My Mom is living at home and has lifeline pendant. It is a great device when she decides to use it. Our most recent issue is that she is wearing the pendant at night and she rolls onto it and it triggers and starts our call tree and the ambulance.
She does not hear it, the device is in another area of the house and she will not hear it, nor does she hear her phone without her hearing aid.
Some other notes:
We have cameras that are accessible and we can remote see her rooms and talk if necessary. This has been great. The cameras are not too reliable, I think it depends on how far they are from your wifi. The camera in her bedroom I have pointing only on the floor of her room for privacy. This seemed better than a blur option, but I cannot see if she is in trouble and still in the bed. The other cameras are great for living, kitchen if she is moving around, or if she entered or left the bath area.
Reminder:
She needs to be reminded sometimes that it is ok to push the button and get help. Stubborn and independence is working against her.
Solution:
I thought a shorter chain for the lifeline, or putting medical tape to stop it from shifting around to her back or other places. I do not think the wrist option is a solution. We do need the fall detection, she has mobility issues.
Anyone have a suggestion?
Second thing, for me, is that she has an alert necklace with a base unit located elsewhere in the house. I have a unit that does not use a base in the house. It has gps as well so you could track her anywhere if she isn't answering the phone. Base units have limits as to how far you can get from the base - often times this means just going to the backyard cuts off ability to transmit a 'help'. The one I have for my mom is 5-star and you can order through AARP or pick up at Walmart. I have the charger for it right next to the bed and mom charges it each night. Prevents hitting the button while sleeping, but is close enough to her if she needs it. - I suggest changing the unit you have. The set up you have now means if she needs help in the night, she can't even hear the people talking from the base. On the 5star, they talk through the necklace device.
With her mobility issues, I think that overrides privacy of seeing her in bed at this point. Not much point in having the camera in bedroom if you can't see her.
"Stubborn and independence is working against her." Or maybe your are misinterpreting this and it's really mild dementia and memory impairment. These 2 traits are often seen as a personality issue by family members when no cognitive test or diagnosis has been made or is available.
If she doesn't have an actual evaluation/assessment/test you won't know what you're dealing with. Because if she really does have mental/memory decline (rather than being stubborn and independent) she will be less able to "participate" in your monitoring arrangement. You may then exhaust yourself trying to orbit around her inability to be actually independent. Just because she wants it, doesn't mean it is reasonable, logical or doable. Eventually she will no longer be able to stay by herself safely no matter what monitoring and safety precautions you put in place. What is the plan for when that day inevitably comes?
By all means direct the camera to the bed and nearby floor so you can clearly see what's going on. This will enable you to assess the situation and let the Lifeline people if an ambulance should be called.
An Echo may help in other creative ways. Sometimes my mom would leave the phone off the hook. An Amazon echo device was another great device where I could set it from my phone to say "Mom please put the phone back on the hook". or even "It's 9am Mary, please get up and call your daughter". The reminders are loud and repeat 3 times. Saved me countless times from running over there.
A funny story: Mom about 89 at the time, living in independent facility, had a pendant and lifeline subscription. She was a night owl, and already starting the spiral into Alzheimer's, but still only needing some assistance. The family planned a trip to the beach, her favorite place, but on the Oregon coast, much too cold to swim. About 11:30 the night before we were going, her pendant went off. She told the story the next morning. She suddenly heard a voice in her bedroom: Lifeline" Sherry, are you ok?" Repeated 2 or 3 times. Finally she realized what it was and replied " Oh yes I am ok, I guess I set it off when I bent over to try on my bathing suit, before packing it".
We enjoyed our trip, but she never put the suit on, much too cold. She is now 96, deep in dementia and never got to swim again, one of the 1000's of pleasures she no longer enjoys while her body refuses to give up. She was on hospice for 2 years ( a major blessing for us all), but graduated off when she stopped going downhill, has no idea who I am, where she is etc. but is well cared for in an excellent memory care facility. Truly a horrible disease known as the long goodbye.
Since I am no longer on her calling tree (thank goodness!!) she lives with YB and his 4!!! adult daughters and his wife. If none of them answer the call--then the EMT's get called in. Unbelievably, most recently she fell and EVERYBODY was outside laying sod. The EMT's showed up, much to the utter embarassment of my YB who himself is an EMT.
Problem with taking it off at night is that a lot of falls occur during the night, when someone gets up to use the bathroom. Although mother's alarm is a screech that would wake the dead, and 6 people are called before the EMT's, we've had a LOT of middle of the night calls...
Same goes for my MIL, who is stone deaf. Several times she's wandered into her kitchen just as the fire department is deciding which window to break into to get to her.
My grandmother's 'last fall' was in the bathtub--there sat her pendant, just 3 feet away, but she couldn't reach it. She spent 48 hrs in the tub, filling and emptying the tub with warm water. When they found her, she was a mess. So undignified!!
Don't they make fall pendants that are more like watches? That makes more sense--but is also fraught with problems, I daresay.
Put up a notice somewhere very obvious so she doesn't forget to take it off when she gets into bed.
Change the system so it is monitored and they call the "tree" - base stations are OK if she is always near enough to be heard but generally seem a waste of time, but may be necessary if it cannot be linked into phone.
Put up a hook next to the bath so that in future she has it close by - a slip or fall in bath is very common.
Forget the privacy in bedroom - safety is far more important.
Commode chair next to bed (or close by) will avoid night time wandering to find bath room.
Plan out the best way to use what is available and what will be better as she becomes less capable.
Like I said, Mom's had a motion sensor that if she fell and the pendant hit the flloor the operator would call. If she/he got no response, then the ambulance was called.
It might be time for mom to move to assisted living. She would have regular "visits" by staff to assess her and would stop the midnight calls.
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