I visited a friend of mine who is a Hospice patient in Arizona. At that time she was living alone and I found myself shocked at the chores she had to do by herself. I don’t think I’d ever thought about how much work it is to take pills on time in the proper amount day after day. Once the pills become a habit, it’s hard to remember whether they’ve actually been taken or not. So, she kept a notebook of what was taken when – when she remembered. Which brought to my mind the difficulty of being a Hospice patient alone. One of her Hospice nurses told me that half of her patients lived alone and that is not uncommon. According to Aging: Demographics, Health, and Health Services by Elizabeth Vierck and Kris Hodgesten ten percent of Hospice patients live alone over all. It’s something to consider as I enter my later years and it scares me! What do you think?
Sherie, I live alone now, never married, don’t have kids, so I think about this sort of thing a lot, too, as I age. We just don’t know what will happen.