Watching an elderly relative struggle with an injury can be an experience where you want to help but you’re not quite sure where to start or what’s going to be most useful for them. The most common issues may suggest they’ve had a fall at home, perhaps there’s been some kind of accident, or they’re dealing with complications from a medical procedure that’s left them more vulnerable than usual.
The hard truth is, older adults often have different needs compared to younger people recovering from similar injuries, because their bodies don’t bounce back the same way they used to, which means the approach you take needs to be a bit more thoughtful and patient.
You might find yourself juggling your own schedule with trying to be there for them, and figuring out what kind of support they actually want versus what you think they need., You likely want to achieve a delicate balance between being helpful and being overbearing, because most elderly people still want to maintain their independence as much as possible while they’re healing.
In this post, we can offer some advice to get you started:
Start With The Basics They Can’t Handle Alone
If you can ask which daily tasks have become genuinely difficult or impossible for your relative to manage on their own, that’s where your help is going to have the most immediate impact on their comfort and safety. You may take up their grocery shopping, meal preparation, getting to medical appointments, or house maintenance as they heal and return back to home.
If you hope to advocate for them, it’s usually the smaller things that matter most to begin with, like helping them organize medications so they don’t get confused about what to take when, or just being there if they need someone to talk to. This might help you get a food into:
Helping Them With Legal Challenges
Medical appointments can become pretty intensive for older adults, particularly if they’re dealing with specialists, insurance paperwork, and treatment plans that keep changing based on how their recovery is progressing and any other health conditions they have at this age. Going along to important appointments with them means you can help ask questions they might forget to ask or take notes about what the doctor says, and generally be another set of ears to catch details
Insurance claims and medical billing can turn into a real pain no matter our age, so if your relative has been injured due to someone else’s negligence, there might be legal considerations that need attention from firms like DiPiero Simmons McGinley & Bastress, PLLC, who understand how these situations affect older adults specifically.
Lend Your Moral Support
Recovery from an injury can be mentally tough for elderly people because it can very much impact their independence and capabilities, and they might be dealing with frustration, anxiety, or depression on top of their physical healing. That’s not to mention we heal more slowly when our bodies are older. Being there to listen when they want to talk about their frustrations, or just spending time with them so they don’t feel isolated, can be just as important as helping with their legal compensation effort.
With this advice, you’ll be sure to help your elderly relative recover.