What Can You Do as a Family Caregiver to Protect Your Senior’s Heart?
Whether your elderly family member has already had a heart attack or is diagnosed with heart disease, it’s vital to do what you can to protect her heart for as long as possible. That might feel like an impossible task at first, but it doesn’t have to be.
Elderly Care in Hockessin DE: Senior Heart Care Tips
Keep up with Doctor’s Appointments
Your elderly family member’s doctor is going to want to keep an eye on her heart and her overall health, so she may need to go in rather regularly. This is especially true if she’s taking medications. Her doctor will want to make sure that those medications and dosages are still right for her and that your senior isn’t experiencing any major side effects from them.
Get Acquainted with Her Test Results
You don’t have to know every single number in your senior’s test results, but it does help to have an idea whether she’s trending up or down with specific numbers and how those results affect how she feels. This can be especially important if your senior is dealing with advanced heart issues that affect her significantly. Depending on her unique situation, she may need some of these tests done more than once a year.
Know What to Look for in Terms of Issues
It’s really important to know what it looks like when your senior is not doing well at all. Some of the problems to be alert for could include increased shortness of breath, sudden fatigue, and pain in the chest or shoulder area. Talk to your elderly family member’s doctor about what to do if these things happen. You need to know what means a call to the doctor and what means “call 911.”
Talk to Your Senior’s Doctor about Lifestyle Changes
There may be some lifestyle changes that can dramatically improve how your senior is doing in terms of her heart. Changing her diet, gradually increasing her activity levels, and getting plenty of sleep could all be part of her recovery plan. It can be overwhelming to face all of those changes at once, so having some help from elder care providers can take a lot of that worry off your senior’s shoulders.
There are a lot of moving parts in any plan for heart health, so it’s understandable if your senior feels like it’s a lot to cope with from the start. It does get easier and she may be able to start to feel better.