When trying to keep elderly parents at home becomes chaotic, family caregivers can feel like they are dealing with a hot mess. Learn tips to manage out of control caregiving situations and choose how you want to live your life.
Let’s begin by defining out of control caregiving situations that can also be known as dealing with a hot mess. Then, describe two caregiving situations and the choices caregivers and persons with health concerns can make.
A hot mess can be defined as a disorganized or chaotic situation in which you feel everything is out of control or a situation barely hanging on, waiting for disaster to strike. It can describe many caregiving and life situations as well as the habits or actions of the people who are involved.
1 Elderly Parents with Complicated Health Concerns
The first out of control caregiving situation involves an elderly parent who takes five or more medications. Then add more complications like multiple health conditions—heart problems, diabetes, arthritis, breathing problems, difficulty walking, and others.
An emergency like an unexpected hospital stay or planned surgery can increase the complexity of managing daily life. Health can suddenly change due to unexpected problems like a heart attack, a fall, or an ongoing condition that worsens.
Navigating health concerns can present many complications.
The Complexities of Surgery
The goal or hope of surgery is that the procedure will solve or improve the problem. So, it’s important to understand the why of agreeing to surgery and the pros and cons.
- You or a parent might agree even if you don’t have enough information or are not well-informed about the after-effects of the surgery.
- What most people who have never had surgery do not realize is that a surgical procedure is invasive and has a significant effect on the body, no matter your age.
- The younger you are, the more quickly you bounce back.
- The older you are, especially when multiple health conditions exist, the more work it takes to return to being able to manage daily activities.
So, what does surgery mean for an elderly parent and their caregivers? Surgery can mean health declines, physical weakness,
mental confusion, delirium, and needing more help with daily activities, at least initially.
Even still, surgery may be the first step to solving health concerns for you or a loved one. Recovering from surgery is the next step.
Elderly parents with complicated health conditions can have a long recovery ahead. The necessity of working to recover from surgery may surprise you or your elderly parents.
Recovering from surgery takes physician and mental work.
The Mindset to Recover
Surgery is an event that benefits from preparation when planned. Planning for surgery is like being healthy and training to run a 5 or 10-K race or train for a triathlon – swimming, biking, running.
If you have not played sports, been on a team, or trained to improve your physical health to be physically active, committing to the steps to plan for surgery and recovery may be a new idea.
Separate from the necessary physical effort, developing a positive mindset is equally important, if not more important.
What It’s Like to Be in the Hospital
Being in the hospital is not always a pleasant experience.
There are many risks for elderly persons. There is no rest. There’s a lot of waiting and returning home can take planning.
While in the hospital, nurses or a nursing assistant enter your room every four hours to take and record blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen levels. Vitals are taken around the clock, so you cannot get an entire night’s sleep.
There is usually a regular flow of doctors, nurses, CNAs, or physical therapists in and out of your room. You have an IV in a vein in your arm to deliver fluids and medicines. If you get up to use the bathroom, the IV pole goes with you. If you feel good enough to get out of bed and walk the halls—which is good for you—you roll the IV pole alongside you.
If you want to shower, you may have to schedule an appointment with the CNA. You order your meals. The only entertainment available is a television unless you bring a computer or something else to occupy your time.
The longer an elderly parent stays in their hospital bed, the weaker they get. So if you’re not physically present to encourage parents to get out of bed and walk with you, sitting up, walking, and getting around will be more difficult. Being in a strange place can also result in mental confusion, called delirium.
Being Released from the Hospital
Then there is the “discharge,” the release to go home.
- If you or your parent are not on top of discharge information, you might be shocked to receive a call from the hospital saying that your mom or dad is ready to go. Come pick them up.
- Or your mom or dad is being sent to X nursing home for more rehabilitation, which is medical speak for physical therapy and strengthening exercises.
I know because I have received panicked calls from caregivers on Friday afternoons when hospitals and nursing homes want to discharge patients so that rooms are available for the weekend. Concern exists about coordinating medications, medical equipment, and other aspects of an elderly parent’s care.
Your
parent has a choice to refuse nursing home care, but if they do and are in poor physical condition, are they expecting you to stay with them 24 hours a day and 7 days a week until they recover?
Planning for Discharge
So, if you don’t have a plan for a parent going to the hospital and leaving the hospital to return home or to go to a nursing home temporarily, you could find yourself in an out of control caregiving situation.
Most people—even the healthiest—need help after surgery or a serious health event. This little bit of help may be to ensure that groceries are in the house and prescription medications have been picked up and are available. Food is prepared and can be reheated without much effort.
So, to avoid the out-of-control caregiving situations when you know a parent is going for surgery, become involved early.
- Attend doctor appointments and speak with the doctor and the surgeon so you know exactly how to prepare and what to expect after surgery.
- Ensure you understand the probabilities of a full or partial recovery and the time frame in which this might happen.
