Home Health Care: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a blanket term for many different progressive lung diseases that can rob your senior of her health and her independence.
She may even worry that she can’t age in place as she wanted to for so long. But with the right help such as home health care and options, your elderly family member may have a much better chance at having the life that she wants, even as her COPD progresses.
Learning What Helps and What Doesn’t
There’s so much to learn about COPD and how it affects your senior. It can be a highly individual illness, so it’s important that your senior learns what helps her and what doesn’t. Things like elevating her feet can help with the swelling that occurs with COPD, for instance. Talk with her doctor and learn what her specific risk factors are and what will help her the most.
Having Assistance Monitoring Symptoms
Symptoms can come and go with COPD, and sometimes it’s difficult for the person who has COPD to notice when those symptoms are actually getting worse. Senior care providers can help your elderly family member to keep track of how she’s feeling and notice when symptoms are actually an exacerbation. They can also remind your senior what helps, like pursed lip breathing and other techniques.
Help with ADLs
Daily living can be so difficult with COPD, including things like eating regularly and keeping up with household tasks. COPD burns tons of calories, which can cause extreme weight loss in your senior if she’s not eating as well or as often as she should. 24-hour home care services make all of this so much easier because your elderly family member has assistance when she needs it. This help also allows her to conserve her energy for the things that she still needs and wants to do on her own.
Help with Mobility
Moving safely is a huge issue for someone with COPD. The last thing that your senior needs or wants is to experience a fall and deal with the ramifications of that on top of managing COPD. Home Health Care providers offer your senior the support and assistance that she needs to be safely mobile in her home and out in public as well.
Your loved one can absolutely age in place, even in the advanced stages of COPD. But it’s vital that she has the tools and the assistance that she needs in order to make that situation as easy for her to manage as possible.
