October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so to honor that, I thought that it was fitting to spend some time talking about how breast cancer specifically impacts the senior population.
When it comes to women, breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer, only behind skin cancer. Unfortunately, many women in my life have been impacted by this, and I’m sure that many of my readers have also experienced this. Sometimes radiation and chemotherapy is enough to get someone back to healthy. Sometimes surgery, such as a masectomy, is necessary. Even with all of these options geared toward promoting health, there is still a much higher than acceptable fatality rate when it comes to breast cancer. According to www.cancer.org, about 43,600 women die each year from breast cancer.
A cancer diagnosis can make care more difficult. It adds another complication that can deteriorate health and make every day activities a lot more difficult.
If you have a loved one, elderly or not, that has suffered from breast cancer, or any other type of cancer, for that matter, you probably have concerns about steps that should be taken to keep them healthy moving into the future. Your first step should be to work with a doctor to ensure that all preventative checkups are taken care of and that cancer is being addressed if it is still a factor. If it’s not a factor, working with a doctor will help to ensure that it stays this way and that any changes are quickly and thoroughly addressed.
Next, it’s important to work with the rest of your team when it comes to staying healthy. This might include other family members, involved senior care services, church or other religious institutions, and various other community members. The more people that you have on your team, the more likely that the help that a loved one receives will be working to meet their needs, both immediate and long term.
Senior care can be a tricky area to address because professional caregivers often fulfill many different roles. Open communication is needed if your care team is going to be involved in post-cancer care. The service that you work with will likely want to have you sign consent forms in order to help facilitate communication between different providers. This ensures that communication is done and done right. HIPAA protect a lot of health and personal information, and when the proper consents are in place, all team members can stay up to date with relevant information to help them do their job properly and keep the people that you love as safe as possible.
Having someone on your team that knows how to facilitate these conversations is important. That’s just one of the things that we pride ourselves on. Senior care can be complicated, but when people communicate, care is more thorough and effective.
Let us know how we can help. One of our trained professionals would love to talk with you and let you know how we might be able to serve your family.
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