The lifetime probability of becoming disabled in at least two activities of daily living or of being cognitively impaired is 68% for people age 65 and older. What this implies is that a very large number of seniors will need some degree of caregiving support. A portion of these people are receiving this care via informal caregivers in the home. In fact, over 70 million informal and family caregivers provide care to someone who is ill, disabled, or aged in the US.
Virtual Reality (VR) is not a new concept in elder care facilities. It provides a fun and stimulating activity that promotes socialization and allows seniors to partake in activities that they have not done in years (like downhill skiing).
But in this new world of social distancing and sheltering in place, our elders are particularly impacted. Not only are the especially vulnerable to COVID-19, but the side effect of isolating them further affects greater loneliness. And as we now know, isolation can have profound health implications over time.
The decision to move into senior housing is a significant decision for both seniors and their caregivers alike. As the older adult in your life begins to struggle more with the tasks of daily living, it’s natural to start asking the question, is it time for senior housing?
One of the most challenging parts of making the decision is bringing it up with your loved one. Understandably, most older adults don’t want to leave their homes, and gently approaching the subject is essential.
The question often arises; how can caregivers better endure and work through the barrage of emotional, spiritual and physical challenges they face during an after a loved one’s illness?
For many people, the role of the caregiver becomes all-consuming, so when it finally comes to an end, life can feel as though it’s lost its meaning and purpose. But even before that, it is rarely a good idea to allow yourself to become so consumed with one thing, at the expense of everything else, including your identity, health, and overall well-being.
When people are considering what we (Cielito Lindo and Rancho Los Labradores) have to offer, each person has their unique concerns. But the question that comes up more frequently is, “Is Mexico actually safe, we here so much in the news?” The short answer is yes, but let’s go a little further with that.
Despite the media headlines painting Mexico as a place of crime and drug violence in the past few years, travelers shouldn’t allow that to stop them from experiencing one of the most colorful and amazing cultures in the world, and the cities have plenty of that.
This guide is designed to illuminate the path for those considering senior living options, ranging from complete independence to the compassionate support of hospice care. It aims to prepare you for the journey of selecting a continuous care retirement community or a specialized care facility for your loved ones, with the unique backdrop of Mexico. Whether you’re researching for yourself, your partner, or as a caregiver, this guide can be viewed through the lens of caregiving, offering a nuanced understanding of the process.
Our goal is to address and alleviate the concerns and misconceptions that may deter you from exploring the exceptional value and superior care available in Mexico. This guide is penned from the personal viewpoint of an author who is not only a caregiver but also has a spouse in memory care, providing a narrative rich in firsthand experience. While striving for objectivity and factual accuracy, it’s important to recognize that some content may reflect the author’s personal journey and insights. This firsthand perspective is invaluable, however, as it brings empathy and understanding to the challenges you may be facing.
The structure of this guide is deliberately straightforward, guiding you through the initial considerations and steps necessary for making informed decisions. If you’re open to exploring a retirement living option that offers warmth, beauty, and loving care, combined with remarkable flexibility and affordability, the forthcoming articles will be of great interest. Join us as we delve into the advantages of senior living in Mexico, a choice that promises not just a change of scenery, but a transformative experience in care and community.
By the way: The term ‘expatriate’ is meant to identify one that is living away from their homeland, as opposed to ‘ex-patriot’ which more commonly identifies an individual that has distanced him or herself emotionally as well as physically.
Navigating the myriad options for senior living can be daunting, reflecting the wide spectrum of desires and needs as we age. This section aims to demystify these choices, offering clear distinctions to aid in your decision-making process.
Imagine a continuum of senior living options, stretching from the vibrant independence of retirement to the more intensive care required in advanced years or due to degenerative conditions. This continuum encompasses various lifestyles and levels of care, each tailored to different stages of life and health.
