When you make the decision to be a family caregiver for your aging parent, you know you are entering a potentially challenging chapter of your life. While fulfilling your seniors' needs, you must also keep up with the rest of the tasks and responsibilities of your life. This can mean losing sleep, pushing yourself harder, doing more everyday, and eventually pushing yourself to and beyond your limit.

This can result in fatigue, which is a potentially serious condition that goes beyond tiredness and can be a real detriment to your health and well-being. Though anyone can experience fatigue, some people are at higher risk of not only developing the condition, but also suffering serious consequences as a result. Understanding your own particular risk for experiencing fatigue during your caregiver journey can help you to feel more in control, and take the steps necessary to protect yourself and your care efforts. 

Some risk factors for experiencing fatigue include: 

• Irregular schedule, such as having to care for your parent at different hours across different days, or responding to emergencies at night after a caring for your parents throughout the day 
• Being in the sandwich generation, which means caring not just for your parent, but also for your children 
• Not maintaining a sleep schedule of going to bed and waking up at the same time each day 
• Staying up to care for your parent at night, resulting in fewer than five hours of sleep, or staying awake for more than sixteen hours in a row 
• Regularly being exposed to high temperatures 
• Regularly being exposed to very loud sounds 
• Experiencing dim lighting when caring for your parent  
• Repetitive tasks 
• Performing boring or tedious tasks throughout the day 

If you have been struggling with fatigue as you go through your caregiver journey with your aging parent, you do not need to feel as though you are alone, or as though you are experiencing something 'normal' that you just have to deal with. Fatigue goes beyond the normal level of tiredness family caregivers experience, and can be detrimental to your health and well-being, as well as to the quality and effectiveness of the care you give.

Fortunately, you don't just have to deal with fatigue. Starting home care for your parent can be a highly effective way to help you get the rest you need, care more for yourself, and still feel confident your loved one is getting all the care and support they need.  

 Source:  https://www.nsc.org/work-safety/safety-topics/fatigue  

If you or an aging loved one are considering Caregiver Services in Deerfield IL, contact the caring staff at Gentle Home Services. Call today (800) 860-9823.

Caregivers in Deerfield IL

According to the National Council on Aging, financial scams directed specifically at seniors have become so common that they are referred to as "The Crime of the 21st Century." The FBI points out that these scams have become so much more common because of the prevalence of technology that often makes elderly adults more vulnerable to those seeking out their financial information and personal details that could put their identities, property, and finances at serious risk. 

February 9 is Safer Internet Day, the perfect opportunity for you to make educating your parents on the potential risks associated with the internet and how they can handle them responsibly so that they can enjoy all of the opportunities and benefit of this technology part of your caregiver routine with them. Use these tips to help them understand the most common forms of internet-based fraud and scams, and how they can protect themselves when using the internet independently:

• Fake anti-virus scams. One of the most important elements of internet safety is making sure that the computer being used is protected with adequate anti-virus software. One extremely common scam is a popup window that warns the user that the computer is not properly protected and that new protection needs to be downloaded immediately. A button brings the user to extremely expensive "anti-virus software" that is not actually legitimate. These sometimes also download malware into the computer that provides access to the user's financial information

• Email scams. Email is a wonderful tool for communication, but it can also be a source of fraud. Make sure your seniors know not to open emails from addresses that they do not recognize as these can contain viruses. Even if they do recognize the address, it is important that they do not click on any suspicious links. They should know never to provide financial information, passwords, or other details through email, even if the email looks like it is from a legitimate source, and if they receive an offer or question that seems too good to be true or somewhat strange, they should make sure to ask you about it first. Common forms of this type of fraud include emails that look like they are from the IRS and are asking for "verification" of personal or financial information

• Look for encryption. Something very important to remember is that not all internet danger comes from scams. Sometimes what your parents are doing online can seem legitimate, and may even be fully legitimate, but professional hackers can access their information and utilize it fraudulently. Instruct your parents to look for proper encryption whenever they are filling out a form with personal information or making purchases online. This encryption is what protects the information from access by unauthorized people. Without encryption the information is easily accessible through basic hacking, which means that your parents may be making a purchase from a legitimate website, but because of improper encryption someone can steal the information and use it for their own gain. 

https://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/fraud/seniors 
https://www.ncoa.org/economic-security/money-management/scams-security/top-10-scams-targeting-seniors/ 

If you or an aging loved one are considering help for family caregivers in Deerfield, IL, contact the caring staff at Gentle Home Services. Call today (800) 860-9823.