Category: 24-Hour Home Care

It’s not a secret that seniors these days overwhelmingly want to stay in their own homes as they get older. But often seniors and their families worry about something happening while they are alone. 24-hour home care for seniors makes it possible for seniors to stay at home safely as they get older. When seniors have 24-hour home care they get the benefits of having someone with them all day and all night. The benefits of daytime care for seniors are obvious, but there are some big benefits seniors can get from overnight and 24-hour home care like:

Safety

Seniors who are not alone at night are safer in many cases. When criminals target seniors because they think that seniors will be easy to steal from they assume seniors will be alone at night. Seniors who have 24-hour home care have someone with them at night which makes it much less likely that seniors will be targeted by thieves. Seniors also are going to be safer from disasters like storms or fires if they are not alone at night. If the power goes out or there is some type of disaster a companion who is there at night can help seniors get to safety.

Companionship

Seniors often get lonely at night if they are by themselves. Many seniors who have lost their spouse or partner feel that loss the most at night. During the day it’s common for seniors to have visits by friends and family members, phone calls, and social engagements that mean they don’t really feel lonely. But at night the loneliness can feel oppressive. Seniors with 24-hour home care will have someone with them at night that they can watch TV with, have conversations with, and share a snack with so that they don’t feel so alone or anxious.

Lower Risk Of Falls

Many times when seniors falls it’s during the nighttime when they get up to use the bathroom or get a drink. Seniors who have been in bed for a long time often are stiff and sore and may have trouble walking which can lead them to fall. They also could be half asleep or under the influence of sleeping medications that can make them groggy and that can lead to falls also. And poor lighting can impact their field of vision making it tough to see obstructions in their path. But when seniors have someone with them at night that person can help them get up to go to the bathroom or bring them a drink in bed so that they don’t have to get up.

Better Quality Of Sleep

Seniors who have insomnia or trouble sleeping often have a better quality of sleep and get more sleep when they are not alone at night. Seniors often worry about what would happen to them if they have a medical emergency at night or what will happen if medical equipment they need like a CPAP stops working at night. But seniors who have 24-hour home care don’t need to worry because there will always be someone there that can help them.

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Edina, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

As a family caregiver, you probably spend a good bit of time wondering if your senior needs more care or a different type of care than she has in place. One option, 24-hour home care, might seem like too much for her, but is it really? There are plenty of situations that might benefit from this type of care.

Help Around the Clock

The first hurdle in understanding whether this type of care is right for your senior or not is to get to know what it is. This type of care means that there is someone there with your elderly family member at all hours of the day. There might be several different caregivers taking various shifts, but there will be someone there with your senior at all times. That can be tremendously reassuring, both for you and for your elderly family member.

Assistance with Daily Tasks

One reason your senior might want help from 24-hour home care professionals is that she needs help with daily tasks. These types of tasks can cover a lot of ground, too. If your senior needs help with eating, for instance, she might want to have help with cooking her meals, making sure that her fridge is stocked, and even helping with actually eating her meal. Other types of tasks that could require this type of day and night help can involve personal care tasks, like getting dressed and transferring from bed to a chair, and even assistance with mobility.

Support for Disabled Seniors

If your elderly family member is disabled, she may need a lot of additional help from elder care professionals around the clock. Some of the disabilities that your senior might find limiting her life could involve trouble with mobility or cognitive changes, like dementia. When there is someone there with your senior every day, all day, she’s got help as soon as she needs it. During the times when she doesn’t need help, caregivers aren’t trying to do everything for her. She’ll only have the help she needs. In the ways she can still be independent, she’s able to maintain that independence.

Help with Chronic Illness

Chronic illnesses can take a serious toll on your senior’s health and well-being. Battling COPD or heart disease each day takes a lot out of your elderly family member. When home care professionals are there with her, they are able to handle tasks that have become more of a challenge for her. That allows her to rest and do what she can when she can. During times when your elderly family member is less able to do things for herself, she has help. There’s also the peace of mind that you get knowing that your senior has someone there with her if she runs into any sort of problem.

