@CTTC yes to many offspring being sole caregiver, often daughters (I was told it was fine for my brother to move south but I’d better not!). My senior care social worker tells everyone in our support group, constantly, that we may die before our parents if we “keep this up.” Even when parents are in assisted living or other facility, the workload is huge.
There are big pluses to being in facilities, and big pluses to being home with family. Lots of pros and cons for both. Right now the biggest “con” to facilities is that they are closed to visitors. I know many like me who are caregiving by remote control, still buying supplies, communicating with the facility, handling bills, hiring private help, talking with doctors etc.
Good luck to all no matter what decisions have been made for elder care during this hard time. Hats off to everyone too.
I should add that my mom was SO excited to move into the facility she helped pick out. OMG, what a beautiful apartment. Spacious, open floor plan. A balcony that overlooked lush landscaping and a pool off in the distance. A glimpse of the Austin skyline. The building is on a hill, so the balcony is on the second floor, but she could walk out her front door, cross a hallway, open a door, and be out in the yard! She could get rides anywhere within a ten-mile radius, seven days a week. There were lots of activities going on all the time.
We had already paid for the first month and were going to start moving her in THE WEEK everything shut down. She keeps asking when she can move. It’s heartbreaking. Now I don’t know what will happen. The facility gave us a credit for May but hasn’t decided what to do about June. I guess we’ll cancel if they won’t give her another credit.
Of course, now that my dad is doing so well, it adds a whole other layer of complexity. The doctors keep telling us it’s only a matter of time, but he seems to be thriving. In a way, the current crisis was a blessing because it allowed us to delay Mom’s move.
Is the ultimate goal to keep the elderly parents alive or keep them happy? They are both valid goals, but how you answer that question may help you determine a course of action.
Speaking generally, please don’t mistake privilege (as reflected in good health, financial well-being, ability to stay at home, ability of one’s elderly family members to have choices) for moral superiority.
One other thing: if a parent is in assisted living, memory care, or nursing home, then family visiting are at risk of being exposed from the elder, as well as the other way around. When I talked with a state hotline about taking my mother out and renting a place with her (she has dementia and cannot live alone), the state person told me it was too much of a risk for ME. And that I should think about staying alive for my kids.
If a parent(s) is home alone and not going out, that is not so much a worry unless they have a caregiver coming in from outside, in which case the risk to family is there but lower than those with relatives in a facility where there are multiple and different aides and nurses every day.
I’ve iterated my blessings before…nice home, good relationships with those whom I’m living the SIP experience. Options as to where to go if/when things get tense. Enough reserves of the basics to allow for some level of emotional comfort.
Prior to COVID I was also blessed with a cadre of what my family calls ‘witch doctors’. A massage therapist, acupuncturist, cranial sacral therapist, hands on yoga instructor. Weekend courses at a local holistic retreat center. Please - not looking for a lecture on the value of these therapies - any issues of concern were run past a standard MD to ensure no sinister thing was happening.
It’s been almost 4 months since I’ve availed myself of any of the above treatments. The effects are very noticeable. My joints hurt - in places they never hurt before. The tinnitus has worsened. I’m stiff where I used to be limber. Energy level is way down. And along with the physical decline is a mental decline. This way of life is depressing.
If this type of degradation is happening to someone who has/had the means to prevent issues - I can only guesstimate how others might be fairing.
“We could have and should have done what New Zealand did and close everything but grocery stores and pharmacies. They did this for 49 days. But we didn’t because we are a stupid and selfish nation.”
This is a gross simplification of the only two businesses you need open.
There are all kinds of businesses that support a grocery store. Who grows the produce, who is packing the meat, milking cows, and processing the orange juice? Who’s going to drive the trucks to deliver the food and medicine? Trucks need gasoline to distribute the goods.
In addition, who’s going to pick up you garbage for 2 months, what happens when there is an electrical fire at your house? Don’t we need fire fighters and for that matter police? Shouldn’t doctors offices and hospitals be open and any businesses that make PPE for these workers. Lab technicians to do testing? Who’s going to feed the patients in the hospital?
Our economy is extremely complex and there are many businesses and workers that support other essential businesses that we all need.
I totally agree with you. It’s interesting how so many people don’t evolve with new information. I was absolutely supportive of the shut down for the first 6 weeks, because of, you know, exponential math and the unknown about how this virus spreads and the fact that we had almost zero testing. But like @Creekland doctor son, I am optimistic based on new information. We have testing (getting better every day), tracing and apps are on the way, people are aware and fairly compliant unlike in early March. Absolutely we will have outbreaks and second waves but we will handle it alot better because we understand way more about this virus than the first time around. Not sure how educated people can think we have learned nothing. Bizarre. Also, there is no way there will be a mass shutdown again. Local shutdowns or adding restrictions during outbreak, yes, national shutdown again? No way. Mutiny. Unfortunately this health and science pandemic has also become political in this country. Sad.
