Preparing to Cover at Home After Surgery

Preparation is the key to recovering at home after a surgery. Unfortunately, patients often underestimate the types of support and services they may need in order to enjoy a more pain- and stress-free recovery. This is especially true for patients who live alone or whose spouses work and will be gone for the majority of the daytime hours.

From mobility aids and other medical equipment to post surgical home nursing and meal provisions - taking a broad-spectrum approach to your preparation will ensure you have exactly what you need as you need it. If nothing else, preparing a "just in case" contacts list will allow you or a helper to contact medical equipment supply companies or an in-home nursing care provider if it turns out your road to recovery is more rocky than originally anticipated.

4 Tips for Post-Surgical Recovery At Home

The following tips will help you prepare for a home recovery.

1.     Quiz Your Doctor Thoroughly. Even the most well-meaning doctors get so used to the post-recovery speech that they don't go into as much detail as you need. Also, if they assume you have someone at home to help out, they might not be as emphatic about some of the more challenging aspects of recovery.

• Make sure your doctor and nurses are aware you live alone, or that you'll be alone for the bulk of the day. Ask detailed questions, like:
• Will there be dressings to change? If so, can you reach them easily on your own? --How groggy will the pain meds make you?
• What are some of the side effects of the pain medications you'll be prescribed?
• Are there food or drinks you should/shouldn't eat?
• Will it be difficult for you to observe routine hygiene habits?
• What do you foresee my greatest recovery challenge(s) to be?

The answers to these questions - as well as a thorough review of the post-surgical instructions and literature provided - should help to guide your preparations.

2.    Talk to Your Insurance Company. You may find recovery will require short-term use of medical equipment or mobility aids. Some type of post surgical home nursing or caregiving may be recommended, especially if you require more complicated wound dressing, IV therapy or medication management. Often, these types of assistance are covered - or partially covered - by health insurance carriers, Medicare and Medicaid - but they will probably require a doctor's prescription or referral.

Researching ahead of time provides the opportunity to obtain referrals and to have medical support and equipment in place before returning from the hospital. Costs may only be covered for the immediate portion of your recovery, but no longer than that. So, you may need to budget out-of-pocket dollars for additional care.

3.    Contact home nursing care agencies. If it seems your recovery will require more skilled caregiving than you thought, reach out to local home nursing care agencies. Many offer free consultations and will be happy to review the post-surgical care instructions to determine whether you will benefit from post surgical home nursing or not. The sooner you do this, the more time you'll have to check their referrals and compare pricing schedules so you can prepare your budget.

4.    Stock up on favorites. Have an ample supply of favorite, easy-to-prepare foods, making sure there are simple soups and bland basics available for the first day or two. Search Netflix ahead of time and load up your movie queue. Books are great, but sometimes reading is difficult if pain, dizziness, nausea or pain-med grogginess become a factor. Plan on wearing soft, loose PJs and clothing so nothing irritates or binds potential recovery sites or sensitive skin.

Are you interested in learning more about what will be required in terms of your post surgical home nursing needs? Contact Nurse Registry. We provide licensed, private nurses who can stop by once a day, a few times a day or who can be scheduled around the clock, depending on the level of care you require.

Alzheimer’s and Dementia: How Do They Differ?

It is easy to confuse the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's. Simply put, dementia is a general diagnosis and a range of scenarios can cause it. Alzheimer's on the other hand, is a specific type of dementia.

It's important that individuals and families learn the difference between the two because it can alter how you approach a plan for short and long-term care.

The Difference Between Dementia and Alzheimer's

What is Dementia?

Dementia is a symptom. Just like a headache or a sore throat, it presents itself similarly in individuals, even if the cause of the symptom is different. So, if a person has dementia, they exhibit signs of memory loss and other cognitive problems that disrupts everyday life. In certain cases, dementia can be reversed or greatly slowed by treating the cause, although this isn't always the case.

Symptoms of dementia include:

• Confusion and disorientation regarding the time of day or familiar, geographic locations.
• Difficulty completing everyday tasks, such as cooking and cleaning.
• Challenges communicating or finding the right words, both verbally and in writing.
• Struggling to find things that have been misplaced, often the result of forgetting where an item usually "lives" and putting it in an odd place.
• Mood swings or irritability.
• Social withdrawal or a lack of interest in favorite people or activities.

As you can imagine, irreversible dementia becomes very dangerous because a person can forget to turn a flame off on the stovetop, become disoriented while walking or driving and can even forget to eat or observe basic hygiene rituals.

The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease. That being said, it isn't the only cause. Additional causes of dementia, which affects memory and language, include:

• Traumatic brain injury
• Stroke
• Parkinson's Disease
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
• Huntington's Disease
• Brain tumor
• Heart disease that leads to vascular dementia

Even severe dehydration and sleep deprivation can cause temporary dementia, as can UTIs in the senior population.

While it's difficult to cure or reverse dementia, doctor's believe maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle are key to preventing some of the most common health conditions that contribute to dementia's development. Individual care, in the form of an in-home nurse or assisted living facility that specializes in memory care, is key to improving the quality of life for adults diagnosed with dementia.

What is Alzheimer's Disease?

As mentioned above, Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, which is one of the reasons it's easy to be confused about the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's disease, however, is a very specific diagnosis and it causes irreversible damage to brain cells, which ultimately affects language, memory and thought processes. The disease is progressive and exists in two forms:

• Early-onset Alzheimer's is the most rare type, diagnosed in adults ages 30 - 60-years.
• Late-onset Alzheimer's is diagnosed in people 60+ years of age.

The symptoms of Alzheimer's are identical to those of dementia but can't be diagnosed via tests just yet. Instead, doctors use diagnostic tests - like brain imaging - to rule out other causes of dementia. If those causes are ruled out, the resulting diagnosis is typically Alzheimer's. Currently, only a postmortem autopsy determines whether or not an Alzheimer's diagnosis is correct.

A specific cause of Alzheimer's has yet to be discovered. Researchers believe genetics, environment and lifestyle play the largest factors in its development. Planning for some type of in-home or assisted living care is the best bet for keeping Alzheimer's patients as healthy, active and safe as the disease progresses.

Are you or someone you love exhibiting symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's disease? Contact Nurse Registry to begin creating a long-term care plan that includes the use of licensed nurses and healthcare professionals.