There are lots of other benefits to having someone there with your senior at all hours, especially if she has more difficulty overnight. In terms of determining when 24-hour home care is truly necessary, it helps to look closely at what your senior’s needs are and how those can best be met.

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Plymouth, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, can be very hard on seniors. Long dark days without a lot of sunlight in the winter can leave seniors vulnerable to developing Seasonal Affective Disorder. But 24-hour home care can help those who are struggling with SAD.

Because one of the contributing factors to developing SAD is the lack of sunlight seniors who feel anxious or vulnerable at night can benefits from having 24-hour home care. When they have 24-hour home care, seniors have company around the clock so they don’t feel alone, scared, or anxious when night falls the way they might feel if they were alone.

Some of the other benefits of 24-hour home care for seniors include:

Medical Monitoring

Seniors who use medical equipment often get anxious at night about their equipment working correctly and that can impact the quality and length of their sleep. With overnight care, seniors can sleep better knowing that someone will always be there to help them if they need it or if their equipment malfunctions. The security of knowing that someone is there in the middle of the night can dramatically improve senior’s mental health.

Helping Seniors Get Safely In And Out Of Bed

One of the most dangerous things that seniors can do is try to get out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or get a drink and get back in bed safely. Often when seniors fall at home it’s trying to get themselves out of bed in the middle of the night. With home care, your senior parent will have help all through the night to make sure that they can get to the bathroom safely even though they are half asleep.

Meals Anytime

Seniors may not always want to eat at usual times. That’s part of the reason why seniors often don’t get enough to eat. With 24-hour home care there will be someone with your senior loved one around the clock who make them a meal or a snack at any time of the day or night. Your senior parent will be able to get snacks or meals when they want to eat which will encourage them to eat more.

Company During Long Winter Nights

When the weather is bad and the sun goes down early the winter evenings can be very long for seniors who are alone. Those long winter evenings and nights can make seniors depressed or increase their anxiety. With the help of elder care around the clock, your senior loved one won’t be alone during those winter evenings. They will have a companion that they can watch TV with, play games with, eat meals with, and read books with. Those winter evenings could turn into fun evenings instead of sad evenings when your senior parent has someone there with them around the clock.

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Eden Prairie, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

If your elderly family member is suddenly dealing with a great deal of pain, it’s important to start putting together a plan for managing it. Pain is one of those things that gradually becomes worse until it’s all your elderly family member can think about, so figuring out how to make it less of a problem for her is crucial. That way she can get back to enjoying her life as much as possible.

Understand What Chronic Pain Does to Your Senior

Chronic pain is a lot more serious than many people realize. It can reduce your elderly family member’s mobility, affect her sleep, make her more prone to falling, and affect her emotionally. There are very few parts of your senior’s life that are left untouched if she is facing chronic pain. That’s why dealing with chronic pain is about more than just trying to relieve the pain.

Get to Know Your Senior’s Signs of Increased Pain

What does it look like when your aging family member’s pain is ramping up? Is she having more trouble with mobility? Or is she more irritable than usual? If your aging family member is avoiding moving or seems more lethargic than usual, pain could be behind those actions. Talk with your elderly family member about what she is experiencing and how it affects her daily life so that you have a deeper understanding of what is going on.

Talk with Her Medical Providers about Possible Relief

There might be pain relieving techniques that your senior hasn’t tried yet, especially if this pain is new for her. Talk with her doctors about what might work for her and what she could try. For some seniors, becoming more active can be helpful, but she might need more help doing that. 24-hour home care can assist your elderly family member in rebuilding her mobility safely.

Make Life Easier in General for Your Senior

It’s a good idea to do whatever you can to make life easier in general for your elderly family member. That might mean helping her to put easy menus together or even outsourcing meal preparation to 24-hour home care providers. Whatever is causing the most difficulty for your senior right now has a solution, you might just have to look at it from a different angle.

