Tips to Help Your Senior Manage Arthritis

If your elderly family member has experienced worsening arthritis, you may need to work out a plan with her that helps to accommodate her needs without making her feel as if she’s unable to do things for herself. That’s a tricky balance, but it’s entirely possible.

Talk about What Your Senior Wants

Work out with your senior what she wants and what’s working for her already. You may want to just take over everything for her, but that’s not a plan that has long-term sticking power. What your elderly family member most wants is likely going to be for things to go back to being as normal as possible. She may also want to be independent and maintain her living arrangements, even if it’s more difficult. What you really need is a plan to help her to make that happen.

Know When to Back Off

Your senior may want or need help, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept that help. Something that may help both you and her is for you to develop a communication system for helping. Let her know that you’re willing to help, once she’s confirmed that is what she really wants. Backing off and not forcing assistance on her may help her to be more willing to ask for help when she’s truly in need.

Learn the Signs of Trouble

Until you fine-tune the plan, you and your senior are going to have some false starts. Something you may need to do is to learn what the signs are that she’s in over her head with something. Also, learn the symptoms of a severe arthritis flare. Those can include severe inflammation or more heat in her joints than usual. Her doctor can help you to know when the situation is more severe.

Find Some Extra Help Now

Something else that helps a lot is for you and your senior to agree now that some extra help could be a good idea. Bringing in a caregiver now, before things get really bad, can give her a chance to figure out her new normal. Working with a caregiver can also help her to find new tricks and tools that make life easier, even with arthritis.

Just because your elderly family member is experiencing arthritis flares more often that doesn’t mean her life as she knows it has to be over. She can still do a lot of what she loves.