How To Avoid Nursing Homes

To avoid the stress and trauma of being institutionalized for the rest of your or your loved one's life ... change your habits.  A day of prevention is worth years of incarceration or being sentenced to chronic conditions beyond your control due to being overweight or not fit for aging gracefully. Chances are we all may need long term care but not sooner but later. Make it the last step not the next step. Make it your decision not your children's  Your habits goal should be avoidance not acceptance.  A short stay may be required for recovery from an accident or recuperation from a surgical procedure or restoring function after a stroke or heart condition.  A nursing home should be for skilled medical care not a living arrangement.  It should be the last step for terminal illness in hospice care.                 

Calculate your Real Age versus your actual age. If you are older, in reality, than your birth date then you are a perfect candidate for a nursing home at some point.  You must not wait until you are in the ambulance ... too late is too bad. And you're never too old to practice prevention.  Invest in walking a mile each day and thinking healthy ... that's all there is to it.  You're the ony one that can preserve the health you are born with. Chronic diseases are avoidable by improving your immune system and  serving your natural health needs.

No, not necessarily unless you want to suffer more from running than being in a nursing home. The simpler the plan the more likely you will do it. Under our 12 step program you design your own activities around calories used and saved. Our "Downsizer" tells you how much you will gain or lose by your choice of activities, how long and often you do them, then converts the actual results over an extended period of time.  But this is secondary to your mental attitude towards wanting a Real Age number under your Chronological Age that keeps you committed.

Again it's relatively simple.  Ask around about the word of mouth on various facilities. Make a visit and use your eyes, nose and ears to see how things are done.  If your nose is full of odd odors, go to the next stop.  If at the next visit the staff doesn't make eye contact, go to the next choice.  if your ears hear any offensive sounds take a pass.  When all three .... Oder free, staff friendly ... music to your ears is serenity that's the one.  Most of the options aren't encouraging due to the owners not being there to make it better.  If it's a corporate chain it's likely we would not recommend it, if we do an evaluation for you.

You look for six factors in their operation

#1 Is the environment conducive to quality of life ... pleasant odors, pets, plants, music, entertainmen and programming

#2 Appearance of Staff with specific uniforms with colors for each  type of posiition

#3 Director of Nursing, Director of Rehab and Director of Social Services highly qualified

#4 Administrator with at least 10 years experience in long term care

#5 Local ownership or Church owned

#6 Automated admission process and integrated medical records with other continuum health care providers

No scheduled care plan meetings.  If so, they are just an overview rather than a review of the patient's condition in relation to the patient's problems. If there is a decline you don't know it as it's happening only  after a visit to the hospital.  You need to go to the ER, either with your loved one or go there upon a timely notice of an incident.  Once you have read the section in the Book on nursing homes you will be prepared to manage the process ... hopefully home is the discharge destination. Any more, hospitals discharge the patient too soon and the nursing home usually isn't capable of handling crisis care. That's not OK.