We asked our followers to share their stories about a time their parents fell and no one knew. Susan wrote out a story for us that many can relate to. It’s important to note that Susan wished to remain anonymous, so the names in this story (including Susan’s) and a few minor details have been changed to respect her privacy.
Susan’s story
My mom’s best friend, Jane, called me in a panic. She was supposed to have heard from my mom many hours earlier, but my mom hadn’t called. Jane continually called my mom’s home phone and cell phone, but the home phone was constantly busy, and the cell phone went unanswered.
By the time Jane called me, she was very upset. The last time she and my mom spoke, they discussed the fact that it had just been a year since my mom’s sister passed away from a stroke in her own house.
My mom lives alone in an over 55 community across the country from me. She doesn’t have anybody who checks in on her regularly. I call about two or three times per week, but she talks to Jane every day.
When Jane called me, I told her I would handle it, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Repeated calls by me yielded the same result: her home phone was constantly busy and her cell phone went unanswered. I tried to call my sister, who only lives five hours away by car, but she was at work and couldn’t answer her phone. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what I would have my sister do. Should she drop everything and race to my mom’s house? If there was an emergency, then five hours later might be too late. If everything was fine, then that would have been a waste of time.
It finally occurred to me to call the security at the community in which my mom lived. They told me that they would go check on her, and they reassured me that they do this type of thing all of the time.
Luckily, it turned out that everything was absolutely fine. Mom had simply forgotten to call her friend Jane, she had accidentally knocked her home phone off the hook, and she left her cell phone in her purse in her car.
We were frustrated, though, by our inability to find out if Mom was okay without having to call Security. She wouldn’t wear a LifeAlert-like button, and, even if she had, all we would have known was that it hadn’t been pushed. We still would have imagined her having a stroke or a fall where she couldn’t push the LifeAlert button.
How CarePenguin could have helped
With an app like CarePenguin, we could have seen that Mom was turning her water on and off to make dinner and rinse dishes, and we would have known that she was going about her day normally. CarePenguin would have given us the clues we needed to know that Mom was just fine.
CarePenguin provides that peace of mind to know everything is okay in situations like Susan’s or notifies you when something is wrong in situations like Lisa’s (from our last personal stories blog.) If you think you and your family could benefit from CarePenguin, it is now available exclusively on our website. Get peace of mind today by signing up for CarePenguin!