17.) Some advise on being a caregiver for our treasure-our elderly.(20 minute read)

This is a medical disclaimer: nothing in this article is to be taken as medical advise. ALWAYS consult a doctor before doing anything with the elderly. When in doubt, always consult a doctor. Always think of their safety first. Geriatric medicine is different from regular medicine. ALWAYS CONSULT THE ELDERLY PERSONS DOCTOR FIRST. ALWAYS. Never do anything without a doctors order. Never do anything on your own, 

 In the code of Hansome Lake, we are told to do everything we can to take proper care of our old people.

A good starting point to understand the taking care of our old people: do not let being right, be more important than living in peace. Actually, that's good advise for everyone, all the time.

Put yourself in the elderly persons place and think about what it's like to have someone telling you what to do, just about all of the time. Tell them you don't know what it's like, to have people telling you what to do all the time. Thank them for their patience with you. Let them know your doing the best you can and your thinking about them.

When they are with you and you are talking to someone about them, do not talk about them in the third person or like they are a piece of furniture sitting there. They can always feel, just like you. Constantly put yourself in their position to understand what they may be feeling. Always try to involve them in the conversation.

Always listen to them, anytime they start talking. Do not interupt, let them talk and listen to them- everyone needs this. Remember, they have been on earth longer than you, and you just might learn something. Maybe keep a pen and paper at hand. Sometimes, the talk may not seem to be going anywhere at first, what they're saying. But just listen, as they may get around to their point in a way you didn't expect. Remember: we are supposed to be enjoying ourselves.

As you can see I'm concentrating a lot on the mental health as well as the physical. As the mental health is just as important and sometimes more important than the physical. People from my mother's generation literally, willed themselves to continue. They are somehow able to overcome the physical limitations of their aging bodies. Medical professionals observe and know this. It is their minds that acomplish this feat. Thinking about our teachings. It is genetic, so we all have this capability. Watching them, you can learn how to harness this same will. Your will.  Theres a reason why we six nation people are still here. Look at all we have endured. We are still here. 

Two of my brothers were lost within seven months of each other. At the last funeral, my mom said one of the old ladies leaned over to her ear and said: "make your mind strong". That was 40 years before her passing at 100 years old.

Touch their shoulder or hand when they wake up and periodically throughout the day. Reassure them with your human touch, your energy, your mind.

Comb their hair every day when they wake up. They will smile.

Be constantly aware that the elderly are more sensitive to heat and cold. And let them know this. It is very important to keep them aware of how age is affecting them. Remind them that this is what can happen to everyone in old age. Ask them about memories they have of taking care of their elderly parent or an older person. In summer time, be mindful of how the heat affects them. If they are outside, watch for them to suddenly get sleepy. This can mean they are getting overcome by the heat. They must be immediately brought inside to a cooler place, but not too cold, to prevent overheating. Give water according to their desire, to prevent dehydration. Be mindful that the elderly do not perspire properly, as they once did. If they get warm and cannot perspire, this can be dangerous. This happened with my mom. I slowly got her used to the heat again, by increasing her time out on the porch in the summer. At first, it was literaly just 5 minutes or less in the heat and then back inside. Increasing time, a little each time on the porch. Always observing how the person is reacting to the heat. And over time she started to perspire and her body was slowly  moving back towards a normal condition. Never leave the elderly by themselves in heat or cold. Always consult a doctor before doing something like this. Individual health condition demand that you contact the doctor first and only a doctor can decide if this should be attempted. Do not have inside air conditioner too cold and it should be used only as necessary. The elderly are also greatly affected by the cold. Do not let them sit in even the slighest breeze. To the young, it may seem like an inconvenience, to the elderly it can be serious.

Remember we had our personality as we were babies and it is the same as we get old. George Burns, the Vaudeville actor said that when he was young man, they called him a "rugged individualist". And then when he got to be middle aged, they called him "eccentric". Now that he's old, they call him "senile". He said, he is still the same guy. It's just the perception of him by society, that has changed. Because of his age.

This is just how some of the world perceives aging. And your perception should change as the caregiving continues. What are you supposed to learn during this time? It is a great opportunity to learn about yourself. Don't lose sight of this opportunity. Its not being self centered. It will help you be even more compasionate in your caregiving. I was fortunate that my mother's doctors were all older and they too went through the process of taking care of an elderly parent. They all said the same thing to me: "I know what you are going through now...difficult. But after, you will be glad, that you did this". This is something a caregiver needs to hear.  Caregiving will change you perception of life afterwards. It is a part of life. Helping you get ready...

