Dignity Care

Too many seniors grapple with isolation and depression, but these are not a normal part of growing older. They are treatable medical illnesses, much like heart disease or diabetes. Depression is a serious illness affecting approximately 15 out of every 100 adults over age 65 in the United States.Seniors experiencing feelings of depression and isolation have a higher risk of hospital admissions, as well as a higher risk for being scammed. Not to mention it makes for a miserable life.So, what can you do? Helping seniors stay healthy means more than ensuring they get good physical care. Individuals living alone miss out on the stimulation of interactions with others on a regular basis. Our caregivers serve that dual purpose of providing physical care and social connection. We enjoy our clients, building a relationship with them, and sharing the highs and lows of their days. Caregivers can laugh with their clients and be an empathetic ear. We make sure our clients are getting out of the house and attending events and activities that interest them.Hiring a caregiver to help out, even for a couple of hours each week, brings conversation and spark along with the physical help. Caregivers are a good antidote for depression. If you have any questions, please call us at 303-444-4040.

Did you know that nearly one-third of the population has difficulty swallowing pills? Most people dont swallow pills correctly. This often results in gagging, choking, and vomiting, which usually results in people not taking their medications at all, or not taking the recommended dosage, which then results in a need for later additional medical care.If you are caring for a senior who has trouble swallowing their pills, here are some medication tips and some good news. Researchers have found new techniques that make pill-popping easier, even for large pills.German researchers recently tested two methods of swallowing pills and found that 80% of the time these methods worked better than the normal way of taking a pill. The first is the pop-bottle method, and it makes tablets go down with ease. The second is the lean-forward technique, which sends capsules straight down the throat. Both have been rigorously tested by 151 volunteers who swallowed numerous dummy pills for the sake of science. And now they are being shared with the world via their publication in the Annals of Family Medicine.Read about each method so you can try it yourself or have the senior you are caring for try it. Just may make life a little easier for you both.

Dignity Care is a homegrown business in Boulder.In the 1990s, Mary Kirk, a registered dietitian, began caregiving for family and relatives. Her husband, Ged, offered a companion travel service for the elderly and disabled. Together they established Dignity Care, LLC in 1997 as a home care business with just two caregivers and a home office.As demand for home care service increased, Mary recruited additional caregivers, but always with an emphasis on the compassionate, respectful, personalized care that was Dignity Cares trademark. Mary created her own approach to senior home care, unique in this area.With this dedication and passion to provide the best caregivers in the Boulder County region, Dignity Care has continued to grow and in 2009 became licensed as a Class A home care provider.  We specialize in using Certified Nursing Assistants on our teams so we can bring you the skill and experience you deserve, if you have any questions, please call us at 303-444-4040.

Hot summer days are a good time for everyone to think about staying hydrated. For older adults the topic of hydration is a year-round discussion that never goes away. Its a serious issue for most seniors but doesnt get resolved because it needs to be addressed every day and cant be solved with a pill.Seniors have a very high risk for dehydration, which is one of the most frequent causes of hospitalization after the age of 65. They have a greater risk of dehydration for many reasons, including the fact that as we age, our kidneys become less efficient at conserving fluids, our sense of thirst weakens, and we are less able to adjust to changes in temperature. Some medications like diuretics, sedatives, and laxatives can also cause increased fluid loss.Dehydration can cause temporary symptoms that mimic symptoms of Alzheimers. If dementia-like symptoms seem to appear suddenly, it could be dehydration which is easily curable.Symptoms of dehydration range from minor to severe and include persistent fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, dizziness, nausea, forgetfulness, confusion, lethargy, increased heart rate, sunken eyes, dry mouth, dark colored urine.  Urine should be clear to pale yellow. I tell my clients that if their urine is darker than pale yellow, they should head straight to the kitchen from the bathroom and drink a full glass of water.  Keeping a glass of water beside you all day to sip on rarely results in someone drinking enough fluids.  Its more effective to drink the entire glass, even if its a small glass.  Seniors cant rely on their sense of thirst to tell them when to drink water.  Scheduling a glass at each meal and/or after a bathroom visit, making sure to drink the full glass, is the best way to make sure youve gotten your full daily amount.If you have any questions, please call us at 303-444-4040. 

