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You may already be caring for your parents, your spouse, or a significant other or friend. Or you may be watching your parents aging and wondering what the future holds for you. It really doesn’t matter, because the decision to care for your loved one at home is a big decision. After caring for a loved one since 1998, while also visiting relatives in a nursing home, I am totally convinced that caring for a loved one at home is the best route — for your loved one and for your family.

It can be a living hell being a caregiver.  You may decide to give up your job, change jobs, or turn your life upside down.  The only thing that will be true for almost everyone is:  your life will never be the same again.   Why is home care the best?  Well there are a variety of reasons, but cost comes to mind first (although the reality is that it is not the most important factor).  How many people these days can afford $200-300 a day for nursing home care?  I know our family couldn’t.  Even with nursing home insurance, the cost was prohibitive.  Also be aware that with nursing home insurance, you must come from the hospital to the nursing home to be covered immediately – otherwise there is a 90 day waiting period for your insurance to be active.

Your loved one is scared.  They are scared of being sick.  They are scared of dying.  They are scared their life will change – remember, no one really likes change.  Having the luxury of home health care, either your home or the loved one’s home, is the best of all worlds.  There is plenty of activity, your loved one feels part of the family and life in general, and they will work much harder to walk, stand, and to help their caregiver.  You are there every day/night to see their progress or lack of progress.  Are they getting depressed?  Is their mood changing?  How are they eating?  The list goes on, but you can easily see that having your “patient” under your nose does allow you to keep on top of their care.

Actually, the reason for this post is to get feedback from you….what are the pros and cons of home health care?  Looking forward to seeing the responses, even though this is the first post on this new blog.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:54 am and is filed under Home Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.