Mom and Aging 2.0

I knew it would not be easy to accompany my mom on the journey of “getting old.” She has always been an ultra-independent person. When someone talks about a parent’s frequent requests for help, I can’t even imagine. My mom avoids asking me for help like the plague and seems to be enduring a form of torture when she does let me help. She’s turning 88 next month so not surprisingly she’s hitting the virtually inevitable limitations that come with living a long life. She is not happy about it.

We both had a big scare last week. She lives alone in an apartment she loves with her two feline companions, and we both want to keep her that way for as long possible.  I live about a 15-minute drive from her and we keep in touch multiple times a day by phone and by email. I was already nervous about the big gap during the night when she could fall and I wouldn’t know she needed help. Then last week she became ill and needed assistance. In this case she could have called me but was reluctant to. I was alarmed that I had no idea she was in difficulty. Thankfully I had recently discovered the Lively safety watch system* and quickly placed an order for it.

We had tried the classic “I have fallen and I can’t get up” emergency response systems in the past when she was recovering from major back surgery. It eventually seemed like a waste of money and every time her phone service went down with her cable service at night, the system would wake her up with a loud alert demanding attention. We agreed to get rid of it, trying at least letting me know when she was going to bed at night and when she was up in the morning. I was left with the uneasy knowledge that if she fell at night, it could be a while before I realized it.

Now for about the same cost, she has a smart watch that allows her to push a button for help and a system that does so much more. It’s the 4 sensors that come with the system that have me over the moon. I was able to place one of them on her walker and I can now see at a glance if she has been moving around as usual. Last week I would have known as soon as I woke up that something wasn’t right with my mom instead of finding out hours later.

My mom is not as excited about the system as I am. I have already seen that my gray hair growth rate has slowed down significantly. There are more functions that we aren’t taking advantage of yet like pill reminder alerts that can appear on her smart watch. Let me know if you have any questions about the Lively system. If you (or your loved one) live in the Greenville, SC area, I would be happy to provide set-up assistance.

~ You can also follow my Aging 2.0 library on Kifi ~

* The mylively.com links in this post will give me credit for helping you discover the system. Thanks in advance for using them!