Long Term Care Insurance and Obesity
    

In her youth Helen was quite a striking figure: five feet ten inches tall, with a good figure at 160 pounds.  She had long blond hair, an engaging, outgoing personality and many friends.  She was athletic, engaging in several sports in high school.
    

In college, however, her athletic participation ceased. She chose to immerse herself in her academic and social activities.  She engaged in no regular exercise routine.  However, her weight remained constant thru college and marriage at age 26, up until having her first child at age 31
    

During her pregnancy she gained about 30 pounds, pushing her up to 190, but she lost 20 pounds after childbirth, leaving her at 170.  During the pregnancy she ate a bit more than she normally did, encouraged by her obstetrician, in order to maintain good nutrition to the developing fetus. 
    

Over the next 4 years she had two more children and her weight climbed up to 220 pounds.  She was not eating excessive amounts, just a few calories more per day than she needed.  Many people don’t realize that if one eats just 100 calories per day more than you need, you’ll gain 10 pounds per year.   Thus in 10 years you can be 100 pounds overweight.  100 calories is no more than an apple a day!  As you approach retirement that extra weight can lead to needing long term care.  To prevent that the key in most cases is that most people’s exercise level decreases as they get older, but their calorie intake doesn’t.
   

So, over the years Helen’s weight steadily climbed upward, despite her efforts to diet it off.  As she entered her late 50’s she was now around 300 pounds.  When you saw her she didn’t appear to be that heavy, but at 5’10” she had a larger frame on which to distribute it and hid it with large black over flowing clothes. 
   

Unfortunately, her knees knew how heavy she was.  Over the years she had gradually worn out most of her cartilage, so that walking had become quite painful.  There was a history of such problems in her family and several members had total knee replacement with good results.  So she decided to do the same.  Her husband pleaded with her to lose weight first, but she would have none of that, so the first operation was scheduled.
    

The first knee replacement went quite well, and right after the operation she and her husband were in the recovery room counting their blessings.  She was on morphine for pain, which unknown to them can cause a drop in blood pressure.  Suddenly she had to go to the bathroom, so she ran for the attending nurse to come and help her.  In came a small, delicate looking nurse, who assisted her into the cubbyhole-sized bathroom.  No sooner had they entered, when her husband heard screaming from both women.  He rushed in to find that his wife was losing consciousness and was about to fall.  With the nurse on one side and he on the other, despite their combined efforts, they could not keep her from falling to the floor.  So down she went, striking her just-repaired knee on the hard floor, rupturing her patella tendon and damaging the knee prosthesis.  She was rushed back into surgery, but the repairs did not turn out as well as she desired.
    

Over the next several months, despite extensive physical therapy, the knee never even approached normal functioning, due mainly to the patella tendon, which did not keep the kneecap in its proper place.  And a second operation didn’t improve it enough.
    

But Helen, probably now somewhat desperate, went ahead and scheduled her second knee replacement, despite her husband’s pleas to wait about a year or so to allow time for more healing on the first knee.  The second knee replacement went well and she returned home.  However about three weeks later she was at her daughter’s house and her first repaired knee gave way on her.  She fell again in the bathroom, and damaged her second knee in the same manner as the first.  Additionally, she also broke both bones in her lower right leg, just above the ankle.  She was rushed to the hospital and repairs were made as well as were possible.  To shorten a long, tragic story, she has since fallen several more times, requiring a total of ten surgeries overall, and she is now confined to a wheelchair, probably for the rest of her life and has already had to use her long term care insurance policy.  Unfortunately, she does not have an unlimited policy and since she used it at such a young age will probably exhaust the entire plan in the next few years.  Since she already needs long term care insurance she cannot buy another policy because she is now medically uninsurable.
    

Now, the good news in this tragic story is that the long term care insurance policy paided for needed home care services, a wheelchair ramp to enter the home and extensive modifications to their bathroom to accommodate a wheelchair.  They also had several doors widened.
    

The point of this tragic story is to show how important it is for folks to maintain good bodyweight and strength as we age.  All of Helen’s troubles can be attributed to her obesity.  Her husband said that had she not been overweight, he could have prevented the first fall in the hospital.  He said, “I can lift 170 pounds, but I can’t hold up 300!” And all her falls and total of 10 operations are directly linked to that first fall.
    

Helen is now confined to a drastically altered lifestyle requiring long term care help with several of her activities of daily living (ADL’s)– not at all what she and her husband had planned.  Three years after the first accident she is now medically stable, but now very dependent on her husband, children and friends to manage her life which has become a burden to the family. They are very thankful for their Long Term Care Insurance and hope they won’t have to use it again. But the odds are they probably will.

Planning ahead is the key for protecting your retirement lifestyle as well as nest egg.  Accidents happen when you least expect them of course and having that long term care insurance safety net is the key from preventing a tragic accident of illness such as Alzheimer’s from draining you financial and your family emotionally.  If you’d like to learn more about long term care insurance and see if it might be a good fit for your situation please fill in the form below.  Either way thanks for reading our blog today, we really appreciate it.