Many people with dementia lose their social filters and no longer understand what is or is not appropriate to say in public. They do not say embarrassing things intentionally but have indeed lost the lens they used to live with. You may have encountered situations like these: Person with Dementia upon hearing someone speaking a different language: Speak English! or they may use a racial slur to describe them.I have seen and heard many elders using racial references that were, to say the least, disrespectful. It doesnt necessarily mean the people are racist. Many of our elders grew up in much less diverse communities than we have today. They have simply lost whatever inhibitions they may have had. When they see someone of another ethnicity, they blurt out labels that they heard as youths, embarrassing everyone involved.How to respond: One of my clients used to make these remarks frequently. He also had travelled a lot. I would apologize calmly to the person and then begin talking about what language I thought they might be speaking and what country they might be from, asking my client if he had ever been there on his travels. This could lead him into a conversation about travel. If the person, he was making the remark about was on staff at the nursing home Id include them in the conversation.Person with Dementia, generally a man pinches a woman or otherwise acts out sexually: Nice butt!Stay calm and realize that this behavior is caused by the disease. Dementia has stripped your dad of his inhibitions and he really cant help it. Try not to overreact from embarrassment.How to respond: Calmly say, Thats inappropriate, Dad, or something to indicate that the action is not acceptable. It wont help to scold, however. Apologize to the person affected and then if possible, move your dad away. Explain to the person that dad has Alzheimers and his actions are the result of the disease. If you cant defuse the situation by moving him away, just allow the affected person to handle it. If it happens to a professional caregiver, they are trained to handle these situations.When these and other uncomfortable situations occur, we are embarrassed for ourselves and for the person our elder once was. Learning that we arent alone in enduring this public embarrassment helps, Talk with other caregivers, either in person or online, for perspective and the chance to laugh about these situations. When we share our stories with people who understand, our pain and embarrassment doesnt take on a life of its own. Try a caregiver forum, such as the one at AgingCare.com

End-of-Life Decisions this is a hard subject for most. Have you had the conversation with your parents yet about how they envision their life as they get closer to the end of it? Most of us havent, but it is time that we do.It is important for us to think about how we want our life to be at the end, because the medical professionals around us during that time certainly arent going to guess what we want. Plus, given the tendency to over-diagnose, over treat, and over-medicate, you may get subjected to more interventions than you ever anticipated or wanted. The time to be considering what you or your parents might want or not want at the end of life, is before you are in the midst of a crisis and needing to make quick decisions.The Conversation Project is a great way to ease into these discussions. Their approach provides a safe and manageable framework for talking with family and friends about what is important to you.

A recent Harvard School of Public Health study published in The American Journal of Public Health suggests that strong social ties, through friends, family and community groups can preserve our brain health as we age, and that social isolation may be an important risk factor for cognitive decline in the elderly. The study also indicated that those elderly engaged in many social contacts had the slowest rate of memory decline.For elderly persons living alone, maintaining that social contact becomes extremely difficult.  Remaining in ones home always seems like a wonderful goal, but it can bring unintended consequences, the most common one being isolation.  The less able one is to get out and around (or drive), the more they stay at home, alone and out of touch, the fewer activities they are involved in, and the more they withdraw into themselves.  This hastens decline, both physically and mentally, which keeps them home even more a vicious downward spiral.Using in-home care services is one way to introduce people into their daily lives and offer the possibility of connections and relationships.  Our caregivers often establish strong bonds with their clients, bonds that enrich both of their lives.  Although the caregiver starts out as a support and helper for the client, it is not unusual for the relationship to evolve into one where the caregiver is learning from the life stories of the client, where they both share laughs or worries about life, where the client can offer advice and wisdom.  The social contact becomes as important as the caregiving tasks that are getting completed.  The hours the caregivers spend in the house bring energy, connection, the outside world.  Caregivers help ward off the social isolation and the decline that comes with it.