Senior Living: The journey into retirement is often envisioned as a period of complete independence and self-sufficiency. Many dream of relocating to a serene retirement haven, exploring the country in an RV, or indulging in extensive international travels. Some may choose to immerse themselves in the culture and lifestyle of a foreign country, leveraging the economic benefits such a move can offer. Another path might be joining a senior living community designed to provide a full continuum of care, adapting to one’s needs over time. This phase, typically commencing post-55, represents a broad spectrum that includes everything from independent living within a continuous care retirement community (CCRC) to more comprehensive care arrangements.
Independent Living: This option is ideal for those seeking to minimize the daily hassles of chores like cleaning, laundry, and maintenance, often within a community that can offer escalating levels of care as required. It’s about preserving autonomy while eliminating the burdens of day-to-day tasks, ensuring a smooth transition should care needs intensify.
Home Care: Opting for home care allows individuals to stay in familiar surroundings, potentially reducing costs and fostering family involvement. It ranges from informal family-provided care to professional in-home care services, including skilled medical care by healthcare professionals. Services can cover physical therapy, speech-language pathology, medical social work, and more, under physician orders.
Assisted Living: This level of care enhances independent living by offering assistance with personal care and daily activities. It’s suited for those who face physical or cognitive challenges in managing independently, including early stages of dementia or chronic conditions like ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, or rheumatoid arthritis. Assisted living facilities also provide essential support for bathing, dressing, meal preparation, and medication management, among other services.
Adult Day Care: As a component of assisted living, adult day care centers offer daytime respite for caregivers, providing meals, activities, transportation, and care assistance, thereby supporting those who require help with daily living activities.
Nursing Home: For individuals with serious medical conditions requiring constant care but not hospitalization, nursing homes offer a solution. These facilities provide 24-hour nursing care, rehabilitation services, and therapeutic care, bridging the gap between assisted living and hospital care, and often include specialized memory care for residents with dementia.
Memory Care: Dedicated to those with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other cognitive impairments, memory care facilities offer specialized support within a secure environment, addressing the unique needs and challenges faced by these individuals.
Hospice: Focused on palliative care for the terminally ill, hospice offers a compassionate approach to end-of-life care, emphasizing pain management and emotional support rather than curative treatment. Care is provided by a multidisciplinary team, including medical and support staff, with significant family involvement.
Continuous Care Retirement Community (CCRC): CCRCs represent a comprehensive solution, providing a seamless transition from independent living to more intensive care levels within a single community. This model ensures stability and continuity, allowing residents to adapt their living arrangements to their evolving care needs without the need to relocate.
Understanding these distinctions clarifies the senior living landscape, facilitating informed decisions that align with individual preferences and care requirements. It’s about finding the right balance between independence, support, and quality of life at every stage of the aging process.
Download the Expatriate Guide for Senior Living in Mexico – For your convenience, the entire 50-page guide is available for download as a PDF. Additionally, give us a call at +1.888.406.7990 or email us at information.cielitolindo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
Navigating the complex and emotional journey of addressing age-related decline with a parent is a significant challenge many adult children face. This transition often represents a reversal of long-established familial roles, leading to discomfort for both parties, particularly if the parent is resistant to acknowledging their need for support.
Parents may recognize their diminishing capabilities yet struggle with the notion of dependence, spurred by denial or fear of losing their autonomy. Signs indicating a need for a conversation about assisted living include:
Acknowledging these signs early can guide a proactive approach to discussing the potential benefits of assisted living, emphasizing it’s not about relinquishing independence, but adapting to ensure safety and quality of life.
Preparing for the Conversation:
Understanding the areas where your parent may need assistance is crucial. This encompasses:
Equipping yourself with knowledge about their financial situation, possible care options like adult daycare, and legal preparations such as advance directives is essential. Being transparent about the level of care you can provide is also important, especially if accommodating them in your home isn’t feasible.
