February 2020 - Green Tree Home Care

At Green Tree Home Care, we are happy to answer any questions you have about choosing the right home care agency for mom or dad. Call us today if you live the San Diego and Orange county areas.

You live far away from mom or dad and you need to find the right home care agency.

You want to pick an agency that will help them continue to enjoy the comforts of home while getting the care they need.

We know that finding and picking the right home care agency for your loved one is hard; but it is not impossible.

In today’s post, we’ll share some tips on how you can find and pick the right home care agency for your loved one.

Choosing the right home care agency for mom or dad

Do your research

These days, rating websites like Yelp or Google Reviews or A Place For Mom make researching a business easy.

Note however that people usually don’t rate a business unless they have had a bad experience. So while we recommend starting here, it’s also important to take the worst reviews with a grain of salt.

Most of these websites are based on a 5-star system with 5 stars being the best.

Our recommendation is that you can read the 3-star and 4-star reviews and find out what the complaints of these individuals were.

This should give you some insight into what the particular home agency does well and what may be lacking.

Check out their website

Once you’ve found out what other people have to say, go and find out what the home care agency has to say about itself.

You will find a lot here too.

If you cannot find all (or almost all) the information you need about a home care agency on their website, this could be a red flag.

A business that is marketing itself online needs to make answers to potential clients’ questions easy.

They can do this easily via their website and if they are not, we recommend that you pass.

If the home care agency has social media channels, these would be good to check as well.

Talk with the home care agency

By this point, you would have made a short-list of home care agencies to pick from for your aging loved one.

Our next recommendation is that you call the home care agency and speak with someone.

Questions you can ask while on the call with them include:

How do you vet your employees?
Does your company have a license? Is there a website or place I can call to verify this information?
What kind of training do you give your caregivers?
Do you have caregivers who know how to deal with people with disabilities?
When can you start providing services?
Will my elderly loved one have the same caregiver(s) each time? If you have to change caregivers, how much notice will I get?
Do you an external monitoring of your caregivers to ensure my loved one is not being abused?
How do your caregivers handle emergencies?
What happens if a scheduled caregiver doesn’t show up?
If I have concerns about my loved one’s care, who should I report this to?

Any good home care agency will happily answer each of your questions and make sure to allay any fears you have.

Choosing the right home care agency for mom or dad, doesn’t need to be hectic when you follow these steps.

How do you spot hearing loss in your elderly loved one?

Hearing loss in the elderly could be difficult to note and observe.

And thus, you and your loved one might seek interventions late. This could pose a safety threat for your loved one.

Hearing loss can mean they don’t hear warning alarms or that they don’t hear a car coming as they cross the street.

In this post, we’ll chat about the signs of hearing loss you should look out for, what interventions you can seek and how to keep your loved one safe.

Hearing loss in the elderly – a guide for the caregiver

The gradual hearing loss that happens as we grow older is a common condition.

In fact, according to the United States National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, approximately 1 in 3 adults between 65 and 74 years will experience age-related hearing loss.

Furthermore, half of the people over 75 years old have some age-related hearing loss.

Therefore based on statistics alone, the chances that your loved one will have hearing loss as they age is high.

But you can be prepared for it.

Hearing loss signs to look out for

What signs should you look out for when it comes to hearing loss?

One of the first signs to develop may be an inability to hear high-pitched sounds. Your loved one may have trouble hearing the voices of females or children.
You find that you have to repeat a sentence multiple times to your elderly loved one when you didn’t have to do this before.
You might also notice that your loved one turns the television or radio volume higher than usual.
Having a conversation with your loved one over the phone has become more difficult because of their hearing loss.
Your loved one may also have extra difficulty hearing in areas that are noisy.
They may also complain about having a ringing sound in their ears.
You may notice that they repeat sentences people have spoken to them wrongly.

When you start noticing any of these signs, it is time to consider intervention for your loved one.

…but what causes hearing loss in the elderly?

It’s difficult to distinguish between hearing loss that comes purely from aging and that which comes from lifelong exposure to noise.

What doctors and scientists do know however, is that special cells called stereocilia (sensory hair cells) can become damaged from loud noises, certain medications or from chronic illnesses like hypertension and diabetes.

Thus, reducing exposure to loud noises, and properly managing chronic health conditions can help to reduce hearing loss.

However, we still don’t know how to fully protect people from age-related hearing loss.

What you can do to help as a caregiver

Hearing problems can be serious. Thus, it is important that you encourage your loved one to see a doctor right away.

This could start with a primary doctor who may then refer your loved one to see an otolaryngologist (commonly called an ENT doctor) or an audiologist.

These professionals may recommend different interventions including:

Hearing aids – These are external devices worn around the ear.
Cochlear implants – Cochlear implants are surgically placed. If your loved one’s hearing loss is severe, a cochlear implant could be an option for them.
Assistive listening devices – These may include devices that amplify sound so your loved one can hear what is being said.
Bone anchored hearing systems – This is also surgically implanted and will help to transmit sound directly through bones around the ear and directly into a person’s inner ear.
Lip reading – Your loved one may be trained to read people’s lips as they speak to make out what a person is saying.

