Ready for Old Age? Will You Be Independent or Need Care?
Together, Gramma and Nannie lighting candles to represent each of our families – joining our lives on August 31, 1997 – through a Unity Candle and Wedding Ceremony.
Today is National Seniors’ Day. This is a day to celebrate the seniors in our lives. To reach out to them and acknowledge how their life-long contributions have helped to shape our lives. With Stats Canada estimating that by 2025 seniors will account for 1/5th of the Canadian population, we need to be sure as designers and contractors that we are creating spaces that support everything from independent living to long-term care.
A few months ago, I wrote down topics near and dear to my heart thinking I would create a post at relevant times throughout the year. Little did I know in the 48 hours leading up to National Seniors’ Day that I would have so many ADDITIONAL reasons to feel sad, angry, and frustrated with the reality some people face when growing old.
When I was a kid, I loved going to stay for weeks with my Gramma. Her and I would do all sorts of things together like gardening, visiting thrift stores, baking, and singing in church. We also visited with my great aunts and uncles – I loved being around seniors – they had such cool stories to tell, and really cool stuff to look at. I got to use a blowgun to shoot pointy sticks into a wall!
During one of my visits, Gramma mentioned a friend who lived alone who had fallen in her bathtub and broke her hip. No one found her until 3 days later! I was horrified and worried for each of my older family members, especially for my Gramma since she too lived alone. Years later, she paid my tuition at MRC so I could be the first person in my family with a college-level education. Those early years greatly shaped my appreciation for healthcare design, especially settings that supported seniors.
Over the years, I have worked on a number of seniors’ care facilities. I learned in practice and through evidence-based design research how the finishes, design details, and products I specified impacted the safety, health, and dignity of seniors, their families, and their caregivers. A small number of those practices included:
The layout of space that considered the use of mobility aids – door widths, hand and bumper rails, and where to store mobility aids to support safe movement no matter someone’s degree of mobility.
The use of certain colours helped people to look healthier and even led to improved moods. Sometimes using colour, we made staff-only areas less visible for the safety of residents.
Some materials reduced the rate of injuries due to falls by softening floors.
Some materials made for easy, discreet cleanup if a resident had incontinence issues or dementia and had trouble finding a bathroom to use appropriately.
Furniture with softened edges, firm support, and consideration for heights of seat, back, and arms, all to aid in sitting and standing safely.
Between my husband’s side of the family and mine, we have 5 generations living and going about their lives from BC to Newfoundland. Our primary focus over the past 48 hours has been on our 2 eldest generations in Newfoundland.
After years of sharing caregiving support of their mother, two 70+ year old daughters visited retirement homes for their mother since her need for care had reached a point of being too much within the family. I was impressed that they were able to tour facilities and CHOOSE where to have their mother move to, then, the reality of the situation sunk in.
The selected retirement home had assessed a frail, ill woman with dementia as needing Level 2 care and accepted her into the home. As evidenced by the last 2 days, she had really needed Level 3 care (terms vary but pertain to the amount of nursing support provided):
A fall in a private bathroom resulted in an ambulance ride and a full body scan that determined a fractured left shoulder, hairline fracture at the top of her spine, and a bruised lump on the head.
Less than 8 hours after the fall, her daughter was told to take her, without shoes or a coat – or did she not want her – since she had been taken in the ambulance only in pajamas. Clothing items were gathered up, Nannie was bundled into a car, and taken back to the retirement home.
25 hours later, another fall, immense pain, another ambulance visit, this time an assessment at the home by paramedics and she stayed there.
14 hours later, another fall, the home’s staff put her back in bed.
1 hour later, another fall, she had cut open her head, another ambulance ride, and now a preliminary assessment of a concussion.
All through this, three 70+ year old adults, one with Parkinson’s, another with other health conditions, were operating on little to no sleep, having heightened stress and blood pressure levels, and striving to be advocates for their loved one’s care in what was supposed to be a better place for her. Thoughts about how and when she might go to sleep forever and no longer suffer entered everyone’s mind. Instead, she will probably go on a months-long waiting list to be moved to an appropriate facility now that she “is in the system”.
But . . . before I even finished writing this, I received a new update about Nannie that has begun to cause numbness alternating with rage about a broken “system”:
She has a small brain bleed, but she’s too old to be operated on.
The hospital is too busy to keep her. *Remember: Newfoundland offered, was rejected, and then taken back up on an offer to help Alberta by sending healthcare workers?
She has now been reassessed as Level 3 but must return to the retirement home until the urgent request can be investigated on a business day next week!
Bed rails to be added, a wheelchair for her, and a phone with a help button placed near her – the best precautionary efforts that can be provided for now. *For real?
Think about all the fears raised about seniors’ homes during COVID. Each of us will one day be faced with either taking care of a loved one in our own home, visiting retirement communities and choosing to move in ourselves, or maybe even needing to go through the “system” to be accepted into a long-term care facility for ourselves or a loved one. We can all hope and work towards remaining independent and active, but at some point, either our bodies or our minds will be faced with the realities of aging.
For all my design and construction industry colleagues, how are you making spaces that support activity, safety, and dignity for seniors? What will you need as YOU age? Will you be independent or need care? How will your contributions allow you to remain in your home or perhaps move to a care facility?
Always open to suggestions on how we all can do our part to support today’s seniors and seniors in the future, whether they are active seniors aging-in-place, frail or ill seniors being cared for by family members, or seniors living in a facility that provides care appropriate to their needs.
Please be sure to visit these sites for resources on some of the ways you can help address the impact of aging. But first, reach out to the seniors in your life and let them know how much they mean to you – one day that will be you: