Mom and Step mom were human. The X- Wife, Susan Sarandon, was jealous of the younger, new wife, Julia Roberts, but in the end when her breast cancer was progressing, the mom, Susan Sarandon, wanted the best for everyone even her X husband, her kids and her rival the Step Mom, Julia Roberts. That is the power of people, caring, and relationships. That power is invaluable and hard to quantify in Dollars. Look for that and you will get the best value for you Senior Care dollars.
Saw the movie Safe Harbor and wanted to share my Senior Moment
The Safe Harbor is another creative way to show that even when one is dead. The Mother who guided the new wife to help her husband and kids still has value. I see the similar values to families, society and seniors as they age. Images of what was, is and can be continue to be powerful influences to families and society. I know no simple dollar formula for love, hope, trust, feeling needed, wanted, productive and valued. Likewise defining “safety” is hard for most seniors to swallow since the social worker, family, or individual defining “safety” for the senior often times is focused more on financial, legal, or physical safety than on emotional well-being, continuity of care and relationship building.
I see families faced with aging, loss as individuals who are aging and families who are losing large parts of who they are. In losing a senior, but in all cases they want to help each other.
Seniors know they are aging and they just want to be known, remembered, and to help if they can.
Feelings are the end point of all process. Pain hurts less when you are holding your own new born or a grandchild. The sum of all pains, pills, and Emotional and social therapies including continuity of care and relationship building is part of the treatment. Complex and powerful therapies, and feelings like hope, trust, belief, faith, belonging, parenthood, creation, choice and empowered to choose, take time and social relationships to achieve. Seniors and all of us know helping can mean getting others to provide the care so the Family can visit, email and carry on. Pain and life have large emotional elements that doctors cannot study. Indeed, few studies add in emotional health and wellbeing since you can’t “study” or quantify it and it varies so much person to person and day to day. However, that does not mean we don’t value those things. Indeed, those are the things we buy based on even if we do not know we are.
If you want to be “Safe”, have a “Safe Hospital Discharge”, “Safe transition to any Senior Care Setting” look for individuals, people, and care teams with
continuity of care.
Sub segmented systems based on business organizational flow sheets and financial payment models pale in comparison to Continuity of Care and Relationship building to make someone feel safe. To feel safe you have to know and trust the individuals who provide the day to day care and who the problem solves or manager are. They have to know your social system and visa a versa. You have to respect what they do and value it also. Then you can hope to feel safer in a process of transitioning to a senior care setting.
Aging and even dying are not bad they are expected. What is bad is not having a care setting with caring and a relationship to allow physical care to be transcended to Family-style care we all want.
Two quotes from Patch Adams of the Movie, Patch, that show Caring is more than care.
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Treat the most devastating problem of all indifference or apathy.
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If you treat the disease you win or lose but if you treat the person you win no matter what the outcome.
To me, even if you die, that is not as much of a loss if they had someone who was there, caring, respecting, all that that person has done and continues to do for the family. That sets a social and family example of valuing people and not just disposing of them which helps each of us in the family, caregivers and all the people surrounding the senior. I care for my dad and he helps me every day by giving me some space to work. Yes, he comes in but he then let’s me finish work and that is helping.
Seniors who can find a safe haven or care setting with caring and continuity of care can help their social system and continue to enjoy family life.
Look for Continuity of care in any care setting Assisted Living, Home Care, Hospice Care, Residential Care, Dementia Care, and Alzheimer’s Care, Memory care, Respite Care, Elder Care, Nursing Home Care and any Senior Care setting. Meet the entire care team and you can find caring with the physical care that all promise you.