I am an independent and base all my actions on what I am reading and learning about every day. I don’t have a position that can’t change or evolve unlike so many others here. I can see clearly now how we got here, and can see the path to the future. I believe we had an awful federal failure regarding this pandemic. States with dense populations, Public transport, and alot of international flights were hammered. I believe the weather helps stop the spread. I believe surgical mask wearing helps (even though the government told us it didn’t), and social distancing and testing is key. I don’t believe this virus spreads much at all via surfaces, so have changed my behavior on that. I believe we need to have a life in the next 2 years while waiting for a vaccine and this was never about death rates, but about stopping the spread to flatten the curve and protect caregivers and give us time. I think governors need to be careful with their rhetoric and focus on how we can safely return to some semblance of normalcy not focus on how to catch people breaking rules.
@roycroftmom - that is something of a false choice, but I get what you are saying.
I want what they want for themselves. I also want to do for them what they did for their parents. Those two things conflict.
I also want to have their grandchild spend time with them while he still can.
I also want to minimize the risk to my husband. And I am mindful that if I go down, my house of cards of a family goes down with me.
Today, right now, my parents want us there. We are all as low risk for exposure as we will get for a year or so. My brothers are ok with it. So we will go. Depending upon how it goes, we will go next week too.
I am not special, in fact I am probably pretty representative of daughters/mothers my age - except I have some resources to throw at the problem. Wherever people live and whatever their opinions about opening up - this problem is exactly the same.
Since March, in our local stores I have not once seen hand sanitizer on any shelf and only seen wipes twice. The two times I spotted wipes, I think it was a stocking error because it was just 2-4 packages on a random shelf.
Both Clorox and Lysol indicate that they’re having trouble ramping up production of sanitizer and wipes so it might be that they are trying to give priority to areas that have higher rates of infection - like NYC - instead of sending much to the areas that haven’t had much infection - like here. If that’s what happening, that’s reasonable and am OK with that.
I put the change in mask-wearing guidance in the category of things we learned more about and now we have better recommendations.
Early there were a few issues with masks -
supply shortages, such that medical personnel did not have enough, and multiple buyers, some with deep pockets, were chasing limited resources
uncertainty about how the virus spread - airborne vs. surface-hand-face
well-founded concern that the general public does a lousy job of wearing masks without constantly touching the mask and our faces, and that this might lead to more spread, not less
understanding and effective communication that the masks protects no the wearer but those around us.
Eventually a consensus emerged that mask wearing helps reduce the spread, N95 should be reserved for front line workers, and that home made masks are generally good enough to be effective in slowing the spread. But there were some mixed messages along the way as the information came together to reach this consensus.
Like much with this novel virus, we got some things wrong at first. We’re getting better, and that’s a good thing.
does “private pay” mean under the table- not paying taxes, Medicare, etc. In most states that’s illegal over a certain number of hours or dollar amount. And the IRS says
“Not sure how educated people can think we have learned nothing.”
Maybe from watching our local news that showed tourists streaming up to Maine from the rest of New England, freely admitting they had no plan to follow the governor’s quarantine orders. Or seeing all the people not wearing masks in our small variety store yesterday. Etc., etc. It’s discouraging.
Oh, and I just read this, written by a friend of a friend:
When I wrote yesterday about “combining households” with elderly parents I meant in a virtual sense: to make a “bubble” or “quaranteam” that includes the elderly parents, even if they are living elsewhere, so as to allow them to be with the child and their family. Not to have the parents move in, necessarily.
Who would have thought that making thread and elastic was an essential business? Yet we found ourselves scrambling for both in order to make masks, now required in many areas and helpful to reopening in a safer manner.
Yes, and you forgot one other critical failure point - China. If the Chinese government had acted in Wuhan when the virus was first recognized instead of weeks after first trying to cover it up, making people who were reporting on it disappear, lying about it to the world and the WHO and allowing travel to continue while all this was occurring…
Here’s the thing, I’m not a scientist or doctor, but all those smart people at the CDC absolutely had to know that this was mainly spreading in China and Europe via the air vs surfaces. Forget deaths, but exponential case rising (over days) in those countries during January and February don’t happen via surface spread. Especially the info coming out of Italy with the super spreaders and soccer players. Yet in March, we were being told it could hurt to wear a mask. They should have been up front about the lack of PPE and asked people to do homemade.
Any airborne illness will see a benefit from surgical mask wearing.
This plus the testing mess put us in a bad place. I just want the truth, always. The CDC was trying to tell us in February - the horse was out of the barn - that this was coming… they were muzzled.
Feb 12-
“Most of the diseases in China, however, we can and should be prepared for this new virus to gain a foothold in the U.S. The goal of the measures we have taken to date are to slow the introduction and impact of this disease in the United States but at some point, we are likely to see community spread in the U.S.”
My D lives in a beach community here in San Diego where a lot of young people live. In person dining started last Thursday at many places. One popular beach bar has already been shut down by the health department because of pictures on social media showing all the crowds with no masks or social distancing.
It’s heartbreaking. Now I don’t know what will happen. The facility gave us a credit for May but hasn’t decided what to do about June. I guess we’ll cancel if they won’t give her another credit.