5 Tips for Weighing End-of-life Options with Your Senior
Hospice Elder Care in Lincoln CA
It is never easy to face the end of someone’s life, even if they have serious health issues. When that time comes for your elderly family member, it helps if you have already addressed some of these concerns with her. If that conversation has been too difficult to have, however, you might want some tips to help get to that crucial information and understand what to do for your senior.
Learn What Hospice Elder Care Can Provide
The misconceptions around hospice care can be enough to keep your senior from even pondering the idea. It helps a lot for both of you to learn together what hospice elder care can offer to your senior and to the rest of the family. The main focus of this type of care is keeping your elderly family member as comfortable as possible and ensuring that she has a chance to meet her end-of-life goals.
Determine When End-of-life Care Is Appropriate
Your elderly family member’s doctors are most likely to recommend hospice elder care to her when they expect she has six months or fewer left. For your senior, there may be other signs that are an indication to her that end-of-life care is appropriate. Working with her medical team and checking in with how she’s feeling can help you to determine when it’s the right time.
Make Sure You Understand Your Senior’s Wishes
If your senior hasn’t thought through all of her wishes around how she wants the end of her life to go, now is the time for you to have that conversation with her. You can’t help her to have the experience that she wants for that stage of her life unless you know what she wants. Getting to the preferences and experiences she wants to have is going to help you to better ensure that you can meet those needs.
Don’t Wait Too Long to Begin Planning for the End of Life
It’s understandable that neither you nor your senior might want to talk about the end of her life and what might happen. But if you are both dragging your feet about this conversation, that’s not going to help anyone involved. Biting the bullet and having that conversation as soon as possible is going to give you the best chance at helping your senior the most.
Remember to Take Care of Yourself, Too
As your elderly family member’s family caregiver, you have to take care of yourself, too. If you are not doing all that you can to keep yourself healthy and ready for the challenges ahead, it is going to be that much more difficult to be there for your senior. Hospice elder care can help you and other family members to find the resources you need in order to cope with what is happening with her.
The right end-of-life plans for your senior are going to be flexible enough to meet her needs and still offer her the support to have the quality of life that she deserves.
If you are considering hospice elder care in Lincoln, CA, for an aging loved one, please contact the caring staff at PIC Comfort Care today. Call (530) 885-9948.
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