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Care for Elderly

My 98 year old grandmother lives in my mother’s home. She was recently in the hospital for a couple of weeks due to serious illness, but B”H has been cured and is back home, with no medical illness, but extremely week and fragile and in need of help for the most basic needs, which is different than before. My mother’s hanhagah has long been to daven three tefillos a day at home. When my grandmother calls (by banging a spoon against her bedrail as she doesn’t have the strength to call), my mother does not know for what need it is she is calling for or the level of urgency. Should she go to help her, and speak to her, wherever she is in tefilla, even shmoneh esreh? (My grandmother doesn’t know when she is davening, and wouldn’t know why she isn’t responding). OR are there parts of tefilla she should respond and disrupt her tefilla, and parts not? Second, my grandmother is meant to consume a container of a product called Ensure, every day. It is not a drug, but is prescribed by the doctors for the nutrients it provides, as my grandmother is not eating enough regular food. Should my grandmother continue to wait 6 hours after eating some meat food before consuming Ensure, which is dairy, or can she be lenient? She can consume the full thing even with waiting, but it is a lot for her, so on days that she eats meat/chicken, it would be much easier for her to get it all down in parts, if she did not wait the six hours.
Thank you so very much for the guidance.

Answer:

A 98 year old bedridden sickly women is certainly in need of full time care. One taking care of her is actually exempt from Tefillah. If one does have time to daven, they should interrupt to answer to her calls for help, as any moment may be an issue of pikuach nefesh.

As she is classified as being sick, there is room for leniency with regards to waiting between meat and milk. She should wait as long as she can without disrupting her eating schedule.

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