When an elderly person leaves their everyday environment, like a trip to the doctors office or a stay in rehab or the hospital, it can be disrupting and cause confusion. They may say that "it just doesn't feel right". There is a medical term called "hospital dementia", and it is temporary. The elderly may sometimes get this due to the change in their environment. It can be considered normal in the elderly. When they get back to their home, to their usual environment, everything seems to get back to "baseline" normal. "Baseline" is a medical term to describe the state of a person before a medical event occured. Ask your medical professional about this. "Baseline" is mental and physical.

Our teachings say that it can be dangerous to move an old person from their home as they get older. They can get sick from this moving to a different environment. They can die.

As things progress with aging, you may have to do things like put a lock on the basement door so they can't go down there. You may have to take the inside lock in the bathroom off so they can't lock themselves in, and can't get out. This can also happen in a restaurant. Lol. Remember, its an adventure. Keep your sense of humor-always. Remember what you did as a child: they may get even with you now. Haha. No, really. Haha. Smile.

If they go to rehab or hospital, someone should try to visit them on a regular basis, every day if possible. Keep them company and "tactfully" be their advocate while in the facility. If you get to their room and they are asleep, consider not waking them up. Wait for them to wake up on their own. They will feel your presence in the room. It helps them. When visiting, tell them it's okay to go to sleep if they feel tired. They're not there to entertain you.

My mom would get "white coat syndrome" every time she went into the hospital. This is a medical term used to describe a persons blood pressure going up dangerously high, simply because they're going into a hospital or doctors office. One hospital stay, they said they had to give her a mild dose of morphine to try to bring her blood pressure down. When she left the hospital she was taking a pill for the high number, a second pill for the low number and another pill every 6 hours. All for her blood pressure. When we got back home, her blood pressure came down to normal and went back to taking her usual, one pill a day for her blood pressure. Before changing her pills, I informed her doctor first, that her blood pressure had come down to normal. Again: ALWAYS CHECK WITH THE DOCTOR BEFORE CHANGING THE PILL(S) THEY ARE ON. NEVER DO SOMETHING ON YOUR OWN. ALL MEDICATION ADJUSTMENTS MUST BE DONE ONLY BY THE DOCTOR.

I took an early retirement to take care of my mom, when she was 95 years old. When she was around 96 or 97, I happen to be walking by her bedroom and she was sitting on her bed just staring. This was unusual, so I stopped and asked her what was wrong. She said "something bad just happened". I went in and sat down beside her on the bed and said "it'll be okay." She said "no, it won't be". I put my arm around her shoulder and said "that's why I'm here mom, it will be okay. I'll take care of things. Thats why i'm here. It will be okay". Thats how things happen, thats how quickly things can change. She never said what happened and I never thought to ask. It was not important.

During all this, my mom kept her humor. May be it was her nature to accept what you can not change. One time, was when she was getting admitted to the hospital. They had just brought her up to her room and one of the nurses ask her innocently: "is there anything I can help you with sweetie?" My mom replied matter-of-factly: "yes... help me get out of here!"

Purchase an "over the counter" (OTC) blood pressure cuff. When you take the elderly person to the doctors office, get a blood presure reading with your "over the counter" blood pressure cuff and compare this reading to the doctors reading of the blood pressure. First, this is letting the doctor know how you are doing readings at home. And secondly, you and the doctor are seeing how many points your blood pressue cuff may be off from what the doctors reading is. Some OTC cuffs can read a little higher or lower than what the doctor is getting. Always go by the doctors reading. That must be the standard to go by. By doing this, you are calibrating your blood pressure cuff with the doctors cuff numbers. If you do not feel comfortable with taking the blood pressure at home by yourself, then don't do it. Always consult the doctor.

Watch for SEPSIS. You MUST consult the doctor to learn about this very serious medical condition. You MUST learn the signs of this life-threatening medical condition. If you take away one thing from this article, this must be it. It is that important. KNOW WHAT SEPSIS IS.

Older people can have infections and not display any of the usual signs that younger people exhibit. They may not exhibit any symptoms of infection so it can go untreated. But left untreated, they may show other signs, like confusion and tiredness. Two examples of this are urinary tract infections(uti) and pneumonia. Again, consult a doctor if you even get a feeling that something may be affecting the elderly persons health.

This is a medical disclaimer: nothing in this article is to be taken as medical advice. ALWAYS consult a doctor before doing anything with the elderly. When in doubt, always consult a doctor. Always think of their safety first. Geriatric medicine is different from regular medicine. ALWAYS CONSULT THE ELDERLY PERSONS DOCTOR FIRST. ALWAYS. Never do anything without a doctors order. Never do anything on your own.

