The best advice I can think of at the moment.
If you don't think about the future, you won't be prepared to deal with it when it gets here.
This journey through caregiving has so many twists and turns that it's difficult to make your way safely through it. It is so easy to get caught up in what's happening now and how you feel about it that it's difficult to think about the future.
One of the things I've noticed about a person with dementia is they are in total denial about the things they can't do. That comes to the point where they can't remember the things they can't do, and they continue to try anyway and that gets them into trouble.
For instance, and I realize my situation is different from anyone else and yet in some ways it's probably very much the same as most of those who read this are going to experience. I figured out early on that one of my big challenges would be how to get my wife in and out of bed once she couldn't do by herself. Without being able to get her into bed I wouldn't be able to keep her at home with me.
I knew that I was going to need some kind of lift eventually to get this all accomplished, but she was totally resistant to that idea and refused to even consider that we might ever get to that point.
She had been sedentary for so long that it's began to be impossible for her to get herself into bed. Our bed happens to be a Sleep Number bed and her legs are too short for her to even sit down on the edge of the bed to get into it. In the beginning I was able to find some step up devices on Amazon that she could step up onto and sit on the edge of the bed and put herself in bed. Then soon she was no longer able to pick her legs up and turn her body into bed and that became my job. That worked for some period of time but it began to be more and more difficult for both of us to actually get her turned into the center of the bed.
I got the doctor to prescribe a lift and rented one from a local supplier. The first lift was a Hoyer mechanical lift, a physical therapist came and showed me how to use it. I really didn't have anybody to practice on and it mostly just sat there for two or three months. I had been told that a Hoyer lift was not a one-person operation but I believed then I could make it work. I actually believed that right up until the day we needed it and I almost dropped her on the floor.
In the meantime here are some of the things we tried before we had to go to the lift.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MQ4Q634/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is an adjustable step box that I put beside the bed and it worked for 2 or 3 months. Eventually there were two problems that made it no longer usable. First she couldn’t step up enough to get on it, and second she would get on it facing the bed and had to turn 180 degrees to sit down. That was really scary because she was so unstable.
This one did not work really well, but it was easier to pry her legs over into the bed than using my own arms to do the same thing.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WNJU1A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This sheet was great and we used it for several months. Even after we started using the sit-stand lift we still needed to turn her into bed.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L2B5H1G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Eventually we did start using the lift and found that the Hoyer lift was not going to work. We traded it for a sit-to-stand lift and that worked for several months. Then I began to see that it was hurting her knees and she no longer had the arm strength to help stand her up. Time to look for another lift if I wanted to keep her here at home with me.
As I explored that I discovered that I now owned the sit-to-stand lift and also that Medicare will not pay for a powered lift. I had already figured out that a mechanical lift was not going to work so more research and I finally ordered the lift we are now using. It has been the perfect solution. I just wish I had known in the beginning that it was going to be what I needed. That would have saved me a lot of money.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TEQUMO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I searched for days for a solution to how to use the new lift for toileting. There are dozens, if not hundreds of videos showing how to move the person but not one address the problem of pants and clothing in the way. Below is a link to my solution for that problem.
https://youtu.be/DVqgxThStyM
One last bit of advice.
If you have a problem, someone else has probably had the same problem and they may have published their solution on the web. YouTube and Google can be your best friend for finding solutions, and Amazon may well be able to bring the answer to your door.