- Ask about the physical condition of mom or dad after the surgery and the level of weakness or pain they might experience.
- While pain medications have their place, they have side effects—like drowsiness or sleepiness, nausea, constipation, dizziness, and an increased likelihood of falls.
- If your parent’s medications are added to or some are discontinued while in the hospital, make sure you understand why, including the potential side effects.
- Schedule a follow-up appointment with your parent’s primary care physician soon after hospital or nursing home discharge.
Mindset Matters for Persons With Health Conditions
A hospital stay for surgery can pose many complications and unexpected situations. Depending on your parent’s health, there can be a long list of follow-ups. There are also situations where a person is perfectly healthy, and something happens, and now they need a lot of care.
Cultivating a positive mindset is essential for caregivers and persons experiencing health concerns.
If you are a patient or someone with health conditions, the best advice is to manage your mindset. Be confident and strong about who you want to be.
While caregivers can encourage and try to motivate elderly parents and loved ones, only so much can be done. Self-motivation and maintaining a positive attitude is an inside job.
Do you want to be a sick person who keeps complaining about your health? Or do you want to be the person who moves ahead and goes out and lives your life—knowing that you have some health problems to manage? Deciding how you want to live is a choice that you make.
For everyone, it is impossible to know if or when you might find yourself or a loved one diagnosed with a health condition in the hospital or needing surgery.
If health concerns exist, create a backup plan and live your life. Check out the Caring Generation Podcast Episode 147,
Creating an Emergency Medical Plan for Elderly Parents.2 Families Experiencing Conflict
Families who don’t get along may be impacted by the behaviors of the person receiving care or a primary caregiver expected to do it all. Specific to behavioral conflict, the person viewed as difficult may be an aging parent, spouse, sibling, grandparent, or another person.
This loved one who needs care may be narcissistic, demanding, critical, or unappreciative. Situations where family conflict exists can be months or years in the making.
Spouses can accommodate their spouse’s habits and behaviors for many years before children become involved in caregiving. When this happens, adult children caregivers can become exposed to negative behaviors or habits of elderly parents that were enabled by the caregiving spouse.
Conflict or resentment happens when caregivers begin helping out and fail to set boundaries or expectations around what they are willing to do. When the caregiver spouse dies, adult children cannot be expected to provide a similar level of support.
When time is devoted, and responsibilities grow, it may be time for a caregiving reset.
When Primary Caregivers Do It All
Out of control caregiver situations where one primary adult child caregiver bears the majority of responsibilities are very common. In these situations, siblings who refuse to help go on with their lives and offer no assistance.
In many situations, a self-sacrificing adult child willingly gives up everything to care for a parent and now regrets the choice.
Additionally, within families, there can be out of control caregiver situations where there is disagreement about what should be done or what mom or dad wants. The primary caregiver may do all the work while siblings complain and criticize.
- If you are a complaining sibling with no stake in the game, resist interfering or criticizing until you are willing to step up and become involved in care activities.
- If you are the caregiver and your siblings complain, let them know that when they start helping, they can express opinions and participate in care decisions. Until then their complaints may fall on deaf ears.
Cause and Effect
Dwelling on the problem instead of
looking for a solution can be a foundational issue in all these situations. Understanding why or how something happened can be important if aspects of relationships or habits must be changed.
For example, eating junk food can result in continual stomach upset. In this case, there is a cause and an effect. In other circumstances, with health problems like cancer, the cause and effect can be unknown. For cancer, the cause can be hereditary, genetic, environmental, habits, or just a rogue cell that starts off a chain reaction that results in cancer.
If you have surgery, receive treatment, and feel better – will you choose to worry about cancer every day continually, or will you go and live your life? Which thought pattern, worry or positivity and joy, do you think has the better result?
Seek Solutions
Like a boat with a hole that continues to take on more water until it sinks, what are you willing to do to save yourself from drowning?
- As a caregiver, which habits or interactions take you closer to the life you want or further away from your dreams?
- As a person with health conditions, what are you willing to do to feel better, or are you okay with feeling just okay all the time?
There are times in all areas of life—not only caregiving relationships—when brutal honesty about the habits or actions that resulted in the present condition must be addressed. With the right mindset, it is possible to recognize situations that no longer work and find the motivation to move ahead.
- How bad do you want what you want? Do you want to feel better and enjoy a healthier life?
- Do you want to stop being a 24/7 caregiver or have caregiving responsibilities interfere with every aspect of your life?
Nothing will likely change until a person arrives at a position of being “done” feeling this way and wants to feel another way. Know that small daily actions can move you toward progress.
Stop waiting for that thing to happen that is preventing you from moving forward. Take charge and create the life of your dreams.
Looking For Help Caring for Elderly Parents? Find the Information, Including Step-by-Step Processes, in Pamela’s Online Program.
©2024 Pamela D. Wilson All Rights Reserved