Palliative care services don’t take anything away from the treatments and therapies that your elderly family member is experiencing now. Instead, it offers a way to help your senior to find other ways to meet more of her needs. This type of care is available after your elderly family member is diagnosed with a serious illness that might be chronic, progressive, or even terminal.
Palliative Care Isn’t a Place
One misunderstanding about palliative care services is that this is something that your aging family member goes to in order to get the help that she needs. But palliative services can be offered anywhere, including your senior’s home. It’s a lot easier when palliative providers come to her, in fact, especially if she’s experiencing challenges with her health that keep her at home.
This Is a Type of Symptom Management
Often curative treatments, particularly for illnesses like cancer, do not focus on managing symptoms. This is why palliative care is so important alongside curative treatments. It focuses on helping your senior to manage symptoms like pain, side effects from medications, and trouble breathing. Being able to manage these symptoms can be a huge relief for you and your senior.
Palliative Treatments Work Alongside Other Therapies
There’s always a lot of pressure involved in making sure that you’re helping your elderly family member to make the right decisions around her health. Palliative treatments are ones that work alongside the other therapies she’s already trying. Working with palliative care services also helps your senior to learn as much as possible about what she’s experiencing so that she can keep making the decisions that are right for her situation.
Palliative Therapies Improve Quality of Life
People who opt for palliative treatments often find that they experience improved quality of life. That’s incredibly important when facing chronic illnesses that may also be terminal. Palliative care improves the quality of life through symptom management, but also because it helps your elderly family member to feel more empowered to face her health concerns head-on with the support that she needs.
Palliative Care Is Also Support for Family Members
As much as your elderly family member needs support, so do you and other family members. It’s a lot easier to care for your senior as well as possible when you are able to access the emotional support and education that you need in order to be there for her. Palliative teams can help you to find the tools that you need to make your job as a family caregiver easier.
Your aging family member doesn’t have to choose palliative care right away or even at all. But doing so could very well improve many areas of her life and help her to have a much better experience overall. If she isn’t sure whether this is the right choice for her, talk with her doctors to determine what palliative treatments might be able to offer her. This is something that she can start any time after her diagnosis, so there is no rush to avoid missing a deadline.
If you or your aging loved one could benefit from Palliative Care Services in North SC, contact the caring staff at Grove Park Hospice, at (803)536-6644.
Providing Hospice & Palliative Care in Orangeburg, Bamberg, & Calhoun Counties
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