Eldercare stress

March 27, 2017 at 8:45 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I’ve been told I need to write a blog about dealing with my parents (age 88 and 94). 

It is stressful. There is so much to learn. Caring for our elders, in America, has gotten SO complicated. And people don’t seem to be willing to embrace reality….

We are mortal. We live. We die. We can’t have one without the other. America seems to not understand this in the same way other cultures do. We need to learn how to ALLOW our elderly to die. Peacefully. With dignity. And without draining every possible resource that they ever worked for, or the money they were hoping to pass on to their children. 

The way we do it now? It has slowly gotten so far from that. We put our parents into “homes”… assisted living. There, they are kept ‘safe’ and kept alive even when they are no longer really functioning. This is not what they wanted. I wonder if my mom will be kept alive until she is just a shell of what she was. Safely… in a bed that she never leaves. This is not what she wanted. She wanted to LIVE. My father had well over a million dollars in savings and investments. That should last for more that 3 years of care. Right? No. It will cover them for about three years IF their care doesn’t have an increased need. Crazy!!! 

Now my family is brainstorming for an outside of the box solution, so that we can at least pay for their care for however many years they have left. I’m not sure what that will look like, or how stressful it will be for those caring for them.  I am hunting ideas and trying to wrap my head around the possibilities. 

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