Ensure She Has Support Around the Clock

Chronic pain is something that your senior may find is starting to affect her at all hours of the day and night. It might be beneficial for her to have 24-hour home care available overnight when she’s having trouble sleeping and needs help. It’s equally helpful to have caregivers available during the day to help with transportation and other complications.

Managing pain involves coming up with a plan that is flexible enough to adapt to your senior’s situation and thorough enough to account for all of the variables she’s likely to encounter. That type of planning is a lot easier to do when you’ve got experienced help along the way.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/treating-pain-elderly

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in St. Paul, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

Between 2012 and 2018, more than 600,000 hip replacement surgeries were completed in the U.S. Eight out of ten of these surgeries were first-time hip replacements. After a hip replacement surgery, patients are typically sent home within two days. Once your mom is home, she needs transitional care. You might not be in a position to spend days and nights with her, but she shouldn’t be alone. She needs 24-hour home care services.

How Around-the-Clock Care Works

Most people don’t understand how 24-hour home care works. Caregivers come to your mom’s home in shifts. Often the shifts are either six or eight hours long, so she might have three or four rotating caregivers each day. Here’s how it would work if your mom has four caregivers working six-hour shifts.

While the caregivers are with her, they’ll help her move around the home and offer support while she walks around her home. If she has therapy appointments, she cannot drive. She’s also going to need help getting in and out of a car. Her caregiver during that shift helps her get to the appointment on time and helps her out of the car and escorts her into the building.

When one caregiver’s shift ends, the next caregiver arrives in time to take over. The morning caregiver may leave right before lunchtime, and that next caregiver prepares lunch and takes over other chores like laundry, housekeeping, and your mom’s afternoon walk.

The same happens with the dinner-time shift change. Your mom has a new caregiver to keep her company during dinner, wash dishes, and clean the kitchen. That caregiver can help your mom brush and floss her teeth and get ready for bed. When the final caregiver arrives, your mom is asleep, but her caregiver is there to help her with bathroom trips and any reminders for middle-of-the-night pain medications.

Once she gets up, her evening caregiver will get her coffee while they wait for her next caregiver. Your mom’s never alone, which eases the fear of falling and having no one know. When her strength and balance improve, her services can be reduced.

Arrange Transitional Care Before Her Surgery

The best way to ensure your mom recovers well from hip surgery is by arranging 24-hour home care before she arrives home. Transitional care is essential while she regains strength and mobility. Her caregivers will help her with mobility as she moves around the home and gets in and out of the shower.

Arrange 24-hour home care services to support your mom. She’ll have someone available to drive her to appointments and help her run errands. She’ll have a caregiver with her to help with bathing routines and dressing. Her caregivers are also there to assist her with nightly rituals and any middle-of-the-night bathroom trips.

Sources:
https://www.prolianceorthopedicassociates.com/dr-barrett-blog/the-results-of-the-2020-american-joint-replacement-registry

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Brooklyn Park, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

Whether your elderly family member has adapted to having help from you and other caregivers already or not, the shift to 24-hour home care can still be a big one. You might find that your aging family member is just as resistant to this as she was to having help at all, even if she finally realized how great it was to have help. Here are some things you can talk about that might help.

Talk with Your Senior about Her Needs and Wants

Sit down with your aging family member and talk frankly about what she’s experiencing, what she needs, and what she wants. Odds are that she’s trying to stay in her home for as long as possible, which means that having help is becoming a necessity. Listen to what she shares about what she wants, because that can help you to show her how this type of care can actually meet those needs and wants for her.

Address What 24-hour Home Care Can Do for Her

While you’re talking with your elderly family member, share what home care providers can do for her. Explain that they’re not the ones in charge and that she’s still living in her own home. Caregivers are there to support and to assist her, not to force her into doing anything that she doesn’t want to do. This misconception can be behind some feelings.

Stress that You’re Giving it a Try

Let your elderly family member know that you’re going to give 24-hour home care a try. You can ask her to help you to set a trial limit for the experience if she’s still reluctant to give this idea the full go ahead. The key here is that you’re both going to give this a full, real try.

