Have You Considered What Your Family Would Do If the Family Caregiver Became Injured or Sick?

If you think about the possible chronic health conditions, injuries and illnesses that people face each day, there are so many possibilities. All of them require time to heal. Many limit activities during the recovery.

It’s estimated that more than 1.7 million new cancer cases occurred during 2018. The CDC estimates that as many as 49 million can develop the flu in one year. Strained muscles and bone fractures are also common injuries among all ages.

When a family caregiver is sick or injured, it can throw a family’s schedule off. Someone still needs to be providing care to aging parents, but the usual person is now out for some time. For a bone break, it could be weeks before the family caregiver is fully mobile again. If it’s cancer, surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments may keep that person down for months. Even the flu takes a week or two before the person is starting to feel better.

Those are physical issues. If the caregiver develops caregiver burnout or becomes depressed, that person may no longer be able to provide care. A new plan needs to be arranged.

If your family doesn’t have a back-up plan, you need to. It’s time to sit down and figure out how to make sure care of your parents isn’t affected if the family caregiver becomes unable to provide care.

What You Need to Discuss

A family discussion needs to include your parents and the current caregiver if possible. You need to discuss what a daily care routine entails and how many hours of care are needed. See if anyone else in the family can take over. You may need to break the week up into shifts to make this happen. Are there gaps?

Turn to Home Care Services to Fill Gaps in Care

When you have people working and also raising a family, it’s going to be hard to manage it all. Sit down and look at the possible schedule and pinpoint where gaps are. Those gaps are best filled with professional caregivers.

You don’t plan to become ill. It’s going to take you by surprise. That’s why it’s important to have a back-up plan for family caregivers. Make sure someone is able to step in and care for your parents if you can’t. A home care agency can help you find the right caregivers to help out so that you can focus on your recovery.

Sources:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html