I Need Health Care For Myself

I Need Health Care For Myself


Living alone while managing an illness will be challenging, but with the right strategies and support, you can navigate this journey more effectively. In the overview below, we will navigate what to expect and how to prepare for sustained, long-term health care needs as we grow older:

Topics Covered:

Preparing for Increased Healthcare Needs as We Age

The physical, emotional and mental needs we have for maintaining optimal health increase as our bodies, emotions and mental faculties change. Lets face it, navigating our health is challenging and learning to accept our physical and mental limitations can be difficult. Denial of our actual condition and avoidance of self-care can become coping mechanisms we develop out of fear of facing the truth about ourselves and an uncertain future 

Preparing for increased personal healthcare needs involves proactive steps such as maintaining a healthy lifestyle through balanced nutrition, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep. Regular health check-ups and screenings are crucial for early detection and management of potential issues. Building a relationship with a primary care physician ensures personalized care and guidance. It’s also important to stay informed about one’s family medical history to anticipate genetic conditions. Keeping an updated record of medical information, including medications and vaccinations, is essential. Additionally, having documentation of  health insurance and understanding its coverage helps mitigate financial burdens associated with medical care. Overall, proactive health management is key to addressing future healthcare needs effectively.

What to Expect for the Journey Ahead

Being prepared and ready to ADVOCATE for yourself is a necessity. Here’s what to expect and how to prepare:

Emotional and Psychological Adjustments

  • Coping with Loneliness: Expect to face feelings of loneliness. Stay connected with friends, family, or support groups via phone calls, video chats, and social media.
  • Emotional Strain: Managing an illness alone can be emotionally taxing. Seek support within your family and friends or counseling or therapy to help process your feelings and develop coping strategies.

Physical and Practical Challenges

  • Assistance with Daily Living:  You may need help with daily tasks. Consider hiring home care aides or utilizing community resources like meal delivery and transportation services.
  • Household Management: Plan for times when you might not be able to perform household chores. Check with an advisor to give you guidance, you cannot get outside help TOO SOON.

Social Challenges:

Maintaining communication with friends is crucial for emotional support and mental well-being. Here’s how this helps

  • Emotional Support: Friends can provide a listening ear, encouragement, and understanding during challenging times.
  • Reduced Loneliness: Regular contact with friends helps combat feelings of isolation and loneliness.  Meetup groups often focus on shared hobbies or interests, making it easier to connect with others.
  • Improved Mental Health: Social interactions can lead to better mental health outcomes, reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety.
  • Enhanced Coping Skills: Friends can offer different perspectives and solutions to problems, helping you cope better with life’s challenges.

By anticipating these challenges and preparing accordingly, you can maintain a higher quality of life and better manage your illness while living alone.

Immediate and Short Term Healthcare for Oneself

Navigating immediate and short-term healthcare needs can be challenging but is crucial for addressing urgent medical concerns and learning to stabilize painful or life-threatening health conditions. This should begin by learning to recognize when to seek immediate care to coordinate short-term treatments for oneself and receive follow-ups visits until one is healthy again. Understanding how to access and utilize healthcare resources effectively ensures timely and appropriate care, which is vital for recovery and maintaining overall well-being.

Verify Your Health Care Coverage:

Verifying your health care coverage is important to make sure you have the correct level of coverage which suits, generally, your health needs and is affordable. Too much insurance can be wasteful for your savings, and being under-insured can limit your ability to receive proper care. Choosing the best health insurer is a challenging task but consider getting multiple quotes and review your policy with your doctor when possible.

Proof of Insurance:

  • Call your health insurance provider and request a printed copy of your policy and insurance card
  • Take a photo of your insurance card and keep it on your phone, and an extra printed copy in your car.
  • Add the main insurance contact # and your policy # to your phone’s contacts.

By anticipating these challenges and preparing accordingly, you can maintain a higher quality of life and better manage your illness while living alone.

Know when your next doctor check-up is due:

The purpose of knowing when your next checkup is to establish a clear, ongoing relationship with your doctor or PCP and get regularly tested so that small health issues dont evolve into emergencies in later life.

  • Know whom your doctor is, where they are located and how to get a hold of them.
  • Keep track of when your next doctor’s visit is for your next annual checkup.
  • Make sure your doctor has your phone and correct email for sending you a reminder notification.
  • Ask your doctor what the procedure is if you need to setup an urgent requests outside of your planned annual checkup.
  • Learn how to login and send messages to your doctor directly through your online web portal.

Managing Medications:

The purpose of managing your medications is to clearly identify and communicate what medications you are taking so a doctor may assist you in the event you become incapacitated or needs to correctly update your existing prescriptions.