Facts Over Emotion:
Approaching the conversation with objective facts rather than subjective feelings can facilitate a more productive dialogue. Offering control and options reassures your parent that their preferences matter. For instance, instead of demanding the car keys, suggest arranging convenient transportation for them, framing it as an opportunity for comfort and ease.
Gentle Initiation:
Start the conversation based on observations without making your parent feel defensive. For example, noting the home’s upkeep or their personal care can open a dialogue about possibly bringing in help. Proposing trials of assistance can introduce the idea gradually, making the transition smoother.
Handling Resistance:
Resistance, particularly around financial concerns or the fear of losing independence, is common. Listening and understanding their perspective while reassuring them of their autonomy within a safer living arrangement is key. Patience and persistence, sometimes requiring multiple conversations, are often necessary.
The Process:
Objective Third Party:
Involving a neutral third party, like a healthcare provider or a trusted advisor, can sometimes facilitate acceptance. Their objective perspective can validate the necessity of the transition in a way that resonates more effectively than familial advice.
Driving Safety:
Addressing driving concerns sensitively by offering alternatives and, if necessary, involving external evaluations, can preserve dignity while ensuring safety.
This approach, characterized by empathy, patience, and open dialogue, aims to empower your parent to participate actively in decisions about their care, reinforcing the notion that moving to assisted living is not about loss but about adapting to ensure their well-being and quality of life.
Download the Expatriate Guide for Senior Living in Mexico – For your convenience, the entire 50-page guide is available for download as a PDF. Additionally, give us a call at +1.888.406.7990 or email us at information.cielitolindo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
Determining the optimal timing for transitioning a loved one into assisted living is crucial, often influenced by the immediacy of their need for senior living services versus the caregiver’s capacity to provide care. This timing can vary significantly based on the individual’s condition and the caregiver’s situation.
For those aging gracefully but beginning to struggle with daily tasks like personal hygiene, meal preparation, and medication management, the transition into assisted living can be more gradual. This slower pace allows caregivers more time to evaluate and decide on the best course of action.
However, in cases where a loved one suffers from a degenerative condition such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS, or MS, the need for specialized care like assisted living or memory care may become urgent unexpectedly. These conditions can progress in unpredictable patterns, sometimes stabilizing before suddenly worsening, demanding a higher level of care than what a caregiver can provide alone.
Caring for someone with a progressively debilitating illness is an immense responsibility that can strain the caregiver’s physical, mental, and financial well-being. Despite the variability in disease progression, a commonality among these conditions is the eventual need for comprehensive care beyond a caregiver’s capacity.
Caregivers may become increasingly burdened as they take on more responsibilities, often without recognizing the potential risks to their own well-being, including financial hardship, job loss, and health issues. The unpredictable nature of these illnesses, which often progress in a stair-step rather than linear fashion, further complicates caregiving. Periods of stability may suddenly give way to significant declines, introducing new challenges without warning.
Preparation is essential for caregivers, requiring confrontation of the situation despite possible denial. This includes arranging legal documents such as power of attorney and healthcare directives before the individual is deemed incompetent. Early planning is critical, as these conditions can deteriorate swiftly, leaving caregivers unprepared for the escalated care needs.
Determining future care—whether through in-home professionals or specialized facilities offering comprehensive services—is a pivotal part of this preparation. Lack of preparedness can lead to a frantic scramble to arrange higher levels of care, compounded by legal limitations if necessary documents are not in place, affecting decision-making capacity regarding healthcare, finances, and property.
For those considering assisted living or memory care facilities in Mexico, timing becomes even more critical due to the complexities of travel with an aging or ailing loved one. However, transitioning too early can meet with resistance from the individual.
Ultimately, the decision on when to make the transition involves recognizing when the individual is sufficiently accepting of their condition to minimize resistance, yet still capable of managing the travel involved. Ideally, this occurs after the person has navigated the stages of grief—denial, anger, negotiation, and acceptance—reaching a point where they can more easily adapt to the change. Identifying this window of opportunity requires sensitivity and attentiveness to the loved one’s condition and readiness, ensuring the transition is as smooth and timely as possible.
