• First-aid kit
• Prescription medicines, list of medications including dosage, list of any allergies
• Extra eyeglasses and hearing-aid batteries
• Oxygen
• List of the style and serial numbers of medical devices such as pacemakers
• Medical insurance and Mediclaim cards
• List of doctors and relatives or friends who should be notified if you are injured

How should the care giver be prepared?

• Always keep a copy of all the medical file of the person
• Always keep a back up of medicines which the elderly person is taking. (Check the date of expiry and replenish as and when needed)
• Understand from the treating physician what medical emergencies can occur for the condition of the elderly
• Always keep a Sorbitrate tablet handy in your purse/wallet
• Keep a portable oxygen cylinder handy
• Learn CPR and practice it properly
• Keep the numbers of the ambulance and doctor on quick dial
• Keep the numbers of back up doctors handy
• Be on good terms with your neighbors as they will be the only available back up persons to you at all times.

What can be done in such a condition?

Well first of all in case of chest pain if the patient is conscious give them a tablet of Sorbitrate (for this you will have to carry one with you at all times. I do!)

If the person has collapsed after chest pain and is NOT breathing then begin Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation. (For this you will have to learn CPR!)

In case the person faints due to weakness or hypoglycemia give them a glass of juice or water mixed with glucose powder.

In all the three scenarios rush the person to the nearest hospital. DO NOT wait for the ambulance. Every minute that you waste could cost the patient his/her life!

Handling Medical Emergencies for the elderly.

One has always got to be prepared for medical emergencies, be it for the aged or otherwise. As a fact as far as the aged are concerned we are mentally prepared to handle any problem. So now let us prepare to handle the medical emergencies too.

Chest pain, pain in the upper abdomen, pain in the left shoulder, middle of the back, neck or jaw; may be due to angina or, if severe, a heart attack, especially if accompanied by sweating and breathlessness. As people get older, the blood supply to all parts of the body including the heart may start to fail. This process is accelerated by smoking, poor diet and illnesses such as diabetes mellitus.

Breathlessness may be due to a heart attack, but there are other causes such as pneumonia in people who are less mobile or bedridden. Chronic Asthma can also be the causative factor of breathlessness. Other conditions such as heart failure may also cause breathlessness while uncontrolled diabetes mellitus may give “air hunger”. Lung disease may cause breathlessness. Emphysema is a gradual deterioration of lung tissue through a chronic cough, especially due to smoking over many years. Smoking may also induce lung cancer, which may cause breathlessness, coughing up blood and eventually death.

Weakness in arms and legs, especially if sudden, may be a symptom of poor blood supply to the brain. This may manifest itself as a stroke, which is due to the sudden clotting of a diseased blood vessel supplying a particular part of the brain. Depending on which part this is, it may cause weakness in a limb or even sudden inability to talk, or (in severe cases) coma and death.

“Last night I was sitting in the living room, talking to my wife about life… In-between, we talked about the idea of living or dying.

I told her: ‘Never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the contraptions that are keeping me alive, I’d much rather die’.

My wife got up from the sofa with this real look of admiration towards me….and proceeded to disconnect the TV, the Cable, the Dish, the DVD, the Computer, the Cell Phone, and the iPod and then went to the bar and threw away all my whisky, rum, gin, vodka & the beer in the fridge…

I ALMOST DIED!!”

If we just read it and pass it is a good joke; but something about it is not so funny and not so nice! The nagging truth in it! We are so dependent on all the gadgets & gizmos; social and professional networking sites, entertainment and infotainment programs that we have forgotten how to live!

We need external stimulants to make us happy! They may be edible uppers like tea, coffee, alcohol, drugs or magnetizing uppers like facebook, MP3 players, and television.

Why can’t we stay still? Just for a little while not do anything and just be. Are we scared of our own company? Are we scared of our own thoughts? Are we scared of ourselves? Ask yourselves these questions. Are we Humans or are we “Paranoid Humanoids”. Yes it is a term I have coined for what is there of humans today.

I believe that all of us will only find our calling, our purpose if we take a “Shoonyam Dip”. Go back to where we started off from. Start on a clean slate. Not only take the ‘Dip’ today but keep taking that ‘Dip’ as often as needed. Almost like touching the base line!

Just stop whatever you are doing and observe. Observe the act, the thought, your state, your emotions, your being! You will be surprised at what you see. I do not promise that it will be a pleasant surprise though.

Begin by ‘Being’; Observing and Asking Questions! Get there!

