…What do you need in the box so when you get the call, are you ready to respond in a planned manner?
Even if your parents are active and engaged in their full lives, it doesn’t hurt to be ready for the unknowns of longer lives.
Be sure to know who your parents’ advisors are: Doctor’s, Attorney’s, Financial Experts and a local Geriatric Care Manager (even if they don’t have one now).
Encourage your parents to keep you informed on where they keep a list of current medications and legal papers.
The Advance Health Directive and the POLST (Physician’s Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments) forms are health related legal documents you need to know about and have copies of if you will be called upon to make decisions in a health crisis. Ask your parents about these most important documents.
You should also have the names and numbers of neighbors if you can’t reach your parents and you live at a distance.
No kidding – you should buy a box that looks like a “First Aid Kit” and pack it with the information that you gathered and place it on a top shelf – hope you never need it – but if you do, you will be glad you were prepared!
I was recently interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and you can get more in-depth advice from this article by clicking here.
Dorothy Harriman says
August 19, 2013 at 5:43 pmThe best advice was “you should buy a box that looks like a “First Aid Kit”! I couldn’t agree more! But that’s not just for seniors.
M Booth says
September 9, 2013 at 1:04 amYour article with the 2 lessons was a wake-up call for us! On one hand, I think my children will enjoy going through SOME old papers I’ve kept; the process will bring up memories of the past and how different it was from the present. But I don’t want to burden them with having to go through it all. So I think I’ll engage in a conversation with them and ask them if it’s okay for me to ‘weed out’ lots of ‘stuff’. I have a feeling my son, who is very nostalgic will say ‘please don’t’. But we’ll see. Anyway, your article really hit the nail on the head! Thank you.