Hearing loss is a challenge to everyone involved and can pose a safety hazard.

When you and your loved one notice signs of age-related hearing loss early, you can seek the right interventions early.

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No matter a person’s age, there are always emotional needs that have to be met.

For most older adults, while they may have been through some rough times in life and have therefore become more emotionally stable, they still need emotional support.

Entering old age comes with its’ own set of difficulties that older people have to deal with.

Scenarios that may cause a sense of frustration in the elderly include:

The loss of friends and loved ones who are older as well
Losing control over certain bodily functions
An increased risk for certain health conditions
A sense that they longer have anything to contribute to society/that people have forgotten their contributions

All of the above and more can cause your elderly loved one to become frustrated.

So, how do you support them in this?

In this post, we’ll talk about meeting the emotional needs of your elderly loved one.

Meeting the emotional needs of your elderly loved one

Acknowledge their feelings – The truth is, nobody wants to feel berated for feeling the way they do about a particular situation. In this case, your elderly loved one doesn’t want to be told to “man up” or to “just get over it”. Losing friends you’ve known for a long time and losing your sense of purpose in this world are situations that cause real grief. The stages of grief were first described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969. For your elderly loved one, it is likely they are experiencing one sort of grief after the other. Acknowledge that this is a difficult time for your loved one.

Look for symptoms of mental illness – Depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are common among the elderly. These may be tied to the scenarios I described above. Don’t dismiss any symptoms you see. In fact, you should encourage them to see and talk to a mental health professional. This can be difficult for generations who were taught to be stoic through difficult times, but it’s important that you do your best as a caregiver to encourage them to seek help.

Know their personality – When you know the personality of your loved one, it is easy to spot any changes. Knowledge of your loved one’s personality will also allow you to design activities that will get them excited and involved.

Encourage them to engage in activities that give them a sense of purpose – For a professional who once contributed a lot to society, no longer doing that can cause a sense of frustration. Providing your elderly loved one with an opportunity to volunteer, take active part in family activities and community activities could help them regain that sense of purpose.

Encourage a social life – With many of their longtime acquaintances and friends dying, Mom or Dad may be feeling lonely. An adult day care community for instance, could give them the opportunity to meet new friends they can socialize with.

Emotional health is part of the total health of a person.

Taking care of and meeting those needs are important to helping your loved one enjoy a fulfilling life.

And so, these tips will help you on that quest.

What should a caregiver know about glaucoma in the elderly?

How does the life of your loved one change as a result of it?

What can you do to help them?

In this post, we’ll discuss glaucoma in the elderly and everything you need to know as a caregiver.

Glaucoma in the elderly – Here’s what you should know

What is glaucoma?

Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in adults 60 years and over.

The optic nerve, which is extremely essential for eyesight, is damaged in glaucoma.

This is usually caused by unusually high pressure in a person’s eye.

There are no clear warning signs that a person is developing glaucoma.

It develops gradually until it is at an advanced stage.

Vision loss due to glaucoma is typically permanent.

Thus taking good care of your eyes to prevent it from developing, is the best way to stay clear of its’ effects.

Types of Glaucoma

There are different types of glaucoma which all come with different symptoms.

Open angle glaucoma comes with patchy blind spots in your peripheral or central vision, frequently in both eyes and tunnel vision once the disease advances.

The symptoms of acute-angle glaucoma include severe headache, blurred vision, eye pain, nausea, vomiting, eye redness and the person may report seeing halos around lights.

As a caregiver, if you ignore these symptoms, your loved one could become completely blind. Early treatment is the best way to deal with glaucoma.

Risk factors

High pressure in the eyes. For some reason that doctors and scientists cannot fully explain, certain people develop high pressure in their eyes. This happens when the fluid in your eye (also called aqueous humor) doesn’t drain from your eye the way it should normally. Once this happens, there is too much fluid in the eye and this causes pressure on the optic nerve. Eventually, this pressures causes damage to the optic nerve which then leads to glaucoma.
People who are black, Asian or Hispanic, are more likely to develop glaucoma.
You’re at a high risk of the disease if you have someone in your family with it.
Diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure can increase the risk for glaucoma.
Eye injuries.
Having certain types of eye surgeries can increase your risk as well.
Using corticosteroid medications for a long time – certain eye drops contain this – can also increase eye pressure and cause glaucoma later on in life.
Being age 60 and over is also another huge risk factor for glaucoma.

What can you do as a caregiver?

This is where it’s important to know your family health history as a caregiver.

If you don’t know, have that conversation with your elderly loved one.

If your elderly loved one has any of the risk factors listed, glaucoma testing with an eye doctor should be on your calendar. Early intervention is the best way to prevent blindness.

Encourage your loved one to wear eye protection when they are in the sun.

Getting regular dilated eye exams can also detect the disease early so it can be treated. The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends that people get comprehensive eye exams – which include a dilated eye exam – every 1-2 years if a person is older than 65 years.

Preventing glaucoma starts with early action.

Knowing the symptoms and the risk factors will help your elderly loved one enjoy good eyesight for years to come.