Caregiver Hints

This is perhaps the most important legal document you will have to deal with next to a person’s will. For anyone who is about to begin the journey of caring for an aging parent or loved one, you will find that if this is not taken care of early enough, it will make the tasks of managing the person’s care and finances incredibly difficult.

For anyone who is facing the onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s in a parent, it will be really important to have a POA prepared and dealt with BEFORE the person is deemed unfit to authorize such a document.

I narrowly missed having my Mother officially diagnosed with dementia before getting this paperwork processed. To have a doctor officially make this diagnosis before your parent can make this decision, will make the ability to get legal approval to manage their assets extremely difficult.

I will be talking more about this with some details in the future. I only stumbled upon this fact accidentally and if I hadn’t found out until later, I would have had even more stress that I already had. You are going to need to find good legal advice to take on the variety of issues you will come across to care for a family member. The more prepared you are the better!

Too often, as people get wrapped up in the hurricane that can be the life of a caregiver, the first thing to become neglected is the health of the caregiver. I know, I’ve been there, and being aware isn’t enough. It is a constant battle not to loose yourself in the tasks of caring for someone, and even knowing it is happening is sometimes not enough to stop the neglectful tendencies, or to keep from falling back into bad habits. It can perhaps be one of the hardest parts of the job, but one of the most important because if YOU get sick, who will take care of you and the one you have been taking care of. Neglecting your own health is detrimental to everyone involved, although it is never obvious at the time.

This is a super important topic, so will be revisited often.

If it isn’t obvious, the site is a work-in-progress. I’m slowly making some progress, but it will take some time to figure out what I’m doing. I will be updating the site as I have time, which isn’t as frequent as I would like, so until things get rolling updates will be slow.

I hope that in time, other people will contribute to the site with experiences and their own hints to help fill out the site. I also hope to incorporate a discussion forum to help facilitate more detailed discussion about caregiving issues. As soon as I have a contact page up, I welcome any ideas.

-Thank you