What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Emotionally After a Heart Attack?

After a heart attack, lots of stuff about your senior’s life may be in the process of changing. It’s a scary time, to be sure, which makes it even more important that you and she spend some time talking about how she’s feeling and how you can help her.

Talk with Your Senior about How She’s Feeling

Open up with your senior and ask her how she’s feeling, on an emotional level. Having a heart attack is a scary situation and it can bring people face to face with their own mortality very quickly. Your senior might be feeling a lot of regret about not taking better care of herself or she may feel upset about all of the changes she needs to make to her life now. All of her feelings are valid, and it’s important to help her to talk through them.

Make Sure She Gets to Her Doctor’s Appointments

Your senior likely has more than a few follow-up appointments with her doctor and possibly some specialists. Getting to those appointments is crucial, both for her physical well-being and for her emotional health. If you’re not able to go with her, you might want to consider arranging transportation for her. Elderly care providers can handle the driving and ensure that she gets safely to her appointments.

Following Doctor’s Orders Is Really Important

It’s just as important that your senior follows her doctor’s instructions, too. There might be a lot that she needs to do right now, like go to cardiac rehab or physical therapy, concentrate on eating a healthy diet, and starting new medications or treatments. All of this is important, but if it’s overwhelming for your senior, talk with her doctor about what’s most important for her to do first so that you can help her to prioritize.

Look for Other Solutions

There’s a lot of help out there for this type of situation. Your senior may find it comforting to join a support group made up of people dealing with the same things she’s facing. Or she might find it helpful to go to a therapist for a while. Regardless, there are a range of different options for her if she’s in need of some more assistance with her emotional health after such a big event.

Checking in with your senior’s emotional well-being now and again helps you to make sure you’re still on the same page.

If you or an aging loved one is considering elderly care in Concord, CA, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Walnut Creek. (925) 203-3039.