Download the Expatriate Guide for Senior Living in Mexico – For your convenience, the entire 50-page guide is available for download as a PDF. Additionally, give us a call at +1.888.406.7990 or email us at information.cielitolindo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
Addressing the legal and administrative necessities associated with aging and caregiving is an inherently difficult task, as it forces us to confront the realities of declining health and the inevitability of life’s end. However, the pain of not having these affairs in order can far outweigh the discomfort of preparation. Proactive planning or the sudden realization brought on by a health emergency underscores the importance of having essential legal documents and arrangements in place.
Essential Legal Documents:
Power of Attorney (POA): A durable power of attorney is vital, granting comprehensive powers to a designated individual from the moment of signing. It circumvents the complex and potentially problematic process of declaring someone incompetent. This document must be registered appropriately and copies stored securely in various locations, including a safe deposit box, to prevent complications should the original be lost. Ensuring the POA is accepted by banks and other institutions by verifying its acceptability in advance can save considerable trouble later.
Health Care Directive: This document allows healthcare decisions to be made by a trusted individual when one is unable to do so themselves. It specifies wishes regarding medical treatment, including directives like “do not resuscitate” orders, ensuring that healthcare providers and loved ones are aware of and can honor these preferences.
Will and/or Living Trust: Establishing a will is crucial for outlining the distribution of assets posthumously. A living trust can further facilitate the process, allowing major assets to be managed and transferred efficiently and privately, avoiding probate. Caregivers should also have their own will and living trust to ensure that arrangements are in place for their dependents.
Doctor’s Letter: A letter from a physician detailing the need for assisted living or memory care can be invaluable for insurance purposes, tax deductions, and legal clarity, especially when traveling or relocating.
If Relocating to Mexico:
Organizing Important Papers:
Creating a comprehensive binder or file system for all critical documents is a proactive step that can significantly ease the caregiving journey. This collection should be accessible to trusted individuals, such as a spouse, adult child, or family friend, and should include not only the documents previously mentioned but also any additional important information (to be listed subsequently).
Taking the time to organize these affairs, despite the emotional difficulty, ensures that you and your loved ones are protected and prepared for future challenges. This approach not only mitigates potential legal and financial hardships but also provides peace of mind in knowing that wishes and needs will be respected and met. You should take your spouse, adult child, and/or a trusted family friend through this information and where it can be found. In addition to what we have discussed about, you probably should assemble the following:
Personal Records
Financial Records
If you do not have the right papers in place before it is obvious that an individual is no longer in a state of mind (i.e, deemed competent) to make decisions and execute legal documents, all of the assets associated with that individual will be tied up until after they pass, their will has been filed and probated (8-12 months).
Typically, money and property will need to be shifted around while the individual is in care, and this cannot be done without the proper papers in effect. Things you may need to sell or draw money from include: homes/property, cars, bank accounts and retirement funds.
None of these documents will not be honored in Mexico, but they will be critical in your day-to-day business of running you family, household, and finances in the US. And they will be very critical once somebody passes.
For More Information About Getting One’s Affairs in Order:
AARP
1-888-687-2277 (toll-free)
1-877-434-7598 (TTY/toll-free)
1-877-342-2277 (español/línea gratis)
1-866-238-9488 (TTY/español/línea gratis)
www.aarp.org/home-family/caregiving/
CaringInfo
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
1-800-658-8898 (toll-free)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
1-800-633-4227 (toll-free)
1-877-486-2048 (TTY/toll-free)
Eldercare Locator
1-800-677-1116 (toll-free)
National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys
1-703-942-5711
National Elder Law Foundation
1-520-881-1076
Download the Expatriate Guide for Senior Living in Mexico – For your convenience, the entire 50-page guide is available for download as a PDF. Additionally, give us a call at +1.888.406.7990 or email us at information.cielitolindo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.