(By: Nancy Wurtzel) – Currently, there are more than five million adults in the U.S., age 65 or older, who have Alzheimer’s disease, and this number continues to grow as the population ages and people live longer. The American Association of Retired People (AARP) estimates that 70% of those with Alzheimer’s live at home and are primarily cared for by unpaid family members and friends. That’s a huge number.
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To fully appreciate the efficiency of a medical alert system in the context of complementing the work of caregivers, let us consider an actual real-world case. Madelyn is a subscriber to one of the leading medical alert system companies. She is 60, with narcolepsy, and lives alone at her own home in California. One day, she decides to change the light bulb in her kitchen. As there is no one else to do the job, and because it is supposedly a simple job of unscrewing the old bulb and replacing it with a new one, she gets up on the short ladder and begins removing the old bulb. At one point, however, the table slightly moves and Madelyn loses her balance and she ends up on the floor, writhing in pain, her hips probably shattered. The phone is on the other side of the house, and if not for the medical alert device she’s wearing around her neck, Madelyn’s situation could have been worse. She presses the panic button, contact is made with the medical alert system’s response center, and within minutes one of Madelyn’s registered responders (whose numbers she registered with her medical alert device) arrive to give her assistance as they waited for the ambulance’s arrival. And while Madelyn subsequently endures months of hospitalization (her age and the location of the bone fracture made her condition complicated), it is obvious that things could have been a lot worse if not for the timely response of the medical alert system’s monitoring center.
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