It is not easy for anyone to face the situation that someone close to them needs another person to continue adapting to the new routines that begin to appear over the years, so when this happens a good way to cope is by looking for a caregiver.
Most of the causes of dependency in older people are disorders or diseases that involve progressive deterioration, associated with an also increasing increase in their need for help in activities of daily living.
The caregiver can be a person hired for these purposes or a family member who gradually acquires the role or role of caregiver, which will be longer or shorter depending on multiple factors.
When a close person is the one who assumes this task, especially at the beginning of care, he will not yet be fully aware that he will be the family member on whom most of the effort and responsibilities of care will fall and neither that You are probably in a situation that can be sustained for many years, possibly involving a progressive increase in dedication of time and energy. However, little by little and without hardly realizing it, the person will gradually integrate this new role of caregiver into their daily life.
Some of the various ways that care can begin are:
After an acute illness and hospitalization that requires a period of convalescence.
After a period of physical fragility associated with normal biological aging that, little by little, requires more help.
Because of a degenerative disease for which there was already some evidence.
One of the most common and difficult situations begins when older people, who live in their own homes with relatively high levels of independence and functional autonomy, worry, like their relatives, about the fact of living alone in their fragile conditions , as well as for some specific events (for example, a fall).
In these cases, it is important to consider whether it is convenient for them to continue living alone, if an external caregiver should be hired or if they should transfer the older adult close to the children or to their own home.