Does anyone have experience with Life Alert or other personal alert products? If you’re not familiar, they’re pendants, often worn on a lanyard, that one carries around the house, and if you have a medical emergency or are unable to get up after falling, you press the button and it summons emergency services. (You might remember this commercial for one of the first companies in the business.)
My parents are in their eighties and they’re considering getting these products. Does anyone else here have experience, either for themselves or an older relative? One site recommended this company, which is in the San Francisco area but offers the product nationally.
To be quite honest, at 81, I only want to die once. I have no interest in a near-death experience, followed by rescue and protracted recovery, only to look forward to having to do it again.
I’ve seen lanyards which can call a set of predefined numbers when the button is pressed. The one I saw connected a base station to a landline and the lanyard would activate it. If they have friends or family nearby, that might be a less costly alternative.
You want the ones that will also phone automatically if there’s a fall and the person is unable to press the button themselves, either because of injury or disorientation.
Never have had an emergency but have set it off accidentally on occasion. This results in the base unit screaming “EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY” until I push the clear button. Then a person comes on line and I apologize for a false alarm. They know to call my neighbor to secure my big guard dog so the EMTs can get in the farm gate safely. I have no intention of lying alone with a broken hip or the like with no way to summon help. If I’ve croaked, on the other hand, oh well. I’m 80 years old. If the end is that fast, I’ll be lucky.
To clarify my above post, which I didn’t have time to do then, I didn’t mean to threadshit. But if for someone else’s use, I would have conversation with the user, to see if they feel the same way I do about being rescued. Don’t be overly persuasive if they balk.
How about, say, falling in the bathtub, where you’re basically okay, in no immediate danger of death, maybe in a bit of pain, but you just can’t get up and out of the tub? And you aren’t expecting any visitors for a couple of days, and maybe not answering the phone wouldn’t freak anyone out, at least the first day or two?
I got a system like that for my father. He was in his eighties, living alone, and having increasing difficulty walking.
The system worked quite well. The package we received from the company contained the base unit, which plugged into the phone line, a small unit to be worn, either as a pendant around the neck or on a watchband (my father chose the watchband), and a few large, very visible panic buttons, to be installed at appropriate places in the home.
We put the panic buttons by the bed, in the shower and in the kitchen.
The system was indeed a lifesaver on two occasions. One time, he fell out of bed. Just rolled off the edge, and was unable to get up. On another, he fell in the bathtub/shower and was unable to get up. Both times he was able to press either the panic button or his wrist unit and get help. Without the system, he would have had to wait for me or my brother to show up to visit, which would probably have been as much as 24 hours later. Can’t remember if this was the case in this particular instance, but my brother travels frequently for work – if he was out of town, it might have been longer.*
I was very glad he had the system. It gave me (and him) a bit of peace of mind, knowing that he could get help if he needed it.
Now for the downside:
At some point, as my father’s dementia progressed (ultimately to the point where he could no longer live on his own), he started to believe that the whole system was how he should call me or my brother on the telephone. Now, that’s all well and good, and I wouldn’t have minded that, but anything that triggered the system not only contacted me, but called 911, and an ambulance and/or police would show up. And the management and co-op board of his apartment building were absolute pricks about that.** Ultimately, we had to disable the system, and that’s when we knew we had to get him into a specialized care facility.
So, evaluate your parents’ situation, and decide (with them, if they’re competent, of course) if one of these systems is good for them.
I think it would be a good idea. Really, before my father had his (and before his dementia issues made it unworkable), it gave me a huge amount of peace of mind. I wasn’t worrying every minute that he might have fallen and was unable to get hold of anyone. He liked having it, too (again, before the dementia got out of control), and knowing that help was just a push of a button away.
*To anyone who is thinking “what a horrible son – you didn’t visit your father at least every 24 hours,” fuck you. I used to get this shit from my own sister, who (at the time) lived in California (rest of the family in NY) and visited her father maybe once every three years. I had then two very small children, a demanding job, and a wife who resented the amount of time I had to put into my father’s care. I did the best I could.
