Dental hygienist provides care for those in home-care with Angie Stone

Dental Hygienist for Home Care

What a great idea! Thanks to Angie Stone.

Angie Stone put her money where her mouth is. She started a company gathering dental hygiensts to provide oral care to residents in long term care. Source: www.blogtalkradio.com

When our loved ones are in a Care-Home, Nursing Home, or Group Home (as my Mom was) they have many needs that are forgotten or simply get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes they don’t realize their bad mood comes from a broken tooth or tooth ache, not to mention the cleaning their teeth may need. A Dental Hygienist could be the first alert for someone with problems in their mouth.

Much upheaval usually accompanies a family members admittance to a Care Home. Families are making major decisions about life and death and all sorts of legal matters for someone they love very much. Their loved one’s teeth may be the last thing on their mind. A regular visit from a Dental Hygienist would be a welcome.

Seemingly trivial things that mean comfort for our loved one can too often be forgotten in the moment. It’s easy to assume that the Care Home will take care of all the personal and medical amenities. BUT, this may not be true.

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I have to say, honestly, a Dental hygienist is probably someone I wouldn’t have thought of during the tumultuous days of admitting Mom to a Group Home. Yet, she had all of her own, healthy teeth and certainly needed that sort of care. An inept tooth-ache could have been a tragedy for Mom. She would have had no idea what the problem was nor the presence of mind to tell me where it hurt.

Quite often those with dementia show only a cranky demeanor when they actually have a UTI or other painful medical condition. A loose fitting denture could cause little more than a grumpy and irritable family member while they were actually in quite a lot of pain.

My own Mom’s toenails had grown quite long before someone mentioned to me that the “care-home” had a Podiatrist visit once a month.

The little things in life keep us comfortable, happy, smiling and pain-free. Mom was in a much better mood when she had her hair washed twice a week and permed every 3 months.

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