  • Identify Current Medications: Keep a list of current medications you are taking including prescriptions, over-the-counter drugs, and supplements on a printed piece of paper with the most recent date it was updated. Keep this list in your car and take a picture of it on your phone.
  • Consider using a weekly pill dispenser with individual containers for each day of the week to help manage your correct dosage.

Long Term Healthcare for Oneself

When thinking about long-term healthcare for oneself, there are two main areas to consider:

  • Preparing for your long-term healthcare needs
  • Managing your long term healthcare services and end-of-life planning needs.

Preparing for Long-Term Healthcare Needs:

Preparing for long-term healthcare can be challenging for everyone and lead to new demands we may be forced to place upon ourselves to radically alter our daily lifestyle; what we eat, how we exercise, how we spend our time, how we invest our savings and how we will come to terms with difficult topics such as our own frailty, loss of function and death. If you are at a place where you have consciously chosen to advocate for optimal healthcare in your senior years and are serious about committing to a better you.

Regular Review and Adjustment:

Regularly review and adjust healthcare plans and strategies based on changing health needs, financial circumstances, and healthcare options to ensure ongoing adequacy and effectiveness.

Long-term care insurance is crucial as it provides financial protection against the high costs of extended care due to chronic illness, disability, or aging. It ensures access to quality care services, such as nursing homes, in-home care, or assisted living, without depleting personal savings or burdening family members. By covering these expenses, long-term care insurance helps maintain one’s standard of living, preserves family assets, and offers peace of mind. Additionally, it offers flexibility and choices in care options, ensuring individuals receive the necessary support tailored to their needs. If you have long term care, contact them annually and find out coverage, and constraints on the policy.

Make Healthy Lifestyle Choices:

  • Physical Activity: Maintain a level of physical activity appropriate for your condition. This can help improve your mood and overall health.
  • Healthy Diet: Focus on a balanced diet to support your immune system and overall well-being. Consider meal planning and preparation to make this easier. Adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle, including a balanced diet, regular exercise, sufficient sleep, and stress management, to prevent or manage chronic conditions.

Build a Support Network:

  • Find Community Resources: Utilize local community resources such as senior centers, volunteer organizations, and social services that offer support for individuals living alone.
  • Keep your support network Informed: Keep up-to-date with information related to your illness. Understanding your condition helps you make informed decisions and communicate effectively with healthcare providers.
  • Build a support network of family, friends, and healthcare professionals to provide emotional support, assistance with healthcare decisions, and caregiving if needed.

Managing Health and Medical Needs:

  • Medical Appointments: Keep a well-organized notebook  including  medical appointments. Record all appoints on your phone and archive for repeated listening and understanding 
  • Use a calendar to stay on top of these commitments.
  • Medication Management: Set up a system to manage your medications. On your list of medications place a pill next to each med and take a photo on your phone.Pill organizers and automatic dispensers can help.

Financial Considerations:

  • This is an area where using an advisor is safest. Avoid using friends or neighbors.
  • Illness can lead to significant unexpected expenses. Create a budget that accounts for medical costs, and explore financial assistance programs or insurance benefits.
  • Legal Preparations: Ensure you have legal documents in place, such as a living will, healthcare power of attorney, Also consider Physicians Orders for Scope of Treatment (POST Form) or Do Not Resuscitate (DNR Form) when advised by your healthcare professional.

Be Prepared for Emergencies:

As we age, we become more susceptible to falling, mental health issues, and challenges to self-care. During this time it is important to consider how one can request emergency assistance if there is an injury from a fall, or one become disoriented and requires rapid assistance by EMT. Once seniors reach this stage, and daily living becomes significantly challenging, the demands to prepare for urgent emergencies increases significantly and relying on family members or friends to make important healthcare decisions on their behalf, becomes a requirement for managing one’s healthcare. Here are our recommendations:

  • Emergency Contacts:  Fill out the VIAL OF LIFE information to have a list of emergency contacts , specifically your Healthcare Power of Attorney, readily available, including neighbors, friends, and family members who can be reached quickly.
  • Medical Alert Systems: Consider investing in a medical alert system that can notify emergency services if you need immediate assistance.

Longterm Healthcare Services and End of Life Planning:

Long-Term Care Planning:

Plan for long-term care needs, such as assisted living or nursing care, by researching available options, evaluating costs, and considering financial planning strategies, like long-term care insurance or savings. Think about long-term care options in case your condition worsens. This might include assisted living facilities or moving closer to family.

Home Care:

Home care provides non-medical assistance with daily activities such as bathing, dressing, and meal preparation, typically personal care needs. The Goal of home care is to regain independence and become self-sufficient with Activities of Daily Living such as receiving assistance with dressing, showering, meal preparation and remaining socially active to combat loneliness and depression.