** I’ve posted here (in at least one Pit thread) about the attitude of too many towards the elderly, who mostly see a bunch of money that they might be able to get their hands on. This was true of his co-op board. There were some there who wanted to force him out of his apartment. The people who had the apartment next door were hoping to get his apartment at a fire-sale price and combine the units, and they had friends on the board.
Actually, that might be a useful feature for older parents if you live nearby. While they are still mentally healthy, get a standalone system with a lanyard and have them use it as the normal way to call you. Then if their mental facilities start to slip, they have already developed the habit of pressing the button when they want to talk to you. They may remember to press the button even if they have some mental impairment.
Why would any system like this, nowadays, use a base station and a landline? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use the cell system? Then there’d be no installation needed, and it’d work even if the person were away from their home.
There would be advantages to using the cell system, but it would make the lanyard more complicated and have more power requirements. The traditional phone lanyard is pretty simple. I don’t think it uses any power until the button is pressed. A cell-based lanyard might be heavier, need to be continually recharged, or have to boot up when the button is pressed. I would guess the base station system would tend to be more reliable and need less regular interaction than using the cell system.
But if someone carries around their phone, I believe there are apps which can provide a similar notification service. A smart watch may have fall detection. Even using the voice activated features of the phone could be sufficient if all they have to do is say “Call Son”. The phone can probably be programmed to respond to “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”.
And believe me, we tried to convince my father to get a cell phone. He never had one, never would. Never used a computer. And this was long before dementia. Once dementia set in, not a chance. And in any case, he was housebound. He wasn’t going anywhere.
But all in all, yes, of course, a cell-service based system would be more versatile.
But consider the market these companies serve. I bet there are lots of non-cell users, a non-trivial number of whom may not be capable of adapting to unfamiliar technology.
I researched these things a few years ago and got my mom a Rescue Alert system. They have several styles of pendants; one uses cellular and GPS (but is larger and more expensive), another connects to a land line and works only in the house. You can purchase the equipment or lease it. My problem was my mom had dementia and never really understood what the pendant was for. Once when she fell, she didn’t remember to press the button and was on the floor for several hours until a neighbor found her. But for someone who has the cognitive ability to use it correctly, Rescue Alert seems like a good option.
One of the issues is older people (esp. if there are cognitive issues) tend to take them off when showering or bathing, & that’s a time when they really really need them.
One of my parents’ friends died when he went to the bath without the personal alert device, so they are aware of the possibility. And that guy and his wife were living in a very nice assisted living complex, supposedly the best one in Connecticut.
So far, my parents have no cognitive issues (aside from being crazy and bored). My brother lives ten minutes away, so he’s available when they need help. (Meanwhile, I’m hours away, even by plane, so he assumes a lot more of the burden than I do, and that makes me feel guilty.)
I think some of the systems have waterproof lanyards. There may be some that have mountable buttons that could be installed in the bath area. But they’d have to be pretty waterproof since they’d need to be mounted low enough to use them if the person fell.
Something which could work in those situations is an Alexa-type device. But make sure you get the Echo Silver model, which is customized for the needs of seniors.
A person who is often alone for prolonged duration can anticipate high-risk scenarios, such as placing a chair next to the tub with a phone on it.
No system will be 100% foolproof. I’m not arguing against, only that the lifestyle and the life philosophy of the user should be matched against the need.
My mother-in-law is 79. She hasn’t had a landline for at least five years; she only has a cell phone. And, this fact drives my wife and me crazy.
She forgets to plug the thing in to recharge it regularly. She is cheap, so she refuses to get a phone from AT&T or Verizon (which have good coverage in her area), since T Mobile is cheaper (and also has terrible coverage); it also means that she refuses to get a landline again, because “it’s too expensive.” And, she regularly runs into issues where she forgets how to use certain features of her cell phone.
As a result of all that, it’s often impossible to reach her on the phone now; none of the above would be an issue if she had a bloody landline again. It’s old tech, but it’s dirt simple.
