Gotta tell this story. After my mother died, my father was attempting to live alone with some progressive physical problems and mild dementia, which was growing worse as his health failed.
We lived about four hours away and we were anxious for him, but trying to respect his boundaries. And we didn't really yet know the extent of his problems. Dad was no mental slouch, he could still drive, he could do rudimentary guy-type cooking, and he was good at laundry and cleaning. He insisted he needed no help, but we arranged for him to wear a Life Alert-type watch.
I was not there when the representative came to set it up, but I was informed by phone from the company that Dad was good to go. And my father confirmed it: Yes, he understood. It was simple. He promised to wear it all the time, especially in the yard, etc.
He phoned me one afternoon--that phone call we all dread--to say that he'd fallen, that he wasn't really hurt, but that he couldn't get up. He asked me to call my aunt in his town and get her to call an ambulance--and all my internal alarms went haywire right there!
I said, "Daddy, I'll be glad to, but how about just pushing that button on your special watch?," to which he answered that he just couldn't do that. Begged the question, "But why not, Daddy?"
He answered, "Because I have on my underwear!"
Come to find out, it was an attractive young woman rep who had come to set up the system and teach my father to use his watch alarm. Thanks to his loss of reasoning, he took it that, when he pushed that button, the cute chick showed up. No wonder he agreed to it.
I love it! My Mom has a LifeStation (same kind of deal) pendant and actually used hers about 3 months after we got it for her. She'd had a bad dizzy spell and pressed the button as she made it back to bed. The monitoring center had been instructed to call me first before sending out any EMT's, but the operator said he'd gotten no response from her when he tried to talk to her. Luckily, my son-in-law was at our house, having just graduated from the police academy that morning. We went there together and as his first offical duty as a police officer her phoned 9-1-1 and supervised the response. She spent some time in the ER and then was sent home (at midnight, in her nightgown and shoeless!) with a diagnosis of an inner ear problem most likely from allergies.
My mother-in-law in California has a pendant too, but when she fell in her garage and fractured her hip (no surgery needed, thankfully) she crawled into the house to phone my brother-in-law so he could take to the ER. She said she didn't want to "create a scene."
Gotta tell this story. After my mother died, my father was attempting to live alone with some progressive physical problems and mild dementia, which was growing worse as his health failed.
ReplyDeleteWe lived about four hours away and we were anxious for him, but trying to respect his boundaries. And we didn't really yet know the extent of his problems. Dad was no mental slouch, he could still drive, he could do rudimentary guy-type cooking, and he was good at laundry and cleaning. He insisted he needed no help, but we arranged for him to wear a Life Alert-type watch.
I was not there when the representative came to set it up, but I was informed by phone from the company that Dad was good to go. And my father confirmed it: Yes, he understood. It was simple. He promised to wear it all the time, especially in the yard, etc.
He phoned me one afternoon--that phone call we all dread--to say that he'd fallen, that he wasn't really hurt, but that he couldn't get up. He asked me to call my aunt in his town and get her to call an ambulance--and all my internal alarms went haywire right there!
I said, "Daddy, I'll be glad to, but how about just pushing that button on your special watch?," to which he answered that he just couldn't do that. Begged the question, "But why not, Daddy?"
He answered, "Because I have on my underwear!"
Come to find out, it was an attractive young woman rep who had come to set up the system and teach my father to use his watch alarm. Thanks to his loss of reasoning, he took it that, when he pushed that button, the cute chick showed up. No wonder he agreed to it.
I love it! My Mom has a LifeStation (same kind of deal) pendant and actually used hers about 3 months after we got it for her. She'd had a bad dizzy spell and pressed the button as she made it back to bed. The monitoring center had been instructed to call me first before sending out any EMT's, but the operator said he'd gotten no response from her when he tried to talk to her. Luckily, my son-in-law was at our house, having just graduated from the police academy that morning. We went there together and as his first offical duty as a police officer her phoned 9-1-1 and supervised the response. She spent some time in the ER and then was sent home (at midnight, in her nightgown and shoeless!) with a diagnosis of an inner ear problem most likely from allergies.
ReplyDeleteMy mother-in-law in California has a pendant too, but when she fell in her garage and fractured her hip (no surgery needed, thankfully) she crawled into the house to phone my brother-in-law so he could take to the ER. She said she didn't want to "create a scene."
I think it's the cats, throwing their voices.
ReplyDelete