daphne Davis

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. And welcome everyone back to answers for alders radio with Daphne Davis here with me, and I’m so glad you’re here with us for this entire hour as we talk about what families are dealing with. And Daphne and this segment, I’m so glad you’re here to talk about how do you introduce care into the home. Now we’ve gone into these conversation. We’ve talked about, you know, getting in the mindset of the bucket lists, the next you know, segment. So now we think about maybe mom and dad or receptive or you’re trying to make them. How do you make that bridge to the next stuff? So many times an easy step can be your parents. Let’s just stick with that. For easy language. Your parents are saying, okay, yeah, like I would like to have some extra help in the house. You know, these things are getting a little harder or I’m not doing deep cleaning in my house, and it could be something as simple as getting a house housekeeper right. It could be something as simple as hiring somebody to do the yard work. Right, you know. So those are easy little things for us to think about. One thing that we haven’t mentioned yet is there are kind of built in cultural thought processes and each generation has their own cultural thought processes, and the one that we’re dealing with right now is usually pretty frugal and fiscally responsible with their funding and fiercely, fiercely independent. There isn’t anything that says, I’m sorry to use this word, but they’re not entitled, they don’t feel like they deserve this, this and this. They’d rather take care of things themselves. So some of the languaging has to get around that that says, you know, mom, Dad, you worked hard all your life. Give yourself a gift. You know, yeah, give yourself a gift. Then there’s going to be what are they going to do it my way or the is, you know, that I have to Redo it. Or there might be the personality type that says I’m embarrassed to let my house be seen lived in and so they’d clean the house before the housekeeper comes, or whatever it is. Those things we can work through and it’s just by taking one step. Sure, time, sure, but if it gets to a place where we say, you know, mom, I’d really feel better if I had somebody come in and start your day with you and make sure that the medications are all lined up right, make sure that your meals are designed for the day and that I know that you’ve gotten up out of bed without incidence. You know, sometimes it’s hard to remember to sit at the edge of your bed and let the blood go from your toes to your head and back down again. Right, I’d feel more comfortable if you would consider having someone come in and we could start, you know, maybe three days a week and see how it goes and you might find that those three days that someone comes in in the morning you have a better day and we could up that to five days. We could do it seven days, but let’s just can we have a conversation about it? Can we talk about getting your day started and the fact that you’re that? I’m going to go back to your earlier segment when you said no decision needs to be made today. Nope, and that’s the thing. I think that’s really nice the way you frame it, because it keeps people, you know that the defensiveness off like that. They feel like they’re cornered and I think that’s important and you know that that naturally will happen with family members because we know each other. I mean we know each other better than anybody else, and so, you know, shameless plug for me, having a third party coming home with these conversations is so helpful. It’s huge and it had I known of you when it was time for me to deal with my mom. I mean, I will never forget the conversation that we had when it was time to move her into assisted living and what what that conversation looked like. And I did it all wrong because they didn’t know any better and I just I thought it would make it easier for her if I planned it all out. I had everything organized, I did all the research and advanced by myself. I’ve word all the facilities by myself, you know, all the communities, everything, and my mom was just like what are you doing? And and it was like now I know better, but it was my intention to make it easy on her right and what I did was I pushed her away. I had the wall came up and it was horrible and it was finally, you know, it caused a lot of strife between the two of us for a long time just because she felt forced into it. Yep, and I will say to this day I sit back and I think that was my first mistake of many, because I didn’t have somebody like you. Yeah, and you know, we need do what we know how to do, or we would have been doing better. So now we’re learning how to do better. It’s even just a simple scenario of the words to use in that scenario is mom, I would like your permission to be able to just gather some information about different communities besides your home, different communities of care, independent living, assistant living. Would you like to join me or could I do the preliminary work and then come back and then real and look great? So you’ve involved her, you haven’t cut her out, but in her head she might be thinking, I’m not getting in out of the car six times in a day. Right, I don’t want to walk all over creation and back. Right, I don’t want to have to put my best smiley face on. You know, who knows what they’re thinking right, the other side is, yeah, that sounds exciting, let’s go. Yeah, I know. And then you plan for one or two yeah, and then she might say later, you know what you go. Look, yeah, and here’s the thing that that really I was approaching it from my corporate mindset. So if you’re going to make a presentation, you’re going to have everything there, right. Well, that’s this is not a corporate presentation. But I tried. In my head, okay, given where I was, I was a businessperson and I was doing a presentation. It was like a proposal, right. Yeah, so in my