Act FAST For a Stroke!  Stroke is an emergency and a brain attack. Learn how to act FAST and call 911 at the first sign of stroke.Recognizing stroke symptoms can be easy if you remember to think FAST. Use FAST to remember the warning signs:F= Face            Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?A= Arms           Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?S= Speech        Ask the person to repeat a simple phrase. Does the speech sound slurred or strange?T= Time            If you observe any of these signs, its time to call 911May is Stroke Awareness Month. The National Stroke Association has easy ways for you to learn more about stroke before it happens to you or someone else. If you have any questions, please call us at 303-444-4040.

Growing old should not mean that you lose control of your daily life and all the decisions that go along with it. Yet too often that is exactly what happens. If you are a caregiver, have you ever heard yourself saying, you NEED to use your walker, because you might fall, you need to drink that water, let me carry that for you or you might drop it, and/or dont do that, you might fall?Even though the person has lived with and managed their risks all their adult life, suddenly everyone else is telling them what they can and cant do. However, this is based on what? Safety? For what end, hanging around waiting to die?There is a wonderful concept called The Dignity of Risk, which acknowledges that life experiences come with risk. It explains that we must respect a persons self-determination and right to allow them to make their own choices about which experiences are worth a risk.I understand that there is an issue of safety here. Im not saying ignore the risks. However, Id like to see risks balanced more thoughtfully against the persons preferences for how they want to live their days and what they do or do not want to do. Theyve been making decisions all their life about what they choose to do, what they want to try, what they want to eat, etc. They weighed the risks of eating fast food, of skiing, of taking a new job, and/or buying lottery tickets. They deserve our respect and support in continuing to make their choices.As caregivers, Id encourage us to allow the elders we work with, or are related to, to live their lives as independently and freely as possible. Listen to their priorities and concerns. Help them think through their decisions. Yes, there is that pesky risk factor, but how does it weigh against the dignity of their life and the loss of life experiences? They have the right to choose their risks. Lets support them in that.If you have any questions, please call us at 303-444-4040. 

No one ever intends to fall.  I hear it from my clients all the time: Im careful or Im not going to fall even though I think they are really trying to tell me that they are worried about falling.  However, that level of fear doesnt always translate into taking specific measures to avoid a fall or learning what they can do to prevent falling.  Without proper prevention and safety measures, falls happen. When people fall, the response is usually, It was an accident, I wont fall again.One of my clients is the poster child for this attitude.  She has fallen multiple times but isnt able to relate any of her falls to the other times she has fallen.  While were working on that end of things, in the meantime we needed some tips on getting up after falls.My favorite find is this video on how to get up.  The main point is to be creative about what you have within reach or crawling distance to be able to get yourself (or someone else) up off the floor. Also, make sure to evaluate yourself for possible injuries, pain, range of motion issues, and/or bleeding before trying to get up. Another thing they discuss is the importance of lifeline devices such as Life Alert. If help is immediately available at the push of a button, you wont even need to worry about how to get up with possible injuries or finding a way to get help.

At least 42 percent of U.S. workers have been caregivers for aging loved ones in the last five years. In fact, most family caregivers work full or part-time while caring for their parent, spouse, aunt, uncle, or other loved one. Juggling Your Job and Caring for a Loved One The majority (68 percent) of family caregivers report making work accommodations because of caregiving duties, including: Arriving late/leaving early or taking time off Cutting back on work hours Changing jobs Stopping work entirely If this is you, you understand the challenge of juggling work and caregiving. Youll want to know that AARP is fighting for workplace flexibility, like family leave or paid or unpaid sick leave, to support family caregivers as they balance work and caregiving responsibilities. AARP is pushing for legislation that would: Let employees use their existing sick time to help care for a family member; or Give employees a few hours of unpaid time each year to help care for their loved ones; or Allow employees unpaid leave to take their loved ones to the doctor, in the same way 15 states allow employees to take unpaid time off to attend parent-teacher conferences and school events.