Memory Care: Choosing Between In-Home and Assisted Living Facilities
More often than not, forgetfulness is associated with aging. When elders exhibit such kind of impairment, members of the family tend to take this for granted unless this memory problem is associated with serious distressed behavior and escalates to more unlikely actions. This situation should trigger the family to seek medical advice. You may never know it but you or your loved one could have been suffering from one form of memory impairment, worst dementia.
Once diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, or any kind of memory dysfunction, or any form of dementia, it’s time for you to face the reality that this type of disease is incurable and progressive and that early planning for the future will likely present more advantages than having spur-of-the-moment decisions when the memory loss progresses in alarmingly fast rate.
What type of memory care is appropriate for you or your loved one?
Memory care is a difficult choice for you to decide for your loved one. As much as possible, you and your elder should come to an agreement whichever arrangement is beneficial to both parties. Should you provide in-home care for your loved one? Is sending him to the nearest assisted living facility that would cater to his needs a viable choice? Before you make the important decision, you may want to think about these following considerations:
Memory Care In-Home
During the early stage of the disease, your elder will experience simple problems of forgetting dates, time, names and misplacing objects. In this case, the situation is still manageable and providing memory care in-home would be less demanding. As the memory impairment progresses, safety would most likely be the biggest concern. Your home must be equipped with safety gadgets or you could make your accident-prone furniture and appliances less accessible to your elder. This will protect your family from mishaps in case your elder turn on appliances like stove and forget it, which can cause fire.
At the advanced stage of memory impairment where one completely forgets location, your elder might get lost in case he wanders outside the house so you need to keep him under your watchful eyes, which of course, would not be possible if you’re working. The next best thing to do is to get professional help to provide memory care in-house. There are a lot of memory care services available and you could opt for stay-in caregiver when your location is not easily accessible and everyday transportation would be taxing for the care provider. Another problem concerning your location being remote is the additional medical support your elder might need. Since memory impairment goes with different health complications, it would be hard to transport your elder to different medical facilities.
Memory Care in Assisted Living Facilities
If the in-home memory care arrangement doesn’t work anymore and your elder needs more skilled hands, moving him in an assisted living facility would be a great alternative choice. Depending on your financial capabilities, assisted living facilities provide housing complete with amenities carefully designed for seniors with memory impairment and staffed with trained aides that will attend to your elder’s daily needs. Depending on the level of memory loss of your elder, assisted living provide a secure area where he can move about without much worry about safety. Another good advantage living in the facility is that your elder has easy access to all medical assistance he needs without the problem of transportation. More so, the facility also offers therapies and socialization programs that help seniors get through memory problems of old age. One disadvantage this arrangement presents is the possibility of fewer visits by family members especially when the facility is far from home.
Providing memory care for your loved one can be physically and emotionally exhausting but it’s not a lifetime responsibility. When you decide what kind of arrangement to give, see to it that your elder gets the best advantage.
