Mind Our Elderly

In the United States, as of 2008 per the Department of Health & Human Services' Administration on Aging, there were 38.9 million persons sixty-five years of age or older. That's about 10% of the population per the 2000 US Census. That number is expected to grow to 72.1 million by 2030, bringing the current percentage of 12.5% up to 19%- or one in every five- of Americans being older than 65 years. What this means is that, in an era of ever-increasing social networking, it's nearly impossible to not know somebody who is a family member or otherwise who's sixty-five or better.

The age of sixty-five is an important number medically speaking because it statistically marks the point at which an adult also become an elderly or geriatric patient. It is important to keep in mind, however, that everyone ages differently according to genetics, diet, exercise, diseases and injuries, and many other lifestyle considerations like occupation, stress, and smoking. It's also important to mind that the elderly stuck in the nursing home for the rest of their days are actually the minority. There are seventy year olds that are healthier than and could run circles around forty or thirty year olds, especially these days.

The facts are, however, that aging is a progressive process that everyone experiences, and in our later days, our body doesn't function as well as it used to. As we age, we lose lean muscle- about 10 pounds of it for every ten years we age past 20. The collagen that once made our skin strong and elastic breaks down and leaves it thin and easily damaged. Our brain physically shrinks, leaving more space than there used to be in the skull and increasing our chances of suffering complications like bleeding between the skull and the brain after a blow to the head. Our sense of smell is the first to weaken dramatically, and all of our five senses- including our ability to feel pain, which is how some elderly can have 'silent' heart attacks- continually degrade in some way or another as we age. Our bones become brittle, making them prone to fracture; our balance fails us, our reaction time grows, our eyes weaken. All of us have a responsibility to help those who helped us- those who came before us. You don't have to save the world- just the people you know, and pass the word along.

The best way to start to look after your elderly is to use your judgment. Are they fully capable of taking care of themselves or do they need help just getting around? Do they still cook full meals, or do they need to be hand-fed? Do they live with somebody, or are they lucky to see someone once a month? Every three to six months, you should ask yourself, their doctor or healthcare providers, and the elderly person themselves if there should be somebody personally looking out for them. You should take the time to consider how their needs might have changed since the last time you thought about it- for example, has their vision gotten much worse, or have they been getting sick much more frequently? Obviously, another consideration is whether or not the person is alone for long periods of time. Elderly, like all people, require mental stimulus and socializing or boredom and depression could result. I would recommend that they at least talk to somebody once a day by some media, though face-to-face, over a meal or a game of chess is highly preferred over phone or Facebook.

Once you've established how much interaction or attention that person needs, you should then check out the house to make sure it's elderly-friendly. Many elderly live at home by themselves, with a spouse, or with a family member as opposed to care facilities with specialized equipment for the needs of the elderly or the disabled. You should search the home for loose carpets, unsecured rugs on slick floors or rugs not designed to grip smooth flooring, raised edges in the flooring- such as a transition from linoleum to extra thick carpet-, a lack of grips or installed railing in areas like tiled bathrooms or stairways, a particularly high bed, and sudden rises such as those found in doorways. All of these are fall hazards for elderly persons, and should be resolved, especially if the person tends to shuffle their feet when they walk. This should NOT be taken lightly, as falls can be devastating to elderly persons- fractured hips, banged heads and all the complications that follow along with them, and potentially being stranded in one's own home for hours or even days are just a few of the things that can and do go wrong. An elderly person may not ever fully recover from something like a hip fracture even if there aren't any further complications, so it's everyone's responsibility to take it serious. Build ramps, cut carpets, throw out rugs, increase lighting, and put commonly used items where they don't have to bend or reach out for them if you need to, but please, whatever you do, don't blow it off.

One important note: A life alert button or device is NOT and NEVER WILL REPLACE having a real person come and personally check on an elderly adult once a day. Life Alerts have a sort of infamy among first responders (Fire Depts and EMS) of either getting accidentally activated far too often or of failing to activate when needed. It's not an argument against those companies, because they do work in theory and sometimes in practice- it's an argument against close-by people shirking a simple responsibility of taking ten minutes out of 24 hours to check on someone once a day. I've stood in the ER, helping a nurse use Peroxide-soaked gauze to take the caked blood off of the face of an unresponsive older woman because nobody bothered to check on her all night and they found her laying in a puddle of blood and vomit the next morning. It's not scare tactics, it's facts- simple measures stop disasters.

Another consideration to take to heart is that elderly people tend to lose the sharp senses they once had, taste and memory included. You should take a few seconds to check the refrigerator once a week to make sure that it's stocked only with in-date, non-spoiled foods, as some elderly may be unable to distinguish the poor taste, texture, look, and smell of spoiled food that most of us would detect almost right away from that of good food. You should also check and make sure that they've established a system for taking their medications, if they're taking any, when they're supposed to. A good device for this is the medicine cases that have a specific container for each day of the week- if they need to take their medications, then that day's container will still have pills, and if they've already taken their pills that day, there shouldn't be any left in there. Because the elderly person's kidneys and liver don't function quite as well as they used to, it is particularly easy for them to build up toxic levels of a drug in their system, so it's much more important that they get the correct dose each day. If they're incapable of filling the dispensers themselves, it only takes a minute or two to go through and fill them yourself.

Finally, mind EMS. It makes things easier for us if we don't need to navigate through clutter, make sharp turns in hallways barely wide enough to fit our stretcher, go up twenty steps and then proceed to the back of the house to get to your loved ones, and it can help us save precious seconds in an emergency. You should also keep a current, physical list of their medications, allergies, and diseases (like diabetes or hypertension. Recent medical history such as a hip fracture a few weeks ago should be on this list as well) ready to hand to the EMTs and Paramedics when they arrive. This makes things easier on everyone, because the paramedic won't have to question you or your loved one in a potentially serious, time-sensitive event, and you won't have to try and remember it all in an already stressful time.