head and you know, God help me, that’s how I felt like I would be more effective in Mike, in my communication to her right, and that was the wrong thing to do and I should have done it so much differently. People, we’re learning, we’re learning what the words are. So had I had somebody like a Daphnee Davis, I’m just explain to us again, Daphne, what you do to help families. So this is a good example. I know if you call me and say hey, this is our story, I’m thinking about gathering some information about Xyz, that conversation would move into you know, I’d say, Suzanne, would it be appropriate at this time for me to come into your home or your parents home and that we all meet together and that I can gather information and share information with all of us at the same time. Sure, and sometimes I get pushed back. Oh, you know, my mom dad just don’t even want to go here yet. And then my pushback, I’ll be very honest with you all, is if everybody gets the information at the same time, nothing gets misconstrued. Very true. The other thing is if it comes from a third party, that we’re just gathering information, no decisions are being made. I promise you. There’s a certain amount, not that you don’t have credibility with your parents, but there is a certain amount of distance that all of a sudden there’s an expert in the room. It’s not my son or daughter. You get you get to be the son and daughter and and you know, I will tell you one of the things that there’s so many families I talked about. Well, mom won’t do this and I’m just making them or you know, it’s I’m in charge now. When I hear words like that, it turns the Harrot on the back of my spine here, because I I really feel like it’s our job as the adult children to stay the adult children, to be that loving presence that is there for your parents. And there’s people out there like Daphne that don’t cost you a dime as a family that you can call on and that you can get the help that you need as your parents are going through the translation. And if you’re a senior, the thing that’s really cool is is you could call Daphney and ask questions. You know, I don’t want to bother my kids. There’s a lot of seniors that don’t want to bother my kids, but they have the perception that number one, then they can’t afford it, or they have the perception that they can’t you know, that it’s just too overwhelming for them. Or if I make the phone call now, I have to move forward. All right. That’s the other thing. Pre You know gone conclusion that I’m going to do that. No, no, no. I have three families right now in different stages of aging in place. None of them are going to be making a move. Some of them should be, but I’m here on the journey with them, right and processing through their fine family dynamics, their life history, their value systems. It’s not my journey, sure, it’s not even dare I say, APS’s, or the state of Washington or any right discharge planners journey. It’s your journey, right, but let’s work together to make sure that you are living to your utmost fullest right, right to your last breath, right and and the thing I think that’s true is there so many options, and that includes if you’re looking for care in your home and if you’re on a fixed income. I think one of the things that people are terrified of I can’t afford it right. Well, there’s other options. They’re out there and Daphne can help you with those options, that’s right, and help you find the financial resources to have care in your home. So there is, I’m there are many ways to go about this and that’s one of the things I think that is a senior. If you’re a senior, you’re having challenges with like what we call the ADL’s, which I want to review with you before we’re done. You know what those activities of daily living are. We had their services out there that can help you. So let’s just review the activities of daily living, just for you know, just for our review. Number One, obviously, as bathing is, is one, Yep. And then what is the rest? So there’s bathing, transferring, that transfer, moving from one place the other, anything with toileting or continents, support dressing. Dressing. There’s five of them. So I got one more to go dressing toileting. Some we’re including in some situations mead management, and then that’s Kinetica, and then also meal preparation, real preparation, and also if there’s any cognition challenges at all. Right, that also qualifies you under the Adel Right activity of daily limit, right requirements. So it’s anything that you have to do on a daily basis that gives you quality of life. I hope I got them right. Yeah, I think you pretty much got them. I think grooming is in there. So yeah, dress, dressing, dressing and grooming is one. So so, you know, even to help, I think sometimes you know you could maybe take a quick shower and maybe get based it close on, but maybe you can’t. It’s too hard now to get your shoes tied right or it’s hard to wash your hair or you know, those are a kind of extra things that you do that might be a little bit difficult. You bring us to the place of establishing what your risk a little is. Exactly. This is really what it comes down to. How risky of a of a person are? You Right? And sometimes our pride gets in the way with that. Sometimes logical thinking process gets in the way of that. Sometimes our internal visual idea of who we are mentally spiritually, our spirit is fifty five years old exact. My Body’s ninety exactly. We have to have a touch of reality in there, and so you want to protect that ninety year old body. And so if bending over to tie your shoes makes you feel a little lightheaded, maybe you should have somebody till your shoot. Exactly. It’s not that big a deal to have somebody help you tie your shoes. So in doing that I hope that we can get more into our conversation about in home care and home health. Absolutely, and Daphne and I will see you very soon. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom.