24-Hour Home Care Tips When Caring For a Senior With Cancer

24-Hour Home Care Tips When Caring For a Senior With Cancer

 March 12, 2024

A nurse giving an elderly woman medicine in bed.

Cancer is a difficult illness to manage, especially for seniors who are dealing with other challenges related to aging. Caring for a senior with cancer can feel overwhelming for family caregivers, which means it might be time to explore other solutions. 24-hour home care services can offer valuable support during a trying time.

Understand What Needs to Get Done

The first step in establishing any care plan is to understand what responsibilities and tasks are involved. Keeping up with doctor’s appointments, coordinating transportation, managing nutrition, and more are all complicated tasks. Family caregivers need to have a clear understanding about what needs to happen so that they can find the right resources to help. 

Include Seniors in Care Planning

When seniors feel left out of the planning process, dealing with a serious illness can feel even more difficult. Family caregivers need to protect their aging adult’s autonomy and ensure they’re involved in conversations about care planning and decisions. This helps seniors to regain some control and to maintain their dignity.

Focus on Strengths and Find Solutions for the Rest

Every situation is different, so it’s a good idea to focus on what strengths the patient has and what they can still do. Dwelling on limitations can contribute to depression and anxiety, whereas focusing on strengths can feel a lot more empowering. Solutions like elder care services can pick up the slack where there are challenges that need to be handled.

Try to Maintain Positivity

A positive outlook is generally a helpful tool for cancer patients. This isn’t about being unrealistically cheerful, it’s more about celebrating victories and keeping the atmosphere hopeful overall. It’s perfectly normal to experience fear, frustration, and sadness, but the important part is not to make those emotions the basis for daily life and activities. 

Keep Life as Normal as Possible

Living with cancer means dealing with a lot of different treatments and having life interrupted quite a lot. It helps when families make a concerted effort to keep life as normal as possible for seniors who have cancer. That means making socialization as easy as possible, keeping hobbies available, and creating routines that offer both comfort and stability.

Don’t Wait to Get Help, Especially Overnight

Caring for a senior who has cancer is both physically and emotionally overwhelming. Many families make the mistake of waiting to get additional help, which can further complicate matters. 24-hour home care services offer the help that families need all around the clock, ensuring that seniors have the care that they need and that family caregivers can take time for respite as needed. Having extra help as soon as possible is a necessary step in keeping everyone involved healthy and happy.

Caregiving itself is demanding, but adding a serious illness like cancer to the equation complicates everything even more. 24-hour home care providers can offer valuable assistance that keeps seniors with cancer in their own homes for as long as possible with their dignity and autonomy intact. Keeping life normal and supporting seniors with daily tasks makes a huge difference.

If you or an aging loved one are considering hiring 24-Hour Home Care in Edgewood, PA, please contact the caring staff at In-Home Quality Care today. Serving the Greater Pittsburgh Area since 1990! Call 412-421-5202