Worst accidents can happen in home...

I am always reminding our clients and senior citizens in general that the worst accidents can happen in the home and it doesn't matter how old you are. Doing routine things in the home like getting on step stool to put something high up on a shelf can result in a fall easily.

Accidents in the home - think about it. When the kids were little and they played outside, this was back in the day when kids played outside, how many of them got a ball stuck on roof of the house or a kite in a tree and as a young parent you didn't think anything of getting the ladder out and getting that ball down or letting that kite free. But even some of those parents missed the last step coming down off the ladder or reached too far and hurt shoulders or had some injury related to doing an everyday activity that they never would have thought could happen.

As we age and our eye sight begins to diminish, our muscles start to weaken and our stability on small stool or a ladder can be tough to manage, the chances that we might slip or misjudge a step increases dramatically. So we have to be double careful as I call it when we are trying to do daily everyday things around the house. No one wants to admit he or she should wait for someone to come over to the house before I get up on a ladder or step stool but in some cases we should. In some cases we should wait to do certain activity and we should have a helper sorta speak especially if you live alone.

How many times a year do I hear from a loved one of an aging parent, dad was getting on ladder to clean the gutters and fell. If it had not been for the neighbor seeing him on ground who knows how long he would have laid there. Or I hear mom insisted on getting on two step step stool with no handles no support and put a basket on top of the kitchen cabinet and on her way down lost her balance and fell. She laid there for several hours until after calling twice and I could not reach her I went over to the home and found her on floor.

No one can tell anyone what to do. If I ask you not to get on the stool you will probably do it anyway just to prove me wrong. For whatever reason human beings have stubbornness, a quality that can either help you or hurt you. Being stubborn can help us when we are trying to get better. It helps fuel our desire to get up and get better but unfortunately it can work against us if for our health we should not being do something. For whatever reason we have to do it, we have to show people we are not getting old, we can handle it, we are still able to everything the same way we did it when we were 20.

There is only one problem with that thinking. We forget that when we were 20 we got hurt getting that kite out of the tree or getting on step stool to get the basket down from over the cabinet. See we forget those accidents and injuries because as young people for the most part we heal fast and we forget. For whatever reason in our mind we forget all those injuries. If I had to tell you every cut, every sprain muscle, every pain throughout the years I could probably name 1 or 2 and the only reason is those are the really bad ones, where you break something. We forget oh yeah that's right I slipped on that last rung of the ladder and sprained that ankle. I forgot about that. It is because we heal fast when we are younger but as we age, the injuries don't heal as fast and also they are usually worse. For example as younger person if we fall we will probably bruise our hip and upper thigh, as an older person we break the hip.

Then if you live alone you try to crawl to phone and make the break worse. This is why I always tell older folks who live alone they should consider the help me I fallen button. It calls for help so you do not have to crawl to phone.

So I ask you, will you be a stubborn person who insists on doing activities that require climbing or stability alone or will you wait for someone to be with you or help you do it? The choice is yours but as you argue with your adult child keep in mind you probably fell off that bottom ladder step getting the ball for him or her.