COPD Awareness Month every November means that it’s a good time to learn what you and your senior's home care providers can do to help your senior to deal with this chronic, progressive disease. 

Avoid Triggers that Make Symptoms Worse 

Every person with COPD has specific triggers that make their symptoms worse, either temporarily or on a more long-term basis. Being exposed to cigarette smoke, cooking smoke, or certain chemical smells can be enough. It’s important that your senior knows what her triggers are so that she can avoid them as much as possible. 

Follow up with Your Senior’s Doctor Regularly 

Because COPD is a chronic health condition, your aging family member absolutely needs to work closely with her doctor to ensure that she’s doing all that she can for her overall health. Her doctor will help her to outline a care plan to follow. That may include several different medications that she’ll need to take as prescribed to manage her symptoms. 

Prepare for Exacerbations 

Exacerbations are times when your elderly family member’s COPD symptoms become much worse, often for quite a while. This can be due to a lung infection, exposure to triggers, or even other illnesses making her COPD symptoms worse. Your elderly family member’s doctor may give her specific instructions regarding being aware of the very beginning stages of pneumonia, for instance, or prescribe a rescue inhaler for her. 

Find Ways to Manage Symptoms on a Daily Basis with Home Care Services 

Managing symptoms of COPD on a daily basis involves taking a great deal of care. Your elderly family member may not be able to do some of the activities she used to do. Having home care services pick up the slack with things like household tasks can enable her to save her energy for the things that she has to do herself. It can also help if you and your senior make her environment as easy for her to access as possible. Wearing loose clothing and getting plenty of sleep are two other solutions that your senior should definitely add to her plan. 

Don’t Ignore the Emotional Impacts 

As your aging family member’s family caregiver, it’s really important that you understand the emotional impact of something like COPD. Your elderly family member may grieve the loss of her ability to be as active as she once was, for instance. She may experience other emotional impacts, too. Home care providers can help her to avoid isolating herself, which is a common response from COPD patients. 

Every case of COPD is slightly different, but there are similarities. If your aging family member can join a support group or meet other people with COPD, that can help her to feel less alone. 

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

Balancing work responsibilities and life responsibilities might be something that is literally keeping you up at night. No matter how much you do for each aspect of your life, you probably feel as if it just isn’t enough. What you need is a plan and some help. 

Look at the Reality of Your Situation 

It might help to take out a piece of paper and list out your responsibility. You might also find that spending a few days or a week making a time map helps you to see where your time and your energy go during the week. This gives you a way to really investigate the reality of your situation and where you’re most out of balance. Don’t worry about doing anything with this just yet because you’re still investigating. You need more information first. 

List out Your Potential Resources 

Where can you turn for help? You might have other family members who could pitch in and help more and you might have options available through your employer. Investigate what is available through your employee assistance program. Another option you might have overlooked is hiring home care providers. They can free up your time in regards to caregiving so that you can devote more time and energy to work when you need to be doing so. 

Make a Flexible Plan 

When you’ve got your time mapping and your resources together, you can start to see where you have gaps and where you need to adjust what you’re doing. Home care services can help you to fill those gaps so that they’re not taking over. Remember, though, that whatever plan you make needs to be flexible. Life has a way of changing things up on you when you least expect it. 

Don’t Forget about Yourself 

Do not leave yourself out of your equation. You have a responsibility to yourself to participate in your own self-care. If you’re not making self-care a priority, all the plans in the world are not going to give you what you’re missing. Life and work balance can only balance out when you’re a part of that math. 

Few situations in life truly are “this or that.” You may have a great many more options than you realize to help you to balance your job with being a caregiver. Take a deep breath and look for ways to adapt your plans to help them work for you more effectively. 

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