Long story short, I am wondering if anyone has any experience or suggestions for managing an elderly parent with diabetes. My dad is a type 1 and he sustained a mild brain injury a couple years ago which left no impact on his life except he can no longer calculate his insulin dose and he is not reliable to do his shot before meals.
My mom does all the care taking and they live in a CCRC. She was rushed to the hospital a couple of days ago and so I had to come over and have been staying with him since.
He needs insulin before each meal and at bedtime. Plus he needs to check his glucose level every few hours to ensure it doesn’t get too low.
I hired a LPN from his community to stay with him for an evening for a crucial work presentation I had to do, which was great up until she gave him quick acting insulin at night instead of long lasting. (She recognized immediately and stayed up all night waking him to eat and check his sugar)
I am able to stay here another week and I only live 45 min away. But I think all I can do is maybe see if he can move to the nursing home wing where he will have supervision. He will hate that because he is an introvert and very independent and won’t want to be “babysat.”
I’ve been down the road of declining elders, but the combo of diabetes plus mild brain injury is overwhelming me. I’d appreciate any suggestions on ways to manage this for him and me.
The first thing to do is get in touch with his Dr. and see if there is anything that can be done to minimize the risk of low blood sugars. Perhaps set doses prior to each meal and accept that he will run higher than usual. Is he good about eating meals regularly? Using insulin on a regular basis?
Yes, going to assisted living with someone to oversee the insulin is the best idea. However, hiring someone to come in once daily to check might be cheaper and preserve his independence if the insulin doses can be adjusted to something more regular.
@“great lakes mom” thanks for your suggestions. He is on a sliding scale already and has become much more unpredictable as far as numbers. I have resigned myself to him running high because that is not as dangerous as low.
I originally hired the LPN from here to come in but the medical manager and I now feel that they do not have the expertise to manage this. He needs an RN and I think it would be cheaper to move him to nursing rather than have an RN in every couple hours. Plus on the nursing side they will make sure he has a meal. I’d also have to make sure an RN had food supplies here and would prepare something for him.
So many moving parts! I think I’ve realized that full time supervision is the only answer despite the fact that he will feel like a baby. Sigh.
You may have already looked into this, but what about a wearable monitor with pump? I seem to recall seeing articles about some that monitor and then calculate the dose needed to be administered automatically. Would that work for your father?
I hired a local elder care firm to come for breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime to help with food and insulin for a senior in my family I was responsible for. Same hours every day 365 days a year. They kept a glucose level log that i faxed once a week to the physician’s office. Remarkably her glucose stabilized with only very infrequent highs or lows out of range and her A1Cs hovered around 7 and her doc was happy with that which told me that prior to me establishing that narrow and tight of a routine actually was good for her. She wasn’t a nibbler so didn’t get into food other than what the caregivers put out for her. She, too, had dementia so wasn’t “trustworthy” to take care of her own insulin needs