Chances are that even before you watch the trailers for these movies, you already had in your mind an image of the setting, the stage, the background for each movie.
When you hear the words “aging well”, most of us have a mental image of what that process looks like. We hear a lot about healthy lifestyle; eating right, exercising, giving our minds regular challenge and new learning, keeping our social life in good shape. And each of those bits of advice are right on when it comes to setting the stage for aging well.
But we don’t hear much about some of the other very important elements of aging well, elements that are crucially important to setting the stage for aging with less crisis and better planning.
Specifically, we all should complete our Advanced Directives: details that we outline, for ourselves, how we wish our lives to be handled in the event that we become unable to make our own decisions. If you are reading this and you are middle-aged, get to work on completing your Advanced Directives. Hopefully they won’t be needed for decades, but work on them now anyway.
If you are reading this and your parents are older or you are the older one in the family, bring the topic up and begin discussing this with your people. In a kind way, talk about wanting to honor ones’ wishes, and then set up an appointment with an Advanced Directives specialist to get the various parts of the plan completed. In Northern Colorado, we are fortunate to have 2 such specialists: Peggy Budai, Nurse Practitioner with UCHealth and an Advanced Directives expert and leader in Older Adult and Palliative Care Programs in Northern Colorado (Peggy.Budai@uchealth.org). And Mindy Rickard, with the Larimer County Health District Advanced Care Planning Team.
As a person who has the privilege of spending time with older folks, I wish I would see the Colorado MOST form on the side of everyone’s refrigerator. This form outlines a person’s wishes in the case of an emergency event (such as cardiac or respiratory arrest) that would render them unable to speak for themselves. In this way, emergency personnel can see that form right away upon entering someone’s home (I’ve been told that they will look for this form immediately) so that a person only receives measures such as CPR if they have previously stated that this is their wish.
The other important part of setting the stage for aging well is a transportation plan. All of us, regardless of age, should have a transportation plan in the event we become unable to drive. This becomes really important when folks are older and transportation options such as city busses become less realistic. The CDC has a very good resource titled “My Mobility Plan” that includes setting the stage for aging in place and includes planning for mobility changes. Someone in the family can print this off, and this can then be a conversation starter for family discussions about these important, and often sensitive topics.
Granted, ”setting the stage for aging well” doesn’t carry the same entertainment factor as the movies we mentioned above, but with just these two plans put in place, everyone can take a deep breath that when the plan is needed, the plan is there. Which means that we avert “crisis mode” once the aging process makes new ways of doing things a necessity. Let’s leave the drama to the big screen. Set the stage for aging well with good planning to include Advanced Directives and a Mobility Plan.
With you on the journey,
©Jill Couch
