Is Your Senior Loved One a Hoarder?

I just read an article on the AARP website that hit close to home. It talks about hoarding. Specifically, it talks about senior citizens who have accumulated tons of stuff and don’t know how to get rid of it.

If hoarding was a strange phenomena a couple decades ago, it is a much more well documented issue today. There have been multiple books written on the subject, countless television specials, and even a reality series dedicated to the subject, aptly titled “Hoarders.” So you are probably familiar with what it is. Hoarding is, to many, an incredibly strange compulsive behavior to collect everything. Not collector’s items, mind you. Everything. Junk mail, empty boxes, dust bunnies, cotton swabs, plasticware, etc. It gets more and more bizarre. They keep collecting until their homes become oceans of junk. It is overwhelming to look at, let alone to live in. To the outside world, this is an unnerving, almost dark pattern of behavior. Families of hoarders feel helpless. There is simply no way for them to intervene. Having some personal experience with elderly hoarders in my own family, I understand why the AARP calls it a “psychological illness.” I don’t know how else to classify it.

Senior Hoarders

Seniors are hoarders at much higher rates than other adults. We can only guess why this might be so. Some seniors experienced some of the great depression as children, and can vividly remember not having any possessions at all. They can’t seem to bring themselves to throw things away, even this many decades later. For others, the loss of a spouse triggers it. Suddenly, everything in the house is meaningful, because it reminds them of their loved one. Yes, even paper cups, small cardboard boxes, and credit card applications. In the case of our family, both of these factors were partially responsible, but there are many other triggers.

What can a Family Do?

Our situation got so bad that the grown kids wouldn’t bring their little one’s over to grandma’s anymore. It was unsafe and unhealthy to stay in that environment. So we had an intervention with our loved one. A couple of them, actually. The results? Mixed at best. She understood the problem and said she planned to “get to” the clutter. We are still hoping that happens soon.

Some baffled families often turn to professional help, but even the medical community can’t offer much help a lot of the time. Psychologists have a difficult time dealing with this disorder. For whatever reason, some seniors seem to have no ability to pull themselves away from it.

So what can a family do? Definitely start with an intervention. You might have far better success than we did. Just be sure to do it with lots of respect. You can gently and gracefully tell your loved ones how their behavior is affecting the rest of the family, and urge them to let you help

Whether that works or not, I recommend you check out this website: Children of Hoarders. They have some great ideas on how to address the subject.

Finding the Right Senior Caregiver, part 2

So, you need a full or part time caregiver for your senior loved one. How can you find the right person? How can you tell if the person will treat your loved one with the proper level of care, professionalism, and respect? Here is our first tip, and it is an important preliminary one. Don’t skip this!

1) Assess Your Needs & Document Them

Now is the time to think of all you are going to need. Be specific and be thorough. Don’t just write “medical help.” Indicate whether you need a nurse, and what level of nurse. What kind of ADL’s (activities for daily life) do you need assistance for? Walking? Bathing? Going to the bathroom? What about other activities (IADS’s), like driving, cooking, and helping with housework?

Whatever it is, record it. Some caregivers are going to want to take care of some activities, but not others. And sometimes a senior caregiver who is not necessarily a nurse will be able to take care of some of those things, and that would certainly help your budget.

The point is, the senior and the caregiver need to have the same expectations. The key to getting expectations aligned is good communication. So before you conduct a search, put out an ad for help, conduct an interview, etc, figure out what your own expectations are. This will take care of a ton of problems on the outset.

For more info on this subject, visit this elder care law site or Inside Elder Care. And stay tuned for more tips on hiring a caregiver. And if you need to find Oregon assisted living or senior housing anywhere in the United States, click on the banner below.

Finding the Right Senior Caregiver, part 1

Recently, a scam artists bilked an 89 year old man out of thirty thousand dollars. Of course, this type of thing happens all the time, right? But there was something especially heinous about this story: the scammer was the man’s caregiver.