Give Your Senior Choices Wherever You Can

Another big factor can be your senior feeling as if she doesn’t have any choice in what’s happening. When that happens, you may see her start to dig in her heels on the simplest of issues. Giving her as many choices as you can as often as possible is really helpful if you’re seeing this happen. Even if the choice doesn’t seem to matter to you, it likely makes a big difference for her.

Let Your Senior Experience the Benefits for Herself

At some point, you have to just go ahead and let your aging family member experience what 24-hour home care is truly like for her. You can spend a lot of time and energy talking about the benefits, but until she realizes that caregivers are there to make her life easier and safer, she may still want to pull the plug. Understanding just how beneficial this is for her can be the turning point in the entire conversation.

Change is really difficult, for just about everyone. It can especially be hard for your senior when all she wants is for her life to be as normal as possible. Having help from home care providers can give her back some of that semblance of normality that she’s been missing.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/aging-caregiving-older-adults

 

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Burnsville, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

Have you noticed your elderly loved one having anxiety recently? This may be new or worsening anxiety. The truth is that many senior citizens struggle with generalized anxiety or some other type of anxiety disorder. It can be truly difficult for someone, especially an elderly person, to handle their anxiety all alone. If this is what your elderly loved one is going through, it may be a good idea to get them overnight care. 24-hour home care can provide the best overnight care and benefits to a senior who is struggling with anxiety.

Reducing Stress on Family Caregivers

One of the ways that 24-hour home care providers can help the elderly with anxiety is to reduce the stress on their family caregivers. If your elderly loved one is getting anxious because they feel like a burden to you or other family members, it may be best to just have 24-hour home care providers take care of them. That way, you can be there as the loving, caring family member and not the person who has to make all care decisions. This could help to reduce your elderly loved one’s anxiety, whether it comes from an anxiety disorder or generalized anxiety.

Keeping Them Home

Overnight home care could benefit your elderly loved one by keeping them home, too. Have you been thinking about whether your elderly loved one will continue to be okay living on their own? Have you worried that they are going to fall at night if nobody is there with them? If these are concerns that you have for your elderly loved one, it would be a great idea to hire 24-hour home care providers. These providers can stay with your elderly loved one overnight, so you don’t have all these worries of them being home alone. In addition, your elderly loved one won’t have to feel anxious about spending the night alone or that they might fall when getting up with nobody there to help.

24-Hour Home Care for Aging in Place

If you have ever thought about moving your elderly loved one out of their home and into a facility, one thing that might not have crossed your mind is the type of care they will receive. While facilities do their best, it is much more difficult to provide each individual with customized care. In addition, your elderly loved one may be too anxious to move out of their home.

However, if you choose to hire 24-hour home care providers that come to your elderly loved one’s home, they can provide complete individualized care as your elderly loved one is the only person they are caring for at that time.

Conclusion

These are some of the reasons that 24-hour home care can provide the best overnight care to the elderly. If your elderly loved one is experiencing anxiety over having to be home alone or they just get anxious in general, home care services may be the best route for them.

Sources

https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/depression-and-older-adults

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Edina, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

ALS is an incurable neurodegenerative condition where the neurons in the spine and brain deteriorate. As it progresses, a person loses the ability to speak, move, and eventually swallow.

Your dad has been diagnosed with ALS, and it’s all new to your family. What care needs is he going to have as it progresses?

Ambulation Assistance

Your dad is going to have a hard time walking around. The disease often starts in the hands and arms, so he’ll start off finding it hard to manipulate or hold items. Eventually, he struggles to support his weight and walk around.

As he progresses to needing a wheelchair or walker, he needs a supportive person to help him get in and out of the tub or shower. He’ll need help getting on and off the toilet, in and out of bed, and when standing from a chair or sofa.

His 24-hour care aides are there to help your dad go up and down the stairs. They can also help him get in and out of a car if he needs to go to a doctor’s appointment.

