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Caregiver Tips: Planning for Long-Term Cancer Care
Caregivers for long-term cancer care
Long-term cancer care supports cancer patients throughout their treatment journey. Patients diagnosed with cancer may choose a friend or family member as their cancer caregiver. When taking on the role of caregiver, make sure to understand how to best assist them. Here are some tips below to help get you started.
Tip 1: Understand the diagnosis of your cancer patient and how it affects them
Aggressive Cancers
Being a cancer caregiver opens up new responsibilities and challenges. There are many types of caregiving that provide help for the general health and wellbeing of patients. With cancer caregiving, patients often require specialized help. You may be familiar with senior or disability caregiving, but certain cancers are more difficult to manage. For example, breast cancer is common but involves a different caregiving approach than mesothelioma cancer. Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer of the lungs that typically targets older adults.
There is currently no available cure for mesothelioma. This results in a 79 percent, 1-year survival rate, even with multimodal treatment—which combines one or two cancer treatments. Cancer patients and caregivers may have many questions surrounding treatment. For this reason, caregiver resources help plan and ease long-term mesothelioma cancer care. Take time to understand the type of cancer your patient has and how mesothelioma will affect them physically, mentally, and socially. The decision to have long-term cancer care is hard on the patient, too. Caregivers relieve some of the burdens patients will have. With this in mind, preparing for your patients will help you fully grasp this role.
It’s also crucial to work with the doctors and cancer teams to provide quality care. Depending on what type of caregiver you are, your responsibilities could change. More qualified caregivers may have to administer medications. Connecting with the doctor will help the cancer team with their prognosis strategy and your patient’s long-term cancer care. This will also help you better understand the patient’s needs.
Tip 2: Keep the patient, family and friends involved
It can be devastating when a loved one is diagnosed with cancer. Putting in the effort to work with your patient and their family will make them feel included and comfortable during this difficult time. Caregivers spend a lot of time with patients. By creating healthy relationships with them, you can give them the support and encouragement they need. Often, treatment is hard on patients and takes long recovery times. You will be one of their biggest advocates.
Tip 3: Pay attention to how you feel
Amidst the distress you and your patient will undergo, it’s vital to check in on yourself. It may seem as though your feelings aren’t as valid as those you are helping, but that isn’t the case. You won’t be able to fully care for your patient if you’re not caring for yourself as well. To avoid burnout, dedicate time for yourself to process your emotions and feelings, especially because of how draining long-term cancer caregiving can be.
If you are taking a cancer caregiver position, keep these tips in mind. Caregiving is not babysitting. Patients and their families rely on caregivers to handle what they cannot. Taking on this role is both an immense commitment and a privilege.
Guest Blog: Suffering From Arthritis: 5 Objects To Make Your Life Easier
Arthritis is one of the most common diseases of the bones and joints around the world, specifically in women. In the simplest of terms, it is the chipping away of the protective layer of bones that help them slide smoothly against each other as you move. When this layer is damaged, friction increases which damages the joints progressively
Long Rod Object Graspers
One inevitable outcome of arthritis is the inability to reach up to objects placed on high shelves. Even if you try and do it, you end up feeling a lot of pain and stiffness in the joints afterwards. As such, one object that can help you on a daily basis to manage arthritis and carry out your daily tasks is to get a long rod grasper that allows you to get hold of things without having to look up or move your neck significantly. Same goes for bending down to lower shelves. Use a grasper to bring the objects onto the front and pick them up with holders.
Wheel Walker/Cane
Most of the arthritis patients experience distress due to their movement being restricted because of the disease. Walkers or canes help shift your weight on them and aid you in moving about in a better way, around the house as well as outside. Arthritis intensifies more when you are heavy weight because then your bones and joints have to bear more pressure. As such, this object helps in dividing the weight and managing the disease a great deal.
Assistive Kitchen Equipment
When t comes to working in the kitchen which is unavoidable, use equipment that shares the work you do with hands. For example, use electric or levered can openers rather than using knives that require you to exert significant pressure.
Hot water bottle
This is a heavy rubber bottle in which you can pour hot water, seal it shut and use it to warm your joint stiffness, especially in the morning. Arthritis patients regularly experience morning joint stiffness due to a consistent inactivity during the sleep hours. This helps prepare you for movement throughout the day. Even during the day if constant work causes pain in the joints, you can sit for a couple of minutes to warm your joints with hot water bottle and feel better.
Guest Blog: Why Seniors Need To Hire An Elder Law Attorney
Given the rather complex legal concerns that the elderly have to face, seniors or those who are helping them make decisions should work hand-in-hand with an elder law attorney.
Seniors have rather unique legal needs, and elder law attorneys use their expertise in the different fields of law that elder law encompasses to serve those needs.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons seniors need the services of a lawyer who specializes in elder law.
Help With Medicaid
Seniors are going to need long-term care, and Medicaid is at the forefront of providing them with the necessary funding for it. However, Medicaid’s rules and regulations for eligibility can get rather complex.
By applying legal strategies properly, an elder law attorney can help seniors navigate those complexities and get the Medicaid coverage they need and deserve, and protect their money, property, or income at the same time.
Estate Planning
The elderly will also require assistance with their estate planning.
Many seniors have yet to create wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. Others simply need to update and maintain their existing estate planning documents.
Elder law attorneys can help seniors with their estate planning to ensure that their assets are legally passed down without complication, and their wishes carried out to the letter.
Planning For Long-Term Care
It is a fact that health complications will eventually arise as people get older. For seniors, there is no better time to plan for long-term care than now, while they are still able to care for themselves.
Seniors will need to draft an advance health care directive, a document where they can specify the actions they want to be taken for their health in case they become incapacitated. They also need to plan for guardianship, so when they are no longer capable of caring for themselves, they can ensure that the court will appoint a guardian of their choosing. These are a couple of concerns that a skilled and experienced elder law attorney can help plan.
With an elder care attorney providing insight and expertise, seniors will be able to make sound legal decisions that will ensure that their future needs will be taken care of and help them get some much-needed peace of mind.
About the Author
Lauren Summers is the Content Marketing Strategist for Miller, Miller & Canby, one of the most respected law firms in Montgomery County, and the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The firm focuses on five core areas of practice: Land Development, Real Estate, Litigation, Business and Tax, and Trusts and Estates Law. In her spare time, she reads books and plays board games with her husband and two kids.