Caring for Elderly With Terminal Illness



Caring for Terminal Elders

Caregiving for elderly people is difficult in itself, but it proves to be more of a challenge when emotional hurdles become involved. This case is often true when family members or relatives of the elderly individual are assigned to nurse or care for them at home instead of entering them in adult care or nursing facilities. Emotional difficulties are further enhanced when the elderly you are nursing for has a terminal illness. It is really easy to be swept with emotion from both ends that could intervene with your effort to provide quality care. 

Daily Care

Caring for terminally ill elders are often left at the responsibility of their children. However, with their own day jobs to take care of, it often requires proper daily schedule to ensure that their daily needs are properly taken care of. If their diseases are considered to be terminal, you can only do so much with the treatment procedure. However, you have control over providing an efficient daily care and nursing for them to suffice for their needs. 

Coping with Depression

In a clinical and research study, experts have concluded that 25 percent of patients suffering from a terminal disease tend to exhibit symptoms of depression caused by multiple factors relating to their condition. Even without terminal illness, depression is a common occurrence among elderly individuals. This is a natural emotional result of their aging process, which leaves them with the impression of dependence, inability to become productive, and becoming a burden to their family or children. Therefore, despite the difficulty of in-home elderly care, several families opt for it instead of leaving their elderly loved ones to the care of sheltered accommodations or nursing homes. This reduces the level of depression on the older person's part and reinforces the family's genuine concern for them. But still, that does not solve the problem of depression associated with terminal illness.

One way to deal with depression is to provide any health or therapeutic services required for their condition. Although the chances of healing are limited, given that it has been diagnosed as terminal illness, seeing that you are extending all efforts to cure their condition combats minimize the feeling of depression in an elderly person. Why? This is achieved through their knowledge that all efforts are exerted in an effort to find cure. Normally, it isn't the ability to find cure that relieves feeling of depression but the effort to try to. 

Keeping Emotional Balance

With elderly care for those who have terminal illness, two forms of emotion often overcome the carer: pity and compassion. It is important, however, to balance those emotions to ensure that you are able to provide the best quality service to the terminally ill elder you are nursing. Pity will make you feel sorry for the elder, while compassion will allow you to become more sensitive of their needs and work your hardest in addressing them. 

Here are important factors to keep your emotions in check and ensure that you provide quality elderly care and nursing:

•	Focus your attention on providing for the needs of the elderly you are caring instead of becoming too engrossed with your emotions.

•	Instead of dwelling on what you cannot change, focus on what you can do to help enrich their lives as of the moment.

•	Let them experience the best of their remaining days.




