Home Health Care: Getting Back On Track After a Long Illness
Home Health Care: Older adults are likely to have at least one chronic health issue as they age.
Some never go away and require regular exercise, a special diet, and daily medications. Others, such as cancer or pneumonia, need plenty of medical care in order to make a full recovery. Your mom is about to be released from the hospital after battling COVID or pneumonia for several weeks. What are her Home Health Care needs once she’s home?
Home Health Care in Prince William County VA: Senior Health
Lung Strengthening Exercises
Talk to her medical team about strengthening her lungs. She will be sent home with an incentive spirometer, which is an apparatus that you breathe into to raise the ball within the device. She’ll need to do this each day to help improve her lung function.
Diaphragmatic breathing exercises are also recommended. To do them, your mom lies on her back and puts her hands on her chest and belly. Next, she takes a deep breath and makes the hand on her belly move. The hand on her chest needs to stay still.
When her belly is distended, she’ll hold that breath for a count of five and slowly blow it out. She continues doing these breathing exercises for a minute.
Her doctors may recommend she continues working with a home health care nurse on these exercises. She’ll practice the breathing exercises and have her nurse take her oxygen saturation levels before, during, and after them.
Physical Exercise
Your mom also needs to embrace physical exercise. Walking is one of the recommended options. Start with five-minute walks and monitor her to see if she is out of breath. Increase these walks to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and half an hour.
Another exercise she needs to do each day is Sit to Stand exercises. She’ll sit in a chair and slowly stand up before slowly going into a squat and sitting back down. Wall push-ups, marching in place, and heel lifts are other exercises she needs to work on to help boost stamina.
Her medical team may recommend having her work with a physical therapist to help boost strength and endurance. Rather than drive her to a PT office, the physical therapist can come to her home and offer home health care therapy sessions.
Home health care nurses come to your mom’s home and help her with medication administration, IVs, nutrition, and wound care. The best way to arrange home health care is by firming recovery plans and goals with her medical team. Call an agency to schedule services once you know the care she needs.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering hiring Homecare in Fairfax County, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care.
Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
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