Here’s the story. In this case, the caregiver was a woman who pretended to cozy up to the wealthy man and start a romance. She was 58 years old. As he grew to trust her, he asked her to go buy a new car for him, which she could drive him around in. So he gave her the money. Thirty grand.

She bought the car, all right! She bought it, and put it in her name…

Thankfully, this time, the woman did not get away with it. She was arrested, tried and convicted for her fraud, and she even has to pay the money back in restitution. Justice has happened!

But the issue raises a larger issue in my mind: How do you choose a caregiver that you can trust? After all, this story took place in an Oregon assisted living home, but seniors who get home health care from an agency or an individual are far more vulnerable, even. When a person begins to get to know them, to understand how they operate, they could be very easy prey for a scam artist. It could happen through a false romance, but more likely, it could happen in far more subtle ways. A credit card disappearing. Old jewelry, lying around, is suddenly gone. Or it could happen in the most drastic ways of all: the caregiver winds up in the will of the senior, receiving lavish gifts. And the family can do nothing.

With this in mind, we will be exploring how we as family members can protect the ones we love when choosing a caregiver. The discussion will move far beyond protecting from fraud. We will look at how to find a person that will encourage your loved one. Someone who can really be able to relate to them. Someone who knows what they are doing.

So stay tuned for our series, “Finding the right Caregiver.”

Line Dancing for Seniors

There’s a new article at Elderly Care Services that talks about dancing among seniors. The article doesn’t focus specifically on line dancing, but it mentions line dancing as a new form of senior exercise that is seeking to rise in legitimacy.

Of course, many seniors and others (me, for one) don’t really get off on country line dancing. But many seniors might find themselves pleasantly surprised at just how much fun it can be, and what a great exercise it is. Senior line dancing is becoming increasingly popular, particularly in senior centers around the United States. Why the popularity? For one thing, it is pretty easy to get down. You don’t have to take too many lessons, or build up too much strength to figure out how to get it going.

Secondly, line dancing involves a whole bunch of people. Unlike Ballroom dancing, you don’t have ro rely on one partner. In this way, there is less pressure than some other forms. All you do is go with the flow.

Am I now trumpeting the cause of line dancing after I already said I don’t enjoy it? Maybe. I don’t enjoy it. But I have to admit that when you have a lot of people, it can actually be kind of enjoyable. And if you need to get exercise, you can certainly do it with line dancing, and have a fun time in the process.

Check your local senior center to find out if there are line dancing events coming up in your town. And if you need to find a fancy way to care for elders in your family, click the banner above and trade some information. It’s easy!

Intergenerational Senior Care?

I just saw this report from a Minneapolis’ Kare 11 News. It is the story of how one medical school is seeking to get its students to live in senior housing with those they may treat one day. It lead me to think about the idea of “intergenerational senior care.”

The University of Minnesota is experimenting with this. Some of their med students have integrated themselves into a partner senior health care home. It is an interesting move, and it already seems to be paying off for them. The two fourth year medical students profess that they are getting to know their senior neighbors in a genuine way and it is shaping the way they see the elder generation. Ultimately, they believe this will help them as doctors. They will be able to sympathize with aging patients and not just say “go take your medicine.”

I think this is a pretty cool idea. After all, we have all had experiences with doctors not really sympathizing to the plight of our families (especially our kids…), so we know there can be a real “professional” separation in the medical community. Writing a prescription is a simple thing to do, and it requires no personal understanding. But only by getting to know the patient’s lifestyle can a doctor or nurse be sure he is really meeting their needs.

So, are we really talking about intergenerational senior care? Maybe it’s short of that. Maybe just a few future professionals doing live in research. But the doctor in charge of the movement thinks it could be a broad integration of senior housing in the future. I don’t know about that (some seniors LIKE living around other seniors…), but I think it’s great that we will have doctors that know how to sympathize with the seniors they treat.

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