Residents of the Allentown-Lehigh Valley area may suffer from a feeling of helplessness as a loved one’s health worsens at the end of life. It can be even more painful when someone you love has dementia. South Mountain Memory Care in Emmaus understands the challenges of caring for your loved one as his or her health rapidly deteriorates. At some point, hospice care may be the best alternative to home care.
Dementia differs from most illnesses because your loved one may thrive physically for years, even as their minds are affected. Someone who has Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia may experience a gradual worsening of symptoms related to their cognitive health, including a loss of thinking, memory, and reasoning skills, but may still be capable of normal physical activity. Eventually, though, dementia will cause physical symptoms as well, such as difficulty swallowing; weakened, stiff, or uncoordinated muscles, making walking and other motions difficult; sleep problems; incontinence, and an increased risk of falling.
Many of these physical symptoms are considered indicators of the final stages of dementia, when hospice for dementia may be appropriate.
How do you know if hospice care is needed for a loved one with dementia?
Hospice care is intended for those with a life expectancy of six months or less. Your loved one’s care team can help determine when it’s time for hospice and how your family can benefit.
How can you know when it’s time to seek hospice care for someone with dementia? The physical indicators of the disease’s progression are a good starting point. As your loved one’s health worsens, it will become increasingly difficult to manage physical symptoms, and the situation will be made more difficult because of difficulty communicating with him or her.
While there are medications available to help slow the progression of dementia, at a certain point, the disease can progress to a point where medications may become ineffective, and you may want to consider care to maintain quality of life rather than curative care. That’s where hospice for dementia can help.
What are the benefits of hospice care for dementia?
Caring effectively for someone who has dementia requires taking several steps to provide comfort and reassurance, along with relief of symptoms. That can be challenging—or even impossible—for a family caregiver, particularly as dementia worsens.
Hospice care for dementia can help provide essential services that can benefit both the patient and his or her family. Hospice services can include nursing care, medical equipment or supplies, dietary counseling, the help of a hospice (or home health) aide, and other care designed to manage pain or other symptoms related to the end stages of dementia.
Because every patient is unique and the progression of dementia is unique for every patient, there are four different levels of hospice that can serve as needed: routine home care, continuous home care, general inpatient care, and respite care.
Routine home care and continuous home care are provided in the patient’s house, a skilled nursing facility, or an assisted living community. The difference between the two levels is that routine care is provided during set hours for patients who are in stable condition, while continuous care is used for longer periods of care when a medical crisis isn’t well-controlled.
If a patient experiences symptoms that cannot be managed at home, general inpatient care can be used to provide more intensive hospice services temporarily in an inpatient setting. Once a patient’s condition is stabilized, he or she can return to routine or continuous home care.
Respite care is provided outside the home and provides care for the caregiver, too. During respite care, hospice patients stay for a short time in a hospice facility or another setting outside the home to provide caregivers with a short break from caregiving responsibilities. This type of care is particularly helpful for those caring for someone with dementia, which is both physically and emotionally taxing on caregivers.
Caring for someone with dementia is uniquely difficult, and caring for someone with dementia in the end stages of life is even harder. Hospice care can make a tremendous difference.
A research study published in 2022 found that those with dementia who used hospice for at least one day in the final month of life experienced better end-of-life care than those who did not use hospice. Those who received hospice care for dementia for 30 continuous days in the last month of life had the best transition to the end of life, with family members reporting that their loved ones’ pain and other symptoms were properly managed and that they received excellent care.
If you believe your loved one could benefit from hospice for dementia, talk with his or her care team about whether it’s appropriate. Hospice services are covered by Medicare and many other insurance providers and are designed to promote quality of life in the last days of life while also providing the grief support you need to handle the loss.
South Mountain Memory Care focuses on high-quality, personalized care. The brand-new building is a stand-alone memory care community, meaning that the entire building, staff, and programs are designed to cater to residents with cognitive issues. To ensure person-centered care and attention, we have accommodations for up to 28 residents. The building is divided into two neighborhoods (wings), each offering 10 private suites and 2 semi-private suites.
South Mountain Memory Care is located in the Allentown suburb of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and it is easily accessible from the Lehigh Valley, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. For more information, go to southmountainmemorycare.com.
