Taking care of the elderly in Silicon Valley – a personal story(venturebeat.com) |
Taking care of the elderly in Silicon Valley – a personal story(venturebeat.com) |
As someone in tech, it's stories and experiences like this that make me wonder if we're working towards something that will help those in need or if we're investing our time/money/energy in the right places. After all, everyone is going to die so I'm wondering what we can do to alleviate some of the pressure + pain from this part of life.
In this vein, if you know of opportunities to help the elderly in NYC, please let me know. I'm open and willing to spend my evenings and full weekends helping out however I can. Have reached out to a few senior centers, but most have not responded, unfortunately...
Considering that the biggest technology companies are advertisers, data-collectors and shopping oriented, my initial feeling is "absolutely not".
But it's also hard to get people engaged to trying to help the elderly, until they see the struggle in front of them. Which I'm sure many don't.
I used to work as a elderly-care assistant in Sweden, and while helping with medicin, cleaning and other things are important, most of the people just want to have some company once in a while, and was incredibly grateful for being able to have a honest conversation with a non-doctor.
So my recommendation would be to reach out to elderly-care homes in NYC, and ask them if they need help with basic tasks on weekends/evenings. With that, you'll get time to interact with them as well (although, maybe all this works differently in the US, I have no idea).
I'm sorry for what your family is going through. It took a profound toll on our family, too.
I found that many newer models of cordless home phones will bluetooth tether to a cellphone. This way we could keep her phone plugged in and charged and she could just use the cordless style phone she was already accustomed to.
I don't know if there's an easy solution to this problem. It seems to be a very deep part of a trade-off made very early on in the development of America's cultural fabric. I'm not sure if (knock on wood that I ever get there) I'd want to retire in America. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the grass is that much greener elsewhere.
Often times taking them in to our home. But it's not all colorful. The Philippines is a third-world country and such there would be conflict in financial matters but still, Filipinos can take a lot of beating and hardships before giving up.
I see a lot of Americans retire here with their Filipino wives. Their dollars are giving them a good buck i.e. nice houses, etc.
Yet major technology companies continue to make it difficult for seniors to do simple things, even though they think they're making things easier. The tech hipsters handling design for FAANG companies should follow around a group of 70-somethings for a week and try to see the world through their eyes ... and realize that a huge segment of the population is not being served.
1. fonts too small
2. buttons that do different things depending on how long the button is held down
3. chording - needing to hold down more than one button simultaneously to do something
4. blink speed - slow blink means one thing, fast blink means another. Is that LED blinking "slow" or "fast"?
5. labeling buttons with icons that have no deducible meaning
6. modes
7. having to do the next step within a certain number of seconds or it fails and you have to start all over again
Holy shit. I can't imagine how the author can afford that plus take care of his family.
Basically you cover it with whatever SS, pension, savings, and other assets they have. When those don't cover it, you make compromises in quality of care, your finances, and your family's life.
Literally the cost of labor is just too high for this to not be part of a social safety net.
Is this housing cost a Silicon Valley thing? Like rents are completely insane, so elder housing is also completely insane?
It's not like I live in a cheap city, either. Boston is pretty pricey, but wow.
Your "family" could be covered by a great health insurance plan through your employer, but you wouldn't get any financial assistance on the $6,300 a month that the author of the article is paying for his elderly mother.
[Edit] Sorry my comment should have been placed in response to the one comment about what SV should really be investing in. Imagine if we had companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon trying to solve dementia rather than get more revenues through ads.
30 years later same issue with my mom, she can navigate very complex tasks no problem but has trouble with anything new, even if it's much "easier" to use.
The trick would be to have new tech perfectly emulate whatever the old generation grew up with.
My mother is in her mid 70s and very far from a techie or tech-interested (worked in textiles/fashion, never used a computer before the current century & then first only for making free international calls via Skype as was setup by us) & slowly but surely adapted to some small variety of new tech especially after retirement when she had more time on her hand.
She does nothing fancy with it but is e.g. using a modern android phone to make video calls & send messages via whatsapp, play casual games, etc.
Sounds like skeuomorphism. Wait for the next generation of designers to bring it back.
It's a terrible existence that my mother is living.
Huh, I didn’t realize this was an option, that’s very useful for situations like this. Thanks for the tip!
I'm sure there was at least one dialer program installed already. No idea how to find it. There is a lot to be said for a simple phone that puts making phone calls front and centre, with permanent buttons with numbers on them.
Many devices I have, once I lose the manual, are simply impossible to use because of the points listed above. My dashcam is simply impossible to use because of this, even though it has a bitmapped display. All it needs is power, menu, up, down, select and with a bitmapped display you can do anything with that. But noooo...
With dementia, the descent can seem very rapid. One year, they are functioning well and adapting, but suddenly you realize they are in deep trouble. For a while, their adaptive energy may be devoted to covering up deficiencies. So, when this coping mechanism fails, the struggle suddenly emerges for all to see.
But, some people may fit the description of "unable to learn new things" long before that sort of dementia is relevant. They may be depressed, or may have a prideful personality which avoids the unknown because any trial and error learning is embarrassing. Frustratingly, it can also be hard to get elders in this category to go anywhere near a doctor for a better evaluation. And without a better understanding of what is going on, it can be difficult to identify an appropriate intervention or care approach.
My mom never went to college but does a lot better with at least basic stuff like email. Once she was super motivated to find a gift for my kids and figured out how to buy it on ebay, something I didn't think she'd be able to do so a lot of it is willingness and motivation.
As someone who works in tech, I just want my personal tech to work, and I have much more limited free time. But he could have all the free time in the world; if he wasn't interested in learning new things, he'd have far less tech than I do.
What does both of you identifying as christian have to do with anything? Are non-christians less likely to do empathetic things?
But the commentor's claims seem limited to Christianity as a motivator for their behavior, which is hardly objectionable and a very different thing from your challenge-reading of their words.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/30/religious-p...
but saying christians visit the elderly for a first date does not necessarily imply nobody but christians are generous in any way.
And there it is.
While I'm sure a study conducted by the "Institute on Faith & Giving" and published by a Moonie paper is objective it misses quite a bit by assuming that donating to charity is the only measure of empathy or generosity.
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/America-s-Generosity-Di...
Take a look a the states that rank towards the bottom of the list (mostly New England) and those that rank at the top (e.g. Alabama). Or take a look at how empathy is framed as a McCain vs Obama thing. What's missing from that sort of narrative is that Obama pushed government welfare where McCain fought it, that Massachusetts will have far more mature safety nets than Alabama. Supporting universal access to health care is no less empathetic than donating to a religious charity, the only difference is in who you trust to dole out the resources.
I have and love many family members and friends who aren't Christian who of course have done similarly empathetic things out of the goodness of their heart; I'm sure we can all name such people in our lives - we should share their stories too.
I really appreciate the author and in light of this story, all the health care employees who work tirelessly to support and care for the ailing and downtrodden. This is what "loving your neighbor as you would love yourself" means.
Sure, and there are plenty of welfare programs that predate Obama. Welfare programs that were, in large part, created by elected officials.