In all cases, we could say that fear is a reaction to something that may happen in the future, be it realistic or not, it is always uncomfortable. And here we find one of the contradictions of fear itself: it should work to keep us from discomfort, yet it is uncomfortable itself

If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear? ~ Confucius

Many a speaker of new age has extolled that, fear lies at the basis of all religions. The name that jumps out at me is ‘Osho’. When humans were in the cave age and were gatherers and hunters, they did not quite understand what was happening around so felt the fear which seems pretty logical; as a fact a logically existential fear. In search for understanding the world around them mystics tried to explain the world with invisible and incomprehensible presuppositions; like spirits, gods, nature itself, the sun and moon etc. which also gave the possibility to do something about ‘the unexpected’ by pleasing the gods and spirits with prayers and rituals. Later on, more advanced ideas and philosophies developed, and of course religion was born to the advantage of the elite few!

One of my favorite religious leaders is Gautama Buddha. So let’s look at Buddhism. It is to a certain extent based on fear; the fear of suffering. As the story goes Buddha went out on his spiritual quest when he realized that everybody is subject to discomfort, problems and pain, and with the goal to find a way to end it altogether he discovered a ‘way out’.

In fact, this is not very different from the original motivation to develop human civilization: we fear hunger so we store food for those times when we might not get any, we prepare ourselves for dangers like wild animals, or to defend ourselves from other humans. This fear of discomfort and attachment to comfort has driven humans in their development from a cave man to a creature that has gained control over nearly all other living beings on this planet.

Therapies for irrational fears work on the same basic principle: discover by experience that the feeling of fear (paranoia) is an exaggeration of what we perceive in the world, and force our rational mind to keep in control of the emotion. So, if you are afraid of spiders, perhaps the cure starts with simply drawing them, then looking at a small one – far away locked in a safe place – then forcing yourself to go closer (the rational mind says that nothing can happen), in the end, usually the patients will regain so much control that can even hold a poisonous, hairy, huge tarantula in their hands – obviously the end of therapy! This is not because they are exceptionally brave people, but they have gradually learned to take control over their exaggerated emotions, by realizing these emotions were not based on a real danger.

In extreme cases, people can be much harder to treat. Specifically when the reason for the fear is vague and hardly known, like imagining that you are being followed (paranoia), it is not always straight-forward or simple to make people realize that these fears are unfounded and the rational mind should take control.

Common fears:

Acrophobia: Fear of heights

Arachnophobia: fear of spiders

Agoraphobia: fear of open spaces

Belonephobia: fear of needles

Brontophobia: fear of thunder and lightning

Claustrophobia: fear of confined spaces

Hamartophobia: fear of sinning

Suriphobia: fear of mice and/or rats

Necrophobia: fear of death

Pentheraphobia: fear of the mother-in-law

Thalassophobia: fear of the sea

Xenophobia: fear of strangers or foreigners

Also some fears may be more common than generally thought:

Athazagoraphobia – fear of being forgotten, ignored or forgetting

Kakorrhaphiophobia – fear of failure

Metathesiophobia – fear of changes

The names are weird but the conditions are pretty common

Yes there is a fun, an enjoyment and a thrill in fear. Some people like fear, because in activities like riding a roller-coaster or during bungee-jumping, we get an adrenaline-rush: a physical reaction to make us alert and ready for action – some people actually get addicted to this natural drug and get into extreme activities. This can easily lead to needing more dangerous situations more often, so they may tend to take ever increasing risks – until the parachute does not open, or the weather changes while climbing a steep, dangerous mountain slope……

This is the other end of the spectrum as compared to overcoming fear. Here the person needs to check himself and overcome the desire to feel the thrill of fear.

There are many ways of overcoming fears. There is psychotherapy, there is hypnosis, there is meditation, there is visualization, there is NLP and there is homeopathy. You may choose the one that suits you best if you need help. Basically everything will work only if you want it to work.

Fear is necessary to a certain extent for survival. If not for fear we would all be stepping off high rise buildings, touching the fire or jumping into the sea just to experience how it feels! To experience the thrill so to speak. This instinct is developed over time immemorial we do not have to undergo the test to learn and remember. We know that putting the hand in fire will burn it!

We can be afraid to fall, but once we are falling, we are afraid to hit the ground, once we hit the ground, we may fear we have a bad injury, once we know we have a bad injury, we may fear the pain and the consequences of not being able to work for some time or become disabled etc. So one could say that fear is always based on something that has not happened yet, and is therefore a fantasy of our mind rather than fact.