I have a family member who is elderly, disabled, and walks with a cane. She lives alone, and even after falling and not being able to get back up unassisted, and spending many hours on the floor trying to get to where she left her phone (the police needed to break down the door to get to her), insists that she's not "that old" and doesn't need a life alert device
I hear you.
I wrote about this some million pages ago.
My dad is 93 and lives alone now because my 92-year old mom is in memory care
He’s had kidney cancer surgery this summer, and is much weaker than before.
I’m in NYC and my sister is in Jersey. We take turns going to Florida to see them and take care of them, but my father DESPISES being 93 and tries not to acknowledge he needs help.
My sister pays for and set up the whole Life Alert System, but it failed when he needed it. I was at my mom’s care home, so I was two miles away instead of 1200 miles away. It turned out that he did indeed fall at home, could not get up, but called his friend before he called me.
He has the alert where you don’t even have to push the button, in case he should fall unconscious.
It turned out that it failed because my stubborn father CRAWLED through the condo to call his friend, leaving a trail of blood, and the alert registered movement on his part so they didn’t call or come.
His alert did NOT go off and did not alert us as it’s set up to do.
It’s a good device that can save lives, yes yes yes. But also yes, even really old and sickly people try to avoid “old people” things sometimes.
We had to practically lasso him down just to get him to agree to it at all.
JME and O
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