Home & Hearth Caregivers’ Tips for Managing Multiple Health Conditions
Diabetes… heart disease… Alzheimer’s… Parkinson’s… arthritis… the list of chronic conditions that can impact seniors is exhaustive. As many as 85% of all seniors are battling at least one, and 60% struggle with two or more. Managing the medical appointments and procedures, medications, and dietary requirements for one condition is tough enough, but when multiple diagnoses come into play, it’s even more challenging.
Home & Hearth Caregivers understands how difficult it can be to stay a step ahead of chronic diseases, and works extensively with seniors and their families to ensure that all of the bases are covered. To that end, we offer the following tips to help your senior loved ones:
- Medication Management: Keep a list of all of the medications the senior is taking, including prescriptions, over-the-counter meds, and any supplements. If a particular type of dose is most comfortable for your loved one – such as a preference for liquids instead of tablets – check with the doctor to see if that form is an option. Using weekly pill boxes is also essential to ensure proper doses are taken at the right times each day.
- Treatment Management: Track regular, ongoing treatments on a calendar or other designated document, and keep in the same location as the medication chart mentioned above. If the senior is struggling with a particular treatment regimen, sit down with the doctor and discuss the pros and cons of continuing or modifying the treatment. The most aggressive treatment plan may not always be in the senior’s best interest.
- Dietary/Exercise Management: Many chronic conditions, such as diabetes and CHF, require adherence to a particular dietary and exercise plan for optimum health. Family members can help tremendously by providing encouragement and support, assisting with grocery shopping and planning/preparing nutritious meals, joining in an exercise program or offering transportation to a senior center program, and more.
If managing your senior loved one’s chronic medical conditions feels overwhelming, we want you to know you’re not alone! Home & Hearth Caregivers is here to partner with you. Our professional in-home caregivers are fully trained and experienced in senior chronic illness management, and can help provide a full range of supportive services, including medication reminders, transportation to doctors’ appointments and procedures, preparation of healthy and delicious meals, and so much more to help improve quality of life for the seniors you love.
Serving Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Will and surrounding counties, we’re just a phone call away at 800-349-0663. Contact us to schedule a free in-home assessment and to let us get to know you!