Home Health Care:

involves medical services provided by licensed professionals, such as nurses or therapists, offering treatments, medication administration, and health monitoring to manage medical conditions. Receiving home health care services normally requires the directive of your doctor or PCP and may include: intermittent skilled nursing care, physical therapy, speech-language pathology services and other occupational in-home therapies.

Assisted Living:

Sometimes managing care needs at home becomes too difficult or unsafe and one might need some help with meals, medication management, light housekeeping or laundry, grooming, transportation etc. This help could be provided through adding services at home through a Home Care Agency, or by moving to a Senior Living Community. Both options have advantages. Making the decision sooner than later allows you, or your loved one, to be part of the decision process rather than waiting until it’s an emergency and then others need to step in to make the decision for you. Planning and preparing is always best.

Options for Senior Assisted Living Include: 

  1. 55+ Independent Living Apartments .
  2. Independent Living Community
  3. Assisted Living Community
  4. Memory Care Community
  5. Skilled Nursing Facility
  6. Rehabilitation Facility

Continue to this page to read more about Assisted Living services and the use of a Guidance service.

Advance Directives:

Create preparatory legal directives in advance of a serious medical condition where an individual is incapacitated, unable to make decisions or death. Examples include:

  • A Living Will (in the case of death) – to identify inheritance wishes and other last will terms.
  • A Healthcare Power of Attorney (in the case of being incapacitated) – to specify medical preferences and appoint a trusted individual to make healthcare decisions on their behalf.
  • Physicians Orders for Scope of Treatment (POST Form) – records a persons preferred level and types of treatment and intervention.
  • Do Not Resuscitate (DNR Form) – to create a clear directive that an individual NOT be resuscitated by EMT or other medical professionals should they face an imminent risk to their life

More information about Advanced Directives can be found on our downloads page.

Hospice Services:

When anyone has a terminal illness and is nearing the end of life, hospice care becomes a vital consideration. Hospice provides comprehensive comfort care and including  support services for individuals and their families. It focuses on managing pain, alleviating symptoms, and enhancing quality of life over curative treatments.

Hospice is typically recommended when a person has an estimated life expectancy of six months or less. However, hospice will be beneficial even earlier, helping patients and families navigate the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges that come with a life-limiting illness. With a team-oriented approach, hospice aims to provide compassionate care and guidance during this profound transition for the entire family.

When reviewing service providers: Consider the following best practices:

  • Conduct a thorough needs assessment with your healthcare provider of the minimal level of actual services you or your family member require.  
  • Involve family members and professionals in the decision making. 
  • Advocate for the appropriate service provider. 
  • Understand what is covered by Medicare and what is not.

Communicating with Healthcare Practitioners

Effective communication with healthcare professionals is crucial for ensuring optimal care and positive health outcomes.  For you personally, establishing clear, respectful, and open lines of communication allows you to convey your symptoms, concerns, and preferences accurately, while healthcare providers can respond with informed guidance, diagnoses, and treatments that best suit you. Receiving the best care requires education, patience and being persistent. Understand that all areas of the current healthcare system have some level of dysfunctionality so whenever working with your doctor, be sure to identify your expectations for them, and what their expectations are for you. 

Organize Your Health Information:

Before your visit, gather all relevant medical records, including past diagnoses, medications, and lab results. Assemble a list of current medications. Having this information on hand will help your doctor understand your medical history  accurately.  Bring a list of symptoms you’ve been experiencing, by filling out the pre appointment questionnaire.

Be Honest and Open:

During the visit, be honest about your lifestyle, habits, and any challenges you face in following medical advice.

  • Be sure to discuss sensitive topics such as mental health, substance use, or difficulties adhering to prescribed treatments. Transparency helps your doctor provide the best care tailored to your needs. If you RECORD visit, all the follow up steps will be made easier.
  • Don’t hesitate to ask for clarification if you don’t understand something, and make sure you leave the appointment with a clear understanding of the next steps and any follow-up needed.

Engage Actively:

Active participation in your healthcare discussions is essential. Listen attentively to what your healthcare provider says, and don’t hesitate to ask for clarification if something is unclear.

  • Bring someone to take notes during the conversation to help you, if you are unable to record, to document all important details.
  • Before you leave the visit, make sure you understand your diagnosis, treatment options, and any prescribed medications.
  • Ask about potential side effects and what you should do if you experience them.

By engaging actively, you can make informed decisions about your health and ensure you are following the recommended care plan correctly.

Follow Up and Communicate Changes:

After your appointment, keep your healthcare provider informed about your progress.

  • Report any changes in your symptoms on the doctor’s website portal, whether they improve or worsen.
  • If you experience side effects from medications, inform your provider promptly.
  • Regular follow-up appointments may be necessary to monitor your condition and adjust treatment as needed.

Consistent communication helps your healthcare provider manage your health effectively and make timely adjustments to your care plan, ensuring the best possible outcomes. Remember the mantra “ if not documented – not done”