I donno. Mom claimed that she did not like the lanyard/pendant around her neck. She always wore a couple of tops, so I suggested she just tuck inside one of them. It wouldn’t swing around. Or use the wrist bracelet.
None of those where acceptable. she said she would pin it to top.
I don’t think it was a vanity thing. I have helped her get dressed.
I could not figure this out.
Though, I will say that Mom did misinterpret stuff she found on the net. She would not allow me to upgrade her internet to fiber. I really needed it for being at her house. So I could work from there when I was there. That’s why I ended up leasing an office space a mile from her house (that money is gone). She thought it was a fire danger. What she read was how resistant to fire are different fiber cables. Not that they cause fire. I explained to her of her misinterpretation.
I have since upgraded her house to fiber, the irony is that going through her mail, it was going to happen anyway, whether she liked it or not. Her company was abandoning all copper lines. :sigh:
I went through the same thing w my now-late MIL. She’d been using a PC since she was 70-something, and toward the end at 95+ between bad vision and little feeling in her fingers and forgetfulness, she wasn’t getting as much value from it as she used to. But you’re right, technophobia wasn’t her issue at all.
I really think it was the feeling that somehow “they’re checking up on me” even though the emergency alarm pendant was send-only. Coupled to the thought that “This thing is a constant reminder I’m infirm.” She used a scooter or walker to move around more than a couple of steps and was deaf as a post without her hearing aids. She readily used those tools. That would suggest that logically the alarm button should be a non-issue. But whoo boy was it a big BIG deal with her. Not gonna do it no way no how.
I hope most folks our age will be better about that when our turn comes. If we’re individually fortunate enough to live long enough to need one.
Believe me I’m sympathetic both to your late Mom’s and you own frustration and angst with this. Parents these days! Whaddayagonnado?
Let me just say that I cannot figure out how to use a smart phone. There are no useful instructions and the phone company reneged on an original offer for a user session. If I get a voice message or a text, I cannot figure out how to get them. My fingers are too fat and sloppy to actually compose a text. Last summer when I took a plane trip to visit my son, I somehow got the phone into airplane mode, but when we landed, I could not figure out how to get it out of that to call my son that we were ready to be picked up. He was able to show me that. I can take photos, but have not succeeded in sending them anywhere. I am not a tech idiot; I have been using a computer since 1982, email since 1984, the internet since 1995. I would not object to an alarm, not at all. But I am unlikely to be able to take it into a shower, which is certainly the most dangerous thing I do.
Many use it as their computer. I do not. I will text and read emails. And it’s my only phone. I much prefer a real computer though.
One thing that has been great is that I have all my books on my Kindle, AND my smart phone (they synchronize) . So if I’m stuck anywhere, I can always read for a bit if I have my phone.
And when working on stuff, I take pictures of it BEFORE I take it apart.
It’s also my calendar, and my timer for cooking. My bedside clock and alarm if I need one (I never do, I wake up way before I need to)
Our land line became so unreliable that we finally got rid of it. I put an antenna on top of our house to point at the closest cell tower. Works well enough. Not perfect though.
I do too. I actually had a fall, but didn’t actually get injured, mainly sore. I have 2 sets of whatever - 1 stepstool that is like 9 inches tall, and I had a previously homemade step that was about half that. There was a pillow on the floor, so I padded both steps with it, and wriggled around til one haunch was on the lower step, rested a few, then squirmed around til one haunch was on the lower step and one was on the taller step, leveraged that til I could roll my torso to facing the bed and sort of got my legs under me and had just enough oompf to get my torso up onto the bed where I squirmed the rest of the way onto my bed. I was joking with my husband when he got home that he should get the chain lift out of the garage and install it next to the bed =)
I wouldn’t have had to do this if I had any real use of my legs other than walking with crutches supporting my actual body weight. What I actually have is some upper body strength, but with a lack of grab bars, that wasn’t as useful as it could have been. But it is nice knowing that I can actually manhandle myself back into bed if I need to.
I’ve fallen too on my driveway. Anyone would when there is 1/2" of snow on glare ice on a slope. I was going to my shed not 100 feet from my house once and boom, found myself on the ground. I crawled to the shed because it was impossible to stand. I had some salt in the shed and very, very carefully spread it out in front of me as I made my way back to the house.
Falls sneak up on you. No, that’s not quite right. They are more like a sniper that hits you when you least expect it.
My in-laws DO wear their alert pendants, though there are limitations: the base station apparently needs a battery (someone had to change it for them) - and when FIL falls - which has now happened 3 times in the past few months - MIL cannot help him up and they have to call 911. There’s some kind of gadget on their door, that the services can use to get in - a lockbox like realtors use, I think.
It did take some persuading to get them to use the pendants, but thank heaven they have them. One of FIL’s falls could have been tragic - he fell against a glass-fronted curio cabinet, and broke the glass. If things had gone differently, he could have severed an artery. The next bad fall did significant damage to his shoulder. The third one, luckily, did not do any permanent damage that we know of. Of course they have proven less than truthful about such things, so who knows…
