Elderly Care Tips: Helping Your Loved One Cope with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Elderly Care in Okemos MI

Imagine feeling so tired that you can barely move, much less go out of the house to do anything. Your muscles and joints ache, your head hurts, and you do not even have the energy to wash a load of laundry or take a shower. You decide to go to bed early to try to get some extra rest, hoping that it will refresh you and make you feel better. You get plenty of sleep, but when you wake up in the morning you realize that you feel exactly the same as you did the day before.

A few days later you are feeling a bit better and so you decide to catch up on the housework that you were not able to do. You load the dishwasher, wash a couple of loads of laundry, and wipe down the counters. By the time you are finished, you feel completely wiped out. For the next day you are not able to get up and have to have someone come to help you handle your basic activities of daily living.

These issues sound extreme, but if you are on an elderly care journey with a senior with chronic fatigue syndrome, they are a daily reality. This complex condition is something that still baffles the medical community. Doctors do not understand what causes the condition or why it occurs. In fact, the diagnosis of this condition is not about detecting whether someone has it, but determining that they do not have anything else. This involves evaluating symptoms and identifying all of the things that those symptoms could mean, but that the person does not have. If your aging parent has recently received a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, it is important that you adjust your care approach to help her manage it in the best way possible.

Use these tips to help maintain your parent's quality of life while dealing with CFS:

• Create a network of support. Seniors who are dealing with CFS may need extra help with daily activities as well as emotional support and encouragement. Create a network of care including friends, family members, medical professionals, and an elderly health care services provider to offer this help.

• Acknowledge the suffering. Assure your parent that she is not imagining the symptoms. Let her know that you know that she is dealing with pain, exhaustion, and emotional stress, and that you are there for her. Just knowing that you do not think that she is being overly dramatic can help to ease stress and depression.

• Address the symptoms. Just as taking cough syrup does not treat a cold, but the cough that is caused by the cold, if your parent is dealing with CFS, you should think about managing her symptoms. Evaluating what she is dealing with lets you find ways to ease each of these symptoms for overall improved condition and quality of life. Focus on addressing those symptoms that are the most severe first and then add further interventions as necessary as her symptoms persist.

Source
http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/general/index.html
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20022009