(10 minute read left in article)

The following are a few things that you can talk about with the elderly person's doctor. 

For keeping regular bowel movements, consider what an old doctor told me. Use the orange flavored fiber drink. There can be less gas with this type of drink. My mom had constipation for years. This drink got her back to normal within a week. Thank them old doctors. Six-Nation people use Senna Leaf as a stool softener. It's a lot milder and gentler, than the harsh laxatives on the market. If you can find real yogurt, it's very good for digestion and you can substitute it for ice cream. Much healther. Most of the yogert in the supermarkets are just a lot of sugar. Sometimes I would open up a probiotic capsule and mix the powder into the yogurt.

Probiotics.

Royal jelly and honey.

Vitamins for the eyes.

Liquid flavored vitamin drinks

Acupuncture.

Bed sores

Hospital dementia

White coat syndrone

Dehydration

Speaking of dehydration, it can happen from a too dry environment, also. The winter of 2019 to 2020 was an extremely dry, low humidity winter. During a point in the winter, I noticed that my mom was getting dehydrated. Her eyes and cheeks were getting sunken and she was getting too fatigued to get out of bed. I immediately went to the drugstore and bought a warm air mist humidifier. I did this hurriedly because if this didn't work, I would probably have to take her to the emergency room. Fluids orally, were  questionable, by this time. Thankfully after using the warm air mist humidifier for about a half hour in her bedroom doorway, she started looking better, she came around and she got up out of bed. I could always tell when she's getting back to normal from something like this, because she would say, so matter of factly- "I'm hungry", like nothing had happened.

So many times that winter, i said to myself- well, I guess this is what it looks like when...

There's a new device just on the market now, to aid incontinence in bed for women. It is used outside the body. I wish I had it for my mom. I seen this device first used, the last time my mom was in the hospital.

No pets or throw rugs on the floor. They are a trip hazard. As we "childproof" a home, we must also "elderly proof" the home.

From traditional Chinese medicine: have them try doing deep breathing exercises like this, once a day. To start, in a seated position, have their hands palm up, in their laps, in front of them, As they inhale, have them raise their hands up to their chest level,turning them over, palm down and then exhale, lowering their hands back to the lap. Repeat, working up to 3 or 4 times. Next, have them start inhaling the same way, but this time have them raise their hands above their head as far as they can without pain, and have them make a large circle to the outside as far as them can with out pain, and then back into their lap.. Repeat, working up to 2 or 3 times. Check with a doctor before doing this. Next, while laying down on their back, have them gently rub their abdomen from below the belly button to up beneath the rib cage and back down to the belly button in a large circular pattern. If you go clockwise, it will help to relieve them of gas. If you go counter-clockwise, it can help them to burp. It may sound humorous, but it works.

Put colorful things in the home and on the walls. In wintertime burn a candle where they can see it or put the fireplace channel on the tv. When traveling in a car in the winter time, try to bring them up to a hilltop, so they can look down on the scene. Remember: winter time is the end of life. The elderly are affected by this, greater than we are. To the younger person, this may seem small, but these things can help the elderly persons mind greatly.

Keep taking them outside to do regular activites. Places like restaurants, parks, go shopping. Talking to different people. Do this for as long as possible, until they can no longer get out of the house. In the pandemic, go for a drive, get them out of the house, keep them active for as long as possible. Keep them doing as much as they can, for themselves.

Now, an experience I had with my mom about taking a daily vitamin pill, with liquid or paste inside a capsules. Actually, not just vitamins, but anything like that. My mom became constipated and had to go to the hospital. The hospital found out that she had a blockage and were able to get it out. It was the size of a golf ball. The doctors couldn't figure out what it was. I figured out later that it was all those little half dissolved capsules, all stuck together. She felt so much better after that. So what I did after that was this: I would take the capsule and get a steak knife, hold the capsule between my fingers on a plate and actually saw through the shell of the capsule part way and then squeeze out the contents on a spoon. And then I would either just put it on some toast or just have her eat the contents right off the spoon. I do the same thing for myself, now. I wonder how many people are walking around with a ball of those undissolved capsules in them right now and the doctors can't figure out whats wrong with them. My mom suffered from constipation for years. I believe it was acupuncture that helped the body to finally be able to get that ball of half dissolve capsules to move through her body to a place where the hospital could remove it. I remember years ago she had an infection in her lower duodenal. The doctors could not figure out how she got this infection. Could it have been that ball of half dissolve capsules moving through her digestive tract. My mom had constipation for years, as many old people do.

