Reverse Parenting or Caring for Senior Citizens

[akailiajade 2]

To give you some background, I am a middle aged woman and the only child of my senior citizen parents.  My Mom is 93 and currently residing in a nursing home.  My Dad is 86 and is still residing in the family home by himself.  He still drives and goes to visit my Mom often.  I am basically their personal administrative assistant.

 

I think that a lot of things that parents must take care of for their children, children eventually wind up taking care for their aged parents.  What I've found is that it is absolutely AMAZING how much paperwork two little old people can generate.  Evernote has been a godsend for keeping track of this stuff.  Here are a few things I have in Evernote for my parents:

 

• I took pictures of all the bottles for medications my Dad is currently taking.  It's very easy to bring this information up in Evernote when we are at a doctor's appointment.
• I took pictures of everything in my Dad's wallet, including his driver's license, he credit card, a little card that has information about the stents he has in his heart, shoppers card for the grocery store, etc.
• I either photograph or scan all his appointment cards so I can keep track of when he has doctor's appointments.
• Medicaid is paying for my Mom's care in the nursing home, so I save all the documentation pertaining to that in Evernote.
• I have power of attorney for both my parents, so I have those documents scanned into Evernote.
• I am on my parents' bank accounts so I can pay all their bills.  I have all their bank statements saved in Evernote.
• I have copies of their wills scanned.

On and on it goes.  My next parent project for Evernote is going to be assembling a funeral notebook.  I know, I know . . . we all hate to think of having to plan a funeral for our parents, but most likely we will have to do it sooner or later.  I've decided that I want to have all the information assembled in one spot so I don't have to do a mad scramble to find things after one of my parents has died and I'm dealing with my own grief.

 

Now it's your turn.  Do any of you have any "Reverse Parenting" ideas that you're using to take care of your aging parents?

 

Karen

[jbenson2 2,147]

Thank you for sharing your use of Evernote.

 

My mother was a prolific writer of personal notes - which I scanned into Evernote. As she aged, her handwriting skills deteriorated, along with my vision. Her notes stored are stored as PDF files, so I can zoom in and read them more easily. I would like to see the young whipper-snappers coders with their eagle-vision eyesight at Evernote enable zoom with the text editor.

 

I found the program useful in keeping track of all the people my mother had to interact with.

Names, titles, addresses, phone #s, email addresses

Nurses, Doctors, Specialists, Physical Therapists, Case Managers, Social Workers, Lawyers, Bankers, Undertakers, Clergy

 

The dates and timeline for all this information were helpful as well.

 

And years later, I still find it enjoyable to review comments and stories sent to me by her friends.

[Elusive Richard 0]

My brothers and I have been using Evernote to share information about my mother, who is also 93.  Fortunately, there are 4 of us to share the load.  We have a shared notebook in which we deposit any information that might be helpful, including medications, appointments, results of doctor appointments, etc. etc. etc.  We also use the Evernote email function to cc: the notebook with emails, or the Outlook Evernote add-in to save emails to Evernote in case we forgot to send a copy to her notebook by email.