Adult Day Care

Adult day care is my favorite form of long term care. I like it because I want to be a part of it when I get older. I work the after school care at the YMCA and Adult Day Care reminds me of what I do. There are many things that the little kids cannot do on their own. They need to be watched while their parents are at work. This is also true for many of the elderly utilizing adult day care facilities.

My grandma is in her early 80s and while she is fine at the moment she has talked to us about the benefits of an Adult Day Care center. Her older brother just went to a Nursing Facility and this made me think about Adult Day Care. She has been living alone for the last 22 years because her husband died young. She has church as her only form of socialization. While there is nothing wrong with that, she gets lonely. Things are also getting harder for her, as is expected of someone at her age. Cooking and cleaning can be exhausting for her. She did get knee surgery a few years ago and that helped her with mobility. She hasn’t put too much thought into the idea of going to an adult day care center because she doesn’t have a lot of money, and just lives on her social security checks. This class has helped me learn that most adult day care centers can be paid for with Medicaid and she might be eligible for it. I hope that this can be a positive influence on her life making things easier and giving her more friends.

Subacute Care

A new form of long term care that just came into the continuum is known as subacute care. I wanted to talk about this because it is kind of hard to understand what it is exactly. It is a specific form of care rendered for very specific reasons. It is inpatient care for acute illnesses, injury or exacerbation of a disease process. A lot of times it is used as recovery from sever procedures or injuries.

I had to have knee surgery two summers ago. It was just for a tear in the meniscus and only a few days after I was able to walk without crutches. I am an avid runner/triathlete though and this surgery leg to many problems. I got muscle imbalances in my legs from overcompensation and had to have physical therapy. It took almost a year to be pain free because I had put off the surgery and the physical therapy so long. While this may have been close to what subacute care does, it’s not. My problem was not that severe, while it did require extensive therapy to go over it. I was never in a state of trauma like the patients of subacute care.

My sister, on the other hand, works as a social worker at a hospital with a Trauma Service. She gets to see all the gory tragedies that happen on a daily basis. She tells me stories of car accidents and all the horrible things that happen to those people. Most people who have had a traumatic injury do not go straight home, but require a lower level of care after their acute care stay in the hospital. This next level of care is often at a subacute facility. The social workers and case managers at my sister’s hospital coordinate the referral and transfer of patients to subacute facilities to continue the patients care when they’re ready to move onto doing more rehabilitation therapy. Subacute facilities help her patients relearn their ambulation, ADL’s, and speech/cognitive abilities.

Long Term Care at Home

Around 70% of long term care is provided in the house by a spouse or a loved one. This is so true in my home. My Mother has many illnesses that make it hard for her to perform many of the activities for daily living. My Father works 7 days a week to help pay for her medical bills and is not around much to help her. My Brother and I try to help as much as we can. Some days she feels good and can bring my brother to school, but others she cannot move. I try to pick up the slack and help her. She gets dizzy and passes out a lot and has suffered many injures from this. I like to keep an eye on her to help make sure she stays safe. About a month ago, around the time she would be getting home from dropping my brother off, the dog was barking relentlessly at the door. I finally went down to see what she was barking at and found that my Mom had tripped just outside the door and could not get up. This all started happening a few years ago when she fell down a concrete flight of stairs that had no railing and severely hurt her head.

I moved up to Orlando to go to school in August of 06 and then moved back home to save money two years later. Now that I have been home for a little under a year I think I will feel guilty leaving. My Mom has progressively gotten worse over the years and my Dad is working so hard just to keep up. I don't know if I will be able to leave for my senior year like I had planed. Is it fair to my family to tell them that I care more about my life then theirs? It is not like it is any one of their faults. My Mom has been very unlucky and economic times have been tough on every one. I also think that my brother would have a higher burden if I leave. He is only in 7th grade and he deserves better.

Even If custodial care, which is non skilled care aimed at helping individuals like my Mom to be able to function for daily activities, was paid for by Medicare; she would not want it. She keeps thinking she will get better. She also hates getting help. People need to feel needed. She is only in her early 50’s and she just wants to stop being a burden and start being a part of the family again.

I know I am not the only person who experiences this. As I stated earlier, over 70% of LTC is provided in this way. No one knows why they are giving the challenges they have but there is a purpose for everything and I’m sure this experience will make me a stronger person.

What does LTC mean to me

Long term care is usually given to people that have a chronic illness or disability. It is mostly used for people that need assistance with the activity's of daily living.
My grandma passed away less then 6 months ago. The last year of her life she had a nurse that would take care of her most of the day. This was costing my grandfather around $3,000 a month. He was not well enough to help her all day though. She had an advance form of Parkinsons disease and for the last year of her life she could barely move. She even needed help going to the bathroom. They also had to physically move her so she would not get bed sores. She started losing her memory and began forgetting who we were. She remembered my grandfather and the nurse the best because they were with her the most. Being a LTC nurse that has to deal with taking care of dying people must be really hard. Not only is it sad, she has to see my poor grandfather everyday who could not always keep it together and would be crying. It is also very hard work, moving and dealing with my grandmother was not an easy task.
This all was a very sad time for my family but it is even worse when a young adult needs LTC. My family is friends with a family that has a daughter who has to live in a nursing home. We cannot control all of our circumstances. God blesses people in varying amounts and we cannot say why. I just know how hard it is to see your grandmother in that state so I pray I never have to see a child as unfortunate.