Help With Feeding

Because your dad’s hands don’t work like they once did, he won’t be able to eat without help. Eventually, chewing and swallowing are problematic. There’s the risk of choking, so he needs someone who can make foods that are soft enough to easily swallow.

Do you have a hard time balancing your work, family life, and errands your dad needs you to run? If you can’t fit in that weekly trip to the grocery store for your dad without rescheduling your plans, remember that caregivers can do the shopping and run errands for your dad.

Help With Grooming, Hygiene, and Toileting

One of the ways you can support your dad is by arranging 24-hour home care services to help him with personal care. Even if he can still use the toilet, he might find it impossible to clean up after he goes.

His caregivers work in shifts to make sure he’s never alone. If he needs help showering, his caregivers are there. They can help him shave, brush and floss his teeth, and apply moisturizer to dry skin.

Your dad has home care aides to trim his mustache or beard, cut his fingernails and toenails, and apply lip balm to prevent chapped lips. With personal care, he even has someone to brush or comb his hair after washing it.

Ensure Your Dad’s Never Alone

May is ALS Awareness Month. Take the time to gather the family and discuss what your dad wants and needs. He needs to be involved. Once you have a list, call an agency and discuss 24-hour home care services.

When your dad has 24-hour home care aides with him, he’s never alone. It gives both of you peace of mind that if there’s an emergency, your dad has the immediate support of someone he knows and trusts. Call now with your questions.

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Coon Rapids, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.

Insomnia is believed to affect half of all older adults. In a study of 6,800 adults over 65, upwards of seven out of ten reported finding it hard to sleep all night. Upwards of three out of five found it hard to fall asleep. About one out of four said they didn’t feel refreshed even after sleeping.

It’s not surprising to learn that your parents have a hard time falling or staying asleep. Insomnia can be linked to their medications, chronic health conditions like arthritis that make sleeping painful and disruptive, or snoring. When you’re a family caregiver, your parents’ insomnia can impact your sleep quality. This is where 24-hour home care can step in to relieve your duties and help your parent all at the same time.

The Top Reasons for Poor Sleep in the Elderly

Medications are one of the leading reasons for poor sleep. If your mom or dad takes a prescription that causes drowsiness or nausea, it can impact their rest at night. The pills that they take cause them to feel tired during the day, so they nap too much. They’re no longer able to sleep through the night.

As you age, the ability to enter into a profound sleep changes. Your parents may wake up to outside noises more than they used to. If this is the situation they’re experiencing, white noise like a fan or white noise machine that produces the sound of rain or a bubbling stream may help them tune out traffic or people on the street.

Your parents may not be active during the day. If they’re sedentary, their body isn’t tired. That makes it harder to sleep at night. Make sure they’re active for at least 30 minutes or more each day. A brisk walk around the neighborhood is one way to ensure they get a half-hour of exercise.

Limit caffeinated snacks and beverages before bedtime. Your parents need to switch to decaffeinated tea and coffee by late afternoon. After dinner, they need to avoid excessive amounts of water, as their bladder will fill faster and cause them to need to get up and use the toilet.

The final thing to do to ensure your parents get the target seven or eight hours of sleep each night is to feed them dinner hours before bedtime. They need to avoid alcoholic beverages, too, as they impact sleep.

Going to bed on a full stomach increases the chance of acid reflux and heartburn. When they lay down, stomach acid production increases to help with digestion. The chest pain that results from heartburn can make it impossible to sleep.

Sleep Well With 24-Hour Home Care

Look at the benefits of 24-hour home care services. Instead of waking up to calls or knocks on your bedroom door or having to set the alarm to wake up, caregivers are there and ready to help your parents with their care needs.

You get to sleep through the night, and 24-hour home care aides are ready and waiting to assist your parents with everything from medication reminders to toileting assistance.

Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5991956/#

If you or an aging loved one is considering 24-hour home care in Eden Prairie, MN, and the surrounding areas, please contact the friendly staff at CareBuilders at Home Minnesota. Call today 612-260-2273.