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Originally Posted by abbey46923  Gail, it is staggering the number of elderly that are being diagnosed with this and it will only get worse over the next several years.
We are lucky in the fact that when our parents were younger and raising their families, the economy was pretty good, not like it is now. Therefore the majority of them had good job's, good health benifits, good pensions and able to save a bit of money, which was suppose to be there to take care of them so they would not be a finacial burden on their children when they became ill or older or so they could enjoy their retierment. I know most of mom's health benifits have been cut unless we want to pay extra for them, vision, dental which were always free or very low cost, we were lucky that my dad had very good health ins. now my mom pays out of pocket for things she always relied on to keep her healthy. Most all assisted liveing place's are pay out of pocket and the price's are staggering each month, so won't take long for the saving to go. Also the price of meds is awful, especially when they are in the gap on the ins.
Does anyone think about who will care for us when we get older, knowing the state of our economy is in now, our kids are barley able to care for themselves and their families. So many out of jobs or homes being forclosed on, no health benifits ect.
One more thing, does anyone have a sibling that does not help or even visit their parent? |
That is exceedingly worrisome. My husband and I have talked about this. We will need to come up with some creative solutions soon. Many couples elected or just didn't have children, so that is not an option.
But even with children, it is very hard to care for someone with dementia. Eventually impossible in the home environment. I can't tell you the number of phone calls I got and had to leave work to find my Dad, who was out wandering. I tried putting an alarm on the doors, but Mom would turn it off, because the noise bothered her, then out the door Dad would go. In fact it was that wandering that eventually forced my hand to put Dad in a home. I still remember vividly one Jan evening at midnight, a knocking of the front door, I hurriedly put on housecoat to find my Dad in summer pj's and slippers and two policeman asking me if I knew this man. It must have been -10 degrees out there. I then slept in the living room, until Dad went into his nursing home.
The next day I called our social services, and the lady there was wonderful. She said she'd tried to swing some things, to get Dad in a nursing home ASAP. If she had put him on an emergency coding, he could have gone anywhere in the province; ie 100's of miles away. She was as good as her word, one week later I was moving Dad into the home.