Dealing with a relative with dementia or Althzeimers can be difficult.
- The situation is especially hard with aging parents.
My husband and I have busy lives of our own. Finding the time to check on my mother on a daily basis is a challenge. There are often times when we simply can’t make it over to her house as often as we would like. Just recently, we’ve become concerned over whether or not my mom is eating three healthy meals a day. She refuses to allow any professional help because she is still of the opinion that she can be totally independent. It is wonderful that she has this confident attitude, but we have no way of knowing if she eaten. She might think she cooked herself dinner but actually be thinking of the day before. I have found that my mom will say she’s eaten, but then when I fix her a sandwich, she’s super hungry. My husband and I were talking about her difficulty with memory and realized that if he doesn’t remember whether she has eaten, she probably doesn’t recall if she turned off the coffee pot, or left the shower running. She might neglect to turn up the heat when the outside temperature drops. I started to worry that she’d be in her house alone, shivering with no heat, on a freezing cold winter night. She might not think to turn on the gas furnace. What if there was a malfunction with her heating system? How would we know. My husband came up with the idea of investing in a smart thermostat. We could program it so that the house is maintained at a comfortable temperature. We’d get emailed alerts if there was a problem and we could access the thermostat through our smartphones.