Any recommendations for human fall monitors - the type that is helpful for “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
My mom enjoys living alone, but especially now when certain times can be worrisome for both us and her, she asked me to check around to see which company would be worth going with. She wants to get one.
Does location matter? She’s in a very rural area, though she lives in a city within the area. Not all cell phones have service there if that makes a difference.
Location and cellphone service might matter.
My mom refused to get an emergency alert device after I did some research and found out that part of the protocol often is that the service will first call someone who lives near to the customer and ask that person to go check on the customer. My mom said this would be unacceptable for her. She would be willing to have a family member called first but the closest any of us live is one hour away, which kind of defeats the purpose of the service. She would like a system that immediately calls EMS, but I don’t think that makes sense for the EMS providers.
New Apple Watch 4. It detects falls. It will ask if the person is ok. If they don’t respond, it will dial the emergency contact on the list and 911. I am thinking about getting one for every elderly family members. I can’t help thinking my BIL would be alive if he had the watch. He passed a few years ago from a stroke. He was not discovered until the evening when his wife came home.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/apple-watch-fall-detection-works-perfectly-swedish-man-133155455.html
Timely thread. My older sister lives all ne and is recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She had a fall last year and had a hard time getting up and her friends have recently suggested she get some sort of alert device.
Very timely. I am also thinking about getting something for my mom.
My friend’s MIL has one where the company calls over the monitor and asks if everything is okay. If Granny says yes, they just reset it. She used to set it off quite a bit just knocking into desks and tables. When MIL fell and really did need help, they called friend who came over to meet the ambulance.
It really does allow the MIL (age 95) to live at her home alone, even though son lives next door. He checks on her 2-3 times per day, but isn’t there 100% of the time.
@twoinanddone Which company, do you know? This is exactly what my mom is looking for so I’d love a specific recommendation from someone who has used it and isn’t earning a commission/payment from their thoughts.
Same here!
I’ll check
Location and phone service definitely matters. My dad had a lifeline in OH that didn’t work in FL.
My 96-year-old MIL lives with us in our less than ideal 2-story home. She has the downstairs bedroom and, unfortunately, we can not hear her from our bedroom. We have Life Alert. Both my wife and I are on their call list (#1 and #2). My BIL, who lives out of state, is #3 on their call list. Originally when she pushed her Life Alert pendant, they were calling her on the speaker phone that they provide and then would always subsequently call for an ambulance. Now, we have it set up where Life Alert calls my MIL and then subsequently calls either my wife or me so we can assess her condition and then we can try to resolve it. We authorize sending an ambulance but, as I said, we had to change the way her account was originally set up. I believe they thought she lived alone when we transferred her account from her home in NV (where she did live alone), to our home in CA.
Non-emergency trips to the emergency room can have bad outcomes for seniors. Once, my MIL had an ambulance dispatched and I t turned out to be nothing serious. No signs of stroke. Several tests came back negative. But, while in the hospital she developed hospital delirium and increased muscle weakness due to being confined to a bed. Long story short: the trip to emergency for being scared in the middle of the night resulted in her spending a week in the hospital and then an additional 5 weeks in a rehab facility to get her strength back to pre-emergency room condition.
For those that have a family member who is resistant to a fall monitor, you can try what we ended up doing for my MIL. We have installed an Alexa device in every room (you could use any other one really) that can be voice activated to make phone calls. While it won’t work if she loses consciousness, it does allow her to call for help and decide whether that’s a neighbor, relative or 911. We see this as an intermediate step because eventually she will need something that is self-actuating.
@jshain - in the upstairs/downstairs situation, might a baby monitor type arrangement work? A camera with speaker might too, but that might be too intrusive.
Jym626, My wife and I, especially my wife, did not want to go the baby monitor route. She thought iit would keep her awake all night with MIL’s normal sleeping sounds.
@My3Kiddos , if you feel comfortable doing so, can you tell us how much the Alexas in every room cost? Thanks.
My inlaws have a very small house so it takes only the main unit in the Living Room ($!00) and a dot ($40 each) in the kitchen/dining area and one in their bedroom to cover the areas where my MIL goes. We shared the cost with my SIL who bought them last year on Black Friday and then she installed them as a Christmas gift (including making sure that they synced with my MIL’s cell phone.)
Are double glazed windows/doors easily broken? They looked rather indestructible to me. I thought they were as good as wooden doors.
@Iglooo I think your window/door post is in the wrong thread!
@thumper1 Ooops! You are right. Too late to delete.
When my mom was still alive we got something through the local hospital.
The system was set up so she could press a button on a necklace and someone would come on the unit and ask if she needed help (the unit looked like a bigger answering machine). We tested it, and it covered the whole house even the basement. If there was no response it would automatically send an ambulance and then call my sister, who was local.
You may want to ask the local senior center or hospital if there is a local alternative they recommend.
It obviously doesn’t solve the problem of not being able to press a button, but it’s something.