A new level of care - 2024 09 24

 

Registered for emergency long-term care. In-home caregiving starts tonight because Mom is not strong enough to hold her weight and I am not strong enough to make up the difference. 

We talk about Activities of Daily Living (ADL) as a measure of care recipient function. We need to talk about Activities of Daily Caregiving to measure the capacity and capability of family caregiving.

We measure the ability of a care recipient to fend for themselves by assessing their ability to do basic tasks defined within Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Where the care recipient is unable to function according to assessment requirements, then someone else is going to be needed to make up the difference in functionality. Family caregivers perform to fill this functional gap. They make up the difference between what a care recipient can do, and where they need help. 

We need to measure the capacity and capability for a family caregiver to fill the functional gap on behalf of their care recipient. I would call this a functional assessment of Activities of Daily Caregiving, to identify when and how a family caregiving household needs resource flows to make up the difference.

At this point, Mom needs assistance every time she needs to use the toilet. In a very short period of time, her needs went from me being able to  barely manage to unmanageable. The timeline and burn rate that took us from manageable to barely manageable covered almost three years. The timeline and burn rate that took us from barely manageable to unmanageable took about 2 days.

Today we need a new level of care that our family caregiving setting cannot provide. We have no choice but to put Mom into emergency long-term care.

We have worked hard to 'let nature take its course' and keep Mom at home. Today we have to accept that her needs exceed our capacity and capability.