Another thing that happened with pills, with my mom. She was taking an antiviral for shingles, the pills caused her to have a quick mood swing, from laughing to crying. It only happened once. I contacted the doctor immediately and he said it was the pills doing this and to take her off the pills, she would be okay. I continually explain to my mother what was happening to her, so that she could clearly understand what was happening to her. It was the medication, the pills that were causing her to feel this way. The pills we're doing this to her and that she has stopped taking them. The doctor knows about this and he said it's the pills and so she should be feeling better once the pills leave her system. I kept explain this to her and reassuring her, so that she understood that everything would be okay. There was nothing wrong with her. It was just the effect of the pills she was taking. 

This is not to be confused with side effects of drugs. As we age, our bodies become more sensitive, and drugs we could have taken before, affect us differently now. This can become a difficult situation when an elderly person needs to take a medication and it affects them the way I have described above, as one example.

It is so important to let the elderly person always know what is happening to them. Even when it may appears to you, that the elderly person may not understand. you still need to talk to them and explain what's happening. You cannot tell when they are able to understand something and when they are not able to understand. Even when they don't react to something you said, it doesn't mean they don't understand what you said. A time will come when you will need to repeat yourself because you never know when they can understand you.

Speaking of taking pills, a retired Six Nations nurse told me about a old nurse trick to get older patients to take their pills. Some patients didn't want to take their pills and sometimes they just had trouble swallowing. So here's the trick: crush up the pills in applesauce, dissolve it real good and then just feed them the applesauce. During one of my mom's hospital stays, a nurse was having trouble giving her pills and I mentioned this old trick to her. She didn't know about it, so she tried it and was surprised that it worked. She told the other nurses about it.

There is an inexpensive "driveway motion detector" you can pick up from the hardware store. There are two pieces to it. One is the actual motion detector, which can be moved about and positioned in any direction. And the second piece is the base, about the size of a large coffee cup and when motion is detected it chimes. I would place the motion detector on the floor in my mom's bedroom and the base in my bedroom so that during the night if she got up, it would chime. This woke me up, to check on my mom to see how she was doing. You can get some decent sleep this way. But remember: as time goes on, things change and closer observation is going to be necessary. Also, do not depend entirely on any device, as anything can, and will fail.

The next thing is about older people falling. It is what can happen to all of us when we get old. A nurse in the hospital told me that even in the hospital, people fall. It can't be helped. It is impossible to have somebody around the elderly person, day and night to prevent falls, it is just  not possible. Be prepared for this. You can do everything you can think of and it is still probally going to happen. This is what can happen to all of us when we get old. It will not be your fault, if it happens, it is no one's fault. This is what happened with my mom.

The last time I seen my mom was when they were loading her into the ambulance at the hospital in Buffalo. New York, headed to a hospice in Branford, Ontario near Six Nations. She was propped up on the gurney, a blanket covering her, up to her chin. We had already said our goodbyes. She looked at me and stuck her fingers above the blanket and just kept wave back and forth quickly and smiling, because she understood she was headed back home. We were both at peace, she was going home...

There is no hospice facility on Six Nations. For that matter, there is no hospice facilities on any Indigenous Nation across Canada. Never has been.

This was just a sampling of things for you, the caregiver to consider. Remember to take of yourself too! After my mom passed, i found myself not eating right because she was not there for me to think about, the type of balanced diet that should be eaten. You have to remember to take of yourself during and after the caregiving is over. Try to get exercise every chance you get. Someone told me, it's time for me to get back to being me, again.

There are personal things that I learned as being a caregiver that I could never have learned any other way. It is a part of life, it's what we're supposed to do, according to our teachings. Give thanks that we have the Great Law and the Code of Handsome Lake to guide us through all these situations. Even the current pandemic that we are in, it is all explained in these teachings. That is where you will find peace of mind. We do not usually talk this way, but these are indeed interesting times that we now are living in. We all have a great opportunity now to learn valuable lessons. Do not let this opportunity go unused. Like so many of us, I am so lucky that I grew up around people who believd and lived these six nations teachings and passed them on to me through oral tradition. That is not to say people were perfect. It said in our teachings that: no one is perfect, we are not supposed to even try to be perfect. 

Our oral tradition has been an uninterrupted proccess since creation to present time. It is now time to find ways to continue to pass these teachings on to the next generation, during a pandemic. And it is up to the next generation to listen to our oral tradition- Six Nation Teachings. And realize how lucky they are that they do not have to make things up, combine many different teachings from other peoples or wandering around feeling lost. It is all here for them. No change, that is what the old people would always say- no change. It is that simple.