APAM and turn

daisy_101

Just bought an alternating pressure air mattresses as suggested by our members here.

My question is if I still need to turn LO? like at least once at night?

towhee

I have never used one, so I hope some of the other members will chime in. From what others have said though, ideally you should turn, but some of the mattresses make it physically more difficult to do so.

Have you heard of palliative care? It was designed to help with the management of chronic disease, and is not specifically end of life care. Their main service is to send out a nurse once a month, and the advice and knowledge that nurse can give is invaluable. We can only pick up so much from books or even caregiver videos. Palliative care can actually see the situation, and show by example. It is newer on the scene than hospice, but often is offered by the same organizations and paid for by Medicare. It is unfortunately not as widely available as hospice. 

One of the problems we have as caregivers is that we have to learn caregiving techniques in drips and drabs, from whatever information sources we can find. There is no program on a national or state level or even usually local level that we can hook into and learn what we need. At best our doctors point us in the direction of the Alzheimers association, or prescribe a few weeks of home health, where we might pick up some pointers. Does anyone else find this totally frustrating?

Iris L.

Some local Alzheimer's Association chapters used to offer Savvy Caregiver classes.  Call the Helpline and ask if it is available virtually, or when they will resume in-person classes.  

Iris L.

daisy_101

Thank you all for the info!