What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Avoid a UTI?

By Jamie Shapiro | August 13, 2019 | Comments Off on What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Avoid a UTI?

Bladder and urinary tract infections can be very detrimental for your senior. The worst part is that they may be difficult for her to keep track of as she ages. Here’s what you need to know about UTIs and helping your senior to avoid them.

Track Fluid Intake

Elderly Care Northbrook, IL: What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Avoid a UTI?

Your senior needs plenty of water to help her to flush through her urinary system and keep bacteria from building up in her bladder and in the rest of her urinary tract. If she’s not interested in drinking enough water, that can be a big problem. One way to make sure she’s getting enough water is to keep track of her intake. Elderly care providers can help you to do that easily throughout the day, especially when you must be in and out.

Set up a Bathroom Schedule
The other side of the equation can be that your senior needs to empty her bladder regularly, again to keep bacteria from building up in her bladder and her urinary system. She may find that she’s going to the bathroom a lot more often as she increases her fluid intake, but that slows down as her body gets used to the new amounts she’s drinking. Set up an initial schedule of visiting the bathroom once an hour at least and adjust as necessary.

Work out a Plan with Her Doctor
If your senior is susceptible to bladder infections, her doctor might have some advice about that. Sometimes adding supplements, like vitamin C, can be a huge way to help your senior’s body to get better at fighting off potential infections. There may be other considerations, too, like whether your senior is getting enough fluids or too much. Her medications have a lot to do with all of this, which is why your senior’s doctor can help you to juggle all this information.

Learn to Recognize Early Warning Signs
Your senior’s early warning signs when she was younger might have been things like pain while urinating or even a fever. But as an aging adult, the symptoms of a UTI can be dramatically different. Your senior might become confused more often or she might be extremely irritable. Pain might not be something she experiences until far later in the infection, which can make identifying an infection so much more difficult.

Bladder infections and UTIs don’t impact your senior the same way now that they did in the past. The more that you learn about urinary issues and how they affect your senior, the better you can plan to help her to deal with them.

Excerpt: You might be able to do more than you think to help your senior to avoid a urinary tract infection.

 

If you or an aging loved one are considering Elderly Care in Northbrook, IL contact the caring staff at Companion Services of America today at (847) 943- 3786. Our home care service area includes Northbrook, Highland Park, Deerfield, Glenview, Buffalo Grove, Evanston, Des Plaines, Skokie, Lake Forest, Wilmette and the surrounding areas.

Jamie Shapiro
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