Posts Tagged ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’

Alzheimer’s Long-term Care Options

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

All the individuals around the country who have parents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease soon learn very well how serious and debilitating this disease really is to the person with the disease and for you the caregiver. As you reach for the medication and try to make the home more adaptable for your parent or parents, you are also reaching for the health insurance policy and beginning to read what your parent or parents are covered.

Traumatic as it is for you to observe the progression and find that you must deal with your own emotions you are also trying desperately to help your parents through this transition too. Everyone who is involved soon learns what a difficult progression and experience this really is. Soon you begin to understand that long-term care is needed and that you, the caregiver, also need assistance to survive this ordeal.

What is long-term care and what will this mean for your family. You will find most of the answers within your parent’s health insurance policy. The remainder of the answers you seek can be found by discussing this situation with the family medical physician. Long-term care can be defined by many avenues to help families cope.

1.    Regular assistance from other family members and perhaps close friends

2.    Requesting the assistance of a home health care aid to assist in the daily or weekly routine

3.    The most obvious is researching the assisted living centers to find the one that is most compatible with your concerns, the current health insurance policy, and that of your parents.

Search for and investigate an assisted living center that will provide twenty-four hour medical attention to all patients as well as close to the original living area so as not to confuse your parents.

When your medical health care allows, there is also respite care to offer families a chance to discuss what the best next step is for the parents. It is an opportunity to discuss with the health care professional different ways to become more efficient in helping your parents even when they are permanently in a living center with other elderly citizens.

Respite health care is only another option that you can add to your arsenal of ways to help and protect your parents. There are other forms of assistance such as Adult Day Services and Home Health Services, which are also filled with many professionals to help make this journey a smooth one for all the family members involved.

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Alzheimer’s Disease

Monday, March 29th, 2010

How many of you are trying to make a living, raise your family, pay bills best you can, participate with your children in after school activities, and taking care of your parents at the same time? Statistically, there are many and the stress levels are running high. You find yourself on the telephone with the health insurance provider on a regular basis to find out if your parents are medically protected under their health insurance plan from certain procedures and new medication.

You are finding yourself torn between trying to do what is in the best interest of your parents and your children, right. Do you find that along the line you are losing the sense of self? You have tried to read the low cost health insurance policy your parents are enrolled.  Yet, you still find it very unclear as to what is and what is not covered.

You are thinking about inquiring about the home health services to ease some of the burden you find yourself involved. You begin to wonder if this is how you will become when you become elderly and it scares you to begin researching the topic. Now with everything else you must do you want to learn exactly what Alzheimer’s is and how it evolves. You also are interested if there is any way to stop it.

The low cost health insurance provider has sent you a few booklets, pamphlets, and medical web sites you can refer to in order to learn. As you begin your homework, you learn that Alzheimer’s disease involves the neurotransmitters within the brain with low levels of chemical messengers.

Talking with your health insurance provider you explain how your mother had five older sisters and your father was the fourth child born out of nine children and never was there any hint of Alzheimer’s disease in the family until now. Unfortunately, the answers are few because the medical community themselves are not able to pinpoint the why.

The various health insurance providers do have a list of some of the more noticeable symptoms as does the medical community.

1.    The most noticeable symptom is memory loss and difficulty making decisions

2.    Confusion begins to set in as to what time of day it is

3.    Appear lost in familiar places and forget where items like a health care policy was placed last

4.    Learning and remembering new information becomes a difficult lesson in futility

5.    Speaking incomplete sentences and confusing or combining topics senselessly

6.    Performing daily activities become confusing

As a caregiver, you need to reach out to the health care community because this is a difficult time for your entire family. The health care community will help to guide you and offer assistance as to medication, group therapy, and suggest investigating the living centers in your area because Alzheimer’s disease never improves. The best anyone can hope for is to slow down the progression, but sometimes even that is impossible depending on the parent with the Alzheimer’s disease. This is such a difficult time for all who are involved and there is no easy path to travel.

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