Client Education

Care Planning

Do You Know How to Tell When Your Loved One Needs Help?

By: Deborah Sullivan Brennan, Special to AccentCare

At 87, my grandfather has the vital signs of a person decades younger and mental faculties that are equally intact. For a decade and a half he lived alone in Florida, relying on nothing but weekly phone calls from his three children. He did his own taxes, devoured the news, dined out daily and played cutthroat domino games with friends from his church widows and widowers club. But his balance began faltering in recent years, leaving him shuffling and unsteady. And glaucoma narrowed his vision.

As my grandfather's eyesight and mobility declined, family members feared he risked a traffic accident or a disabling fall. A Thanksgiving visit in 1999 convinced my aunt that it was time to act, and my aunt, mother and uncle persuaded him to enter Silvergate Retirement Residence in San Marcos, Calif., at Christmas.

"You want to make sure you get them to the place soon enough, because if you wait until they fall, it? too late," my mother explained. (She feared that hip fractures or other injuries from a fall could prove fatal, or leave my grandfather bedridden or wheelchair-bound.)

At first my grandfather resisted giving up his familiar life, but he relented when he realized how much his children worried for his safety. Although he still misses his car, he settled quickly into the retirement home and even founded a dominoes club, which has proved popular.

My grandfather suffered physical signs of aging, but memory problems caused by Alzheimer? disease can also impair seniors?ability to manage on their own. My father and his sister moved their mother to a senior home after a neighbor repeatedly found her lost in the lobby of her apartment building, unable to get home.

Changes in diet, appearance, mobility, household maintenance or social activities can signal the need for help, experts say. Bare cupboards, neglect of personal hygiene and loss of interest in church or social clubs are some other red flags. So are frequent and/or serious bruises and burns.

"If you live out of town and you come for a visit, the things you want to look for are anything out of the ordinary," said Linnea Goodrich, director of operations for AccentCare. Look for signs like a habitually tidy and organized person who leaves clutter unattended and mail unopened, or a normally well-dressed senior who wears the same clothes five days in a row or stays perpetually in pajamas. Such people may be suffering illness, memory loss or depression.

"Look for changes in attitude and behavior," said Monique Snyder, a certified geriatric care manager in Carmel, Calif. "If your parent has been real involved in activities and social groups and now they?e not, you would wonder what? going on. Are they having incontinence issues, so they?e embarrassed to attend? Or is there another medical condition going on, such as clinical depression?" The same symptom could have myriad causes. Trouble doing laundry, for example, could result from vision problems, arthritis, memory disorders or exhaustion, Goodrich said.

Talk to your loved one? friends, neighbors, doctor or clergy member for clues, Snyder suggests. And then gently discuss the problems with your loved one. To find the root of the problem, Goodrich said, "You need to be kind of a detective without grilling them. You need to really listen to what they do during the day and how they sound."

Deborah Sullivan Brennan is a freelance writer based in Idyllwild, Calif. She previously worked for newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Palm Springs Desert Sun.