Caregiving Tips for Family Caregivers with Alicia and Suguna
9:49AM Feb 23, +0000
Speakers:
Alicia
Suguna
Keywords:
recipients
realised
elderly
combative
caring
visit
care
spend
homage
care provider
family members
soft spot
adequate lighting
patience
tender loving
important
house
meal
seniors
signal
First of all, we need to give all the elderly people more tender loving caring. And then second thing we need to be to have a lot of patience with them. And also that whatever things we do, we need to keep on repeating to them. And also showing them some pictures of the elderly people as what they normally do at home, and to remind the elderly people over and over again.
It's always important to share those information with as much family members and friends as they can. Quite often what happens is when they don't share this kind of information, they may not know the facilities that's available to help them to care for the recipient. One of the family members that I do care for, they did not know of Homage service until they googled and one of their friends told them to watch it. So the more family members and friends that you involve, the more information that you can get. The tips that is very crucial is to maintain safety; safety for the care recipients and safety for the care providers. Safety in such that, as much as possible, we want you to eliminate, all the things that's available in the house, so that you do not contribute to any harm for the family, or for the recipients. For example, if you don't have a antislip floor mat, put them on. If you have two floors, three floors of house have adequate lighting, so that when the care recipients want to move around the house they do have enough support. For example, the other thing is that if the care recipients staying on the second floor third floor of the house, look into relocating where they sleep; their bedroom to the ground floor so that the possibility for them to go upstairs and have a fall would be very less. Should the care recipient have an agitated day or they get very combative, try to take a step back.
The more we try to calm them down, the more agitated and combative they can be. As long as when they are in that mode. And you know that there's nothing around them that could injure themselves. For example, that the siderails are covered with cushions, for example, so you know no matter how combative, they get the possibility for them to injure their hands very low. The other thing is, like I said take a step back, taking a step back is always important cause one thing we get them to release their anger in however that they want to. The other thing is it would give us some time to think, what can we do next, or how else we're going to approach them. Yeah, those are some of the things.
For my part, I will always remind the elderly people more about their family members and also their friedns around them. And I'll always show them the pictures of their old age and also other people. the photos lah.
I'm a people person so I've always had a soft spot for senior citizens. When I was young, I never had the privilege to spend time with my grandparents, because they did pass away. However, when I've met my best friend and she has a grandmother and I've become attached to her grandmother that's when I realised that I do have a soft spot for them, and it is always enjoying to be caring for them because they do like to share their stories. They like to share the experience of when they were young, this is how it's done or when they were a kid this is what they'd do and so on so forth so it's nice to share them. I've learned from them a lot. And the other thing after that as well that I, I've more patience when I'm with them. They are not as active as they used to be. Now I did not realise that I had that in me
So, there's always like and I like to do one after another, back to back. But caring for seniors have taught me to take a step back to be patient. I've learned a lot of patience when I'm with them. And that's what I enjoy. So I always learn something new about my about myself. And it's always with the help of them that I do that
The most I enjoy of taking care of seniors citizens, is because that I love to hear the stories from them. And they also can give me a very good time, lifetime story. And it's also for me to learn from them. I learned from them a lot through their stories. And I can also feel the love from each and every one of the elderly people.
I normally organise and schedule my time. And then I also like things that I cannot solve, I will actually go and and ask my friends. And also, family members, and also not forgetting Homage. And I will also ask other caregivers for their tips and also help from them.
So I don't have one specific way to do there's multiple things that i would do. One of the things that I do is that I know what my limit is. With regards to visit, I would have a day that I would take a visit full on throughout the day. And I would do it for two days and I'll take a break. Whereby, the third day I would take a lesser visit. And that is how it goes about. The other thing is I spend time with my family. I stay with my sister and she has four kids. So those three nieces and nephew of mine is good enough to, to change my mood.
Most of the time. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I would do is that, since I'm on the road a lot, going from one visit to another. I listen to radio stations. Most of the time I just sing my lungs, while driving even though I do not know what the lyrics is about. And quite often, when. Most of the time when I get stopped at the traffic light, I would see other drivers looking at me like "what is she doing" and all that. So I get all that stares. The other thing- that's one of the things that I would do. But apart from spending time with family, I think healthy diet is very important. One of the things I've realised, which helped me a lot, is that I don't eat much. I just tend to snack at night. Because I realise that most of the time. This is before. What I would do is after my late night visits, I'll go have a heavy meal and the next day I just feel very bad, so I stopped doing that and I realised that helped me a lot. Whereby I cut down on my meals, and I make sure I keep myself hydrated all the time.
Our body is very special in the sense that it gives a signal to us to tell us when we are feeling tired or we are breaking down a little bit. Listen to those signs because those signs when we as a care provider ignore it,
It's not healthy anymore. So as long a we listen to those signals, yeah I think that's very important.