Living alone has a lot of benefits, but also a few dangers. The classic danger is falling ill when you’re home alone and not being able to reach a phone for help. It’s not that irrational a fear; brain strokesare more common then people think and can incapacitate the sufferer so that he she cannot walk or crawl to a phone.
You may say: “If I don’t show up at work, they’ll contact me”. But what if they call you on the phone, don’t reach you and… then what? They might notice your absence, but they may only shrug and plan to bitch at you when you show up again.
But do your co-workers have your house key, or do they know how to reach someone who does have a house key?
A friend of mine, in his fities and a divorced dad of teenagers, said he wasn’t so much afraid of dying alone, but he WAS afraid of his kids coming to his house on the weekend to a gruesome sight. He knew of somebody who found his fathers body like that and was scarred for life.
I recently enrolled my eightly year old mom in a phone circle for that reason. It’s a simple idea: a social worker calls the first person on the list, she calls the next person, and so on and so on, all between 9 and 10 am. If the last person on the list doesn’t call back the social worker by 10 am, she finds out who broke the circle, and can let herself in with her set of keys.
My mom didn’t like the idea of a phone circle at first, ( “But that’s for old people!”) but now she loves the daily phone call she gets and gives, and the security of knowing that someone will come to her house if she breaks the phone circle.
So, if you live alone and want to tackle this problem, what have you done? Share your tips and tricks !
This actually happened where I work. A highly reliable employee did not show up to work and did not call in, so the store director asked the police for a welfare check. Yep, turned out she had died - apparently while reading in her favorite chair.
My place of work does have emergency contact information for the employees as well.
Very informal “phone circle” type of thing - if my friends don’t hear from me for a couple days they’ll check into things. But I’m still relatively young and fit compared to folks in their 80’s and 90’s. I do sleep with the phone next to my bed. None of it is a perfect, solution, of course, but even if you live with someone it’s possible they might not realize you’re departed for the better part of a day what with busy schedules and all.
My Daddy died from a reaction to an antibiotic alone. He had called me and I told him I would be at his house for the weekend. I knew he was ill but not really concerned. He was 86 and the picture of health. Still working and very active. He collapsed in his bathroom sometime Thursday. And died in a few hours they think. An employee alerted me and the police when they couldn’t get him on the phone or to the door. It was awful. If I had just planned to go earlier. I have blamed myself and everyone else in my grief over this. It has been 3 years and I am still recovering. Lately I have been in the bittersweet phase. I am able to look at pictures and retell the funny stories. So I am better. My advice is to make some kind of game plan and tell people especially if you have chronic heath issues.
Me too. A cow-orker did not show up, we could not reach her by phone. We worked the night shift and we joked that she must have gotten lucky. Turned out she had committed suicide.
mmm
My inlaws live in a retirement community where this sort of thing is probably more common than it should be. They had a neighbor who was a rather unpleasant woman of specific habits, and when it was obvious her routine wasn’t being followed, they called police. Turns out, she’d fallen/collapsed in the bathroom and was unable to get to the phone. She was alive when they found her, but she died a few days later. She was estranged from her children and I don’t know if any of them made it to the hospital before she died. She was a very sad woman…
In some critical computer situations, such as industrial control systems that would let something harmful happen if they stop working, there’s often a system feature called a “watchdog timer”. It can be a separate little area in the main control chip. It is always running and timing itself, and every so often – perhaps every second or even every 1/100 of a second, it checks to see whether some tiny task has been done, and then undoes it again. If the task is not done when it checks, it sounds an alarm, or shuts the system down in a safe controlled way, or engages some kind of emergency mechanism.
When you program the rest of the system you include instructions here and there that do the tiny task. If your program stops working, the tiny task goes undone and the watchdog catches it and acts.
People could do this. Your elderly neighbor could go out and put a flower pot on her porch railing every morning at dawn, and when you go to work you go put the flower pot back on the ground, but if it’s not on the railing you go investigate.
We could easily have watchdog timer websites or phone services. You have to call a certain number every morning, or the service notices and acts on it. Or you have to go to the web site and click a button.
It might even be automatic, such as connected to the bathroom light switch, alarming if 18 hours pass without the switch moving.
That seems so old fashioned & prone to failure for a couple of reason. If B starts a conversation with C then they don’t get thru the phone chain by cutoff time. If D has a doctor’s appointment & isn’t home at the proscribed time it also breaks down.
