Enhancing Safer Independent Living

“My mother and father live about 6 hours away.  Until about a year and a half ago, they were both very active and enjoyed good health.  Then my mother developed congestive heart failure and my father had a stroke.  They have both recovered and are now living at home but they are not as healthy and independent as they once were. Yet they refuse to relocate or move into a community complex.  They both take over 8 different kinds of medications per day.  I have a home care person visit several times a week but my father has refused her help where it’s most needed – medication refills – and he will not wear an emergency pendant.  I have a husband and two young children, ages 7 and 5, and for the last year, I have taken my whole family to visit them at least once or twice a month.  My biggest frustration is that I want to do more for them but don’t know how. I call all the time because I know my father forgets to take his medications, going sometimes over a week without them.  With my mother suffering from heart disease, I can’t always be sure that one parent will be able to help the other if something were to happen.”

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“My father passed away about 5 years ago, leaving my mother to live alone on their farm of 35 years.  The location is quite remote but I didn't start to worry until she turned 72.  At that age, I started thinking – 'you never know, anything could happen, and she lives so far away from everything’.  My brother and I looked into getting her a home security system but never pursued it further because it didn't’t seem to solve our problem of how to get her help if she fell or had a heart attack.  She voluntarily moved into a senior housing complex, which is a great relief.  But I still worry because they only check on her once every 24 hours – 24 hours is a long time to be in pain or incapacitated if something should happen to her inside her apartment.”

“Until several years ago, my fiercely independent father, who lives in Atlanta, enjoyed good health and thrived on his own surrounded by many friends, his sister, his daughter, and neighbors.  Then his sister died and my sister moved with her family to Florida.  Shortly after her move, he developed macular degeneration and diabetes. I now fly to Atlanta from Boston (where I live) once or twice a month to check in on him. One of my biggest issues is that I feel helpless at such a distance. Several times, my father called me in Boston with what seemed like a medical emergency.  I flew down there right away only to find out that there was no emergency.  Yet several other times, my father concealed real troubling diabetic symptoms from me, saying everything was fine when they were true emergencies.  I’ve tried to talk him into moving to Boston but he refuses to move.  It's not so much the expense of traveling back and forth and the time it all takes.  It’s the 'not knowing' about when he’s really in danger and the uncertainty of whether or not I can get him help right way.”

“My father had always been a very vigorous person – he traveled all over the world and exercised. I never use to worry about him living alone, even though he lived an hour away from me.  Then in 1999, he fell – he slipped on the wet floor in the bathroom at night and it took him over five hours to crawl to a phone. After that, he was never the same but he refused to move closer to me.  My brother lived close by but he was always traveling for business.  So I would visit him several times a week, call often, and drive him to his doctor appointments.  But my job as a professor keeps me quite busy so I never felt like I could do as much as I should.   There were many times when I was out of my mind with worry when he did not return my calls for hours, sometimes not until the next morning, even if he was home and got the message (I later found out).”

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