The social worker then needs to investigate & determine where it failed. When not have the social worker send an email to everyone that they need to respond to. Are there that many elderly that don’t have email anymore?
I could see a job not caring for the first day or two, especially if people sometimes work remotely, or the boss is out. If something happened on Fri night or Sat, it might be Tues or Wed before work raises an alarm. My sister is my emergency contact but she doesn’t have a key.
OTOH, a shameless plug for something like RoadID*. For anyone who lives alone, a license does nothing to notify next of kin if you’re in an accident. All PD knows is where you live, not anything about any of your relatives.
I have one but am otherwise not involved w/ the company.
There are probably a non-trival number of elderly who have no e-mail.
My grandmother used a “phone circle” when she was still alive, much like what is described above but no social worker involved. Yes, there were some false alarms. So what? Better false alarms than failure to alarm.
I live alone and I have no plan. My mother and two sisters live in this town, but while we see each other often there’s no regularly scheduled contact. I’ll probably get hurt or fall ill and lie there for at least a day before family or work would try to contact me. It figures, dyling alone and in pain.
Yes, it’s an issue. If something were to happen, it might be a week or more before I was found. Perhaps it’s silly, but one of the precautions I take is not showering; I bathe instead. So there’s no chance of me slipping and falling and cracking my head there.
I had a former cow-orker; literally the week she retired (early) she started her bath & then had a stroke. Family found her the next day, but because the stopper was in & the water was running full for approx 24 hrs it overwhelmed the overflow valve, over the edge; down the floor/walls & ended up w/ about 6" in the basement. In addition to losing their aunt, the house had to be gutted before they could sell it due to all of the water damage.
This seems to be an issue technology is made for. The new ‘Alexa’ things, cell phones, medical alert buttons, home security systems. All these things can be used and simply taught to a person who is home alone and aging. It seems only reasonable. I am tech-challenged but I could learn at least a couple of those.
There’s a whole market of selling alarm buttons to seniors. But they run on batteries and are likely to malfunction without it being obvious. What a nightmare to lie there injured, to press that ugly alarm button around your neck, and have nothing happen, and not even know if it worked or not. Plus, these things are typically bought by worrying kids and then NOT worn by the senior, because they are ugly and remind the person in an unpleasant way about their age and their vulnerability.
For people that use smartphones, there is no problem or stigma in always carrying your phone on your person. Although, in my own home; I tend to have the phone in it’s charger or a different room or floor from where I am. As a woman without convenient pockets, who carries her phone usually in her purse, it’s a bit cumbersome to have my phone on me or in my hands when I’m puttering about the house. I wish someone made and sold a more elegant an convenient version of this band that allows women to carry their phone on their upper arm.
Yes, about one in 15 people in the Netherlands is functionally computer-illiterate. A lot of those are elderly. They are a quiet, easily overlooked group.
The watchdog idea is a good one. My neighbour gets worried if I don’t open my curtains in the morning.
Intelligent smoke alarms might be even be better candidates for your watchdog function. My smoke alarm, the NEST, records if anyone passes it during the night, and sends a notice to an phone number you can program in. It could be worth it to install one in a corridor and have your kids check their NEST app every mornign to see if someone passed underneath the NEST.
Interesting idea. But with my luck, I’d be hurt on the floor, calling out Alexa to call 911, while Alexa keeps saying things like “Do you want me to rent the movie Ninowan?” Or: “Sorry, but you will have to enter your Apple ID password first”. I’d be dying AND annoyed to death.
This app makes calling for help easier, and messages several people at once. Then it clearly indicates if anyone of them has taken action, eliminating the problem of everyone thinking everyone else may have done something. But the person still needs a phone on them.
Most smartphones in the UK have an emergency call feature which you can use without unlocking the phone. I’ve used it myself: a lady collapsed in the street and I used this feature on her phone to call an ambulance for her.
The neighbor thing would not work for me. I live where I have none. Middle of no-where.
I am young enough now it’s not an issue. And there always my SO. He goes on lots of hunting and fishing trips and I am home alone. My kids are all grown. So if I fell off the deck and broke my leg I would be in a fix. I just last week got dog bit by a stray and I was able to get inside and call for help. Lucky Mr.Wrekker answered his phone. If he hadn’t I would’ve called my sons house. He’s about 15 mins from me. But it makes you think.