Archive for the ‘caregiving’ Category

Stubborn. How Many Baby Boomers Are Dealing With This?

Friday, July 30th, 2010

A good friend of mine, like a lot of other Boomers, has a lot on her plate. She’s caregiving for her husband and her mother, working, and a long-distance grandma to four grand-kids. Her mom is living alone, not far from my friend, increasingly fragile and needy. She thought she had things worked out; her mother would go to live with her sister in California. That is until it came time for her mother to go to California. Stubborn, and set in her ways, not to mention the home she’s lived in for years, she put her foot down and refused to budge.

It made me wonder, how you start to broach this conversation, and what the signs are that your loved ones shouldn’t be on their own any more. The fact that you can’t cope is certainly a strong signal, but there should be earlier warning signs, and there are.

According to my friends at SeniorHomes.com, there are five signs a loved one might need assisted care:

  1. Does your family member’s skin feel soft and have a normal color?
  2. Can your family member see clearly?
  3. Can your family member hear you?
  4. Is there food in the refrigerator?
  5. Are medications current and being taken regularly?

I know what you’re thinking…I can answer these questions but this is not giving me the tools I need to have this conversation. So here goes…AARP has a really good post on starting a conversation. Click here for the link. Jacqui at SeniorHomes.com also gave me these two links for assessing your loved ones needs, and their site has the full answers to the five questions.

“Talking To Your Loved Ones About Their Care” from the American Health Care Association
http://www.longtermcareliving.com/prep/conversation/

“Assessing The Need” from Comfort Keepers. This is a really good assessment guide.
http://www.comfortkeepers.com/sites/default/files/document/assessmentguide.pdf

Thanks to Jacqui and Chris at SeniorHomes.com for their help with this! And be sure to check out this week’s Blogging Boomers Carnival. There’s a great post from our hostess. Check it out and comment if you don’t think Boomers are “a bunch of big fat heavy drug users who never exercise and are bad with money”. Doesn’t sound like anyone I know, what about you?

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Posted in aging, boomers, caregiving, conversation | 3 Comments »

Family History. Is This a Harder Conversation Than the Money One?

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Why is it that most families are reluctant to discuss family health histories? A good friend of mine died last year from prostate cancer. He got it at a pretty early age, and at a pretty advanced stage. When he was finally diagnosed, it turns out that there was a long family history of the men in his family having and dying from prostate cancer, going back at least three generations. But nobody talked about it, and so my friend was never warned in time to start getting himself tested at an even earlier age.

  • Side note: there was a fascinating study recently about using dogs to detect prostate cancer. Turns out there’s something in the urine, that trained dogs can smell. So if a dog keeps sniffing around an embarrassing area, maybe it’s time for a check-up.

In my own family, I bet there’s a history of depression, that no one has ever talked about. I’ve suffered from it, and think my father suffers from it. But we’re WASP’s so we don’t talk about it (until now). I know that my father’s mother had arthritis, and it looks like my mother has it in her hands. My doctor told me years ago that I had signs of early arthritis in my hands, but once again, no one talks about it.

Recently, my husband was told he has a “tiny bit of diabetes” and he should watch his weight and diet. You’ve probably already figured out what comes next. Yes, he has a family history of diabetes, and he knows it, but the extent of his knowledge, unknown.

So, how do we start this conversation?

Don’t forget to check out this week’s Blogging Boomers Carnival, it’s the last one before the 4th of July!

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Posted in Diabetes, aging, boomers, caregiving, family, health, men, parents, people | No Comments »

Baby Boomers Take Note: A Wonderful Use For Your Flip Video

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Most Baby Boomers have a video recorder. It may be an older video camera you bought for taking videos of the kids growing up, or a cool new Flip Video, but you know you’ve got one. After reading this you’re going to want to dust if off and recharge the batteries.

For her mom’s 75th birthday, Ann Mehl had her filmmaker friend Mark McDevitt film her mother as she went around doing her daily tasks. Ho hum you’re thinking, right? Before you dismiss it as just another family video, check it out here on the NY Times site. Ann’s mother has dementia, and Ann has written several time for this blog, about her experiences caring for an elderly parent. Mark has captured her caregiving, and kindness as well as the wonderful spirit of Ann’s mother. Here are some ideas for video records for your own family and you don’t have to have a professional do them:

  • Practical: Shoot videos of each room in the house, focusing on valuables. Copy this video to a thumbdrive and move it to a secure place off-site in case of fire or theft. This way you’ll have a record for the insurance company.
  • Delicious: Is there a family recipe or cooking technique you’d like to know about? Sometimes a pinch of this, or the right texture for meatballs or pie crust is better filmed than on a aging recipe card.
  • Enthralling: What better way to have the family stories preserved, than by your family’s best story teller?
  • Timeless: Do you really look at your photos on the computer? Wouldn’t you rather see your family as they were at that moment in time? The NY Times piece said “If we want to remember the people they were at 75 or 85 or 93, why don’t we document their voices and smiles and stories using today’s simple, affordable technology?”
  • Creative: The Times article also pointed out that the younger members of the family may be the most adept with the technology, so why not let them have a shot at filmmaking?

What other uses for a video camera can you think of for your family memories? Leave a comment. As a side note, because I was so touched by the 75th birthday video, I’ve been working with Mark on another project, and it’s been a great experience.

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Posted in aging, boomers, caregiving, dementia, family, legacy, memories | Comments Off

Someone to lean on, a new workshop for caregivers

Monday, January 11th, 2010

It's All About Aging Ann with her momOne of It’s All About Aging’s favorite guest bloggers, Ann Mehl, is starting an exciting new workshop in February. As an executive coach and entrepreneur dealing with a mother with dementia, Ann knows firsthand what she’s teaching. For this series she’s teaming up with Angelica Perez, Ph.D., a licensed Clinical Psychologist with a specialty in geropsychology
and dementia. For those of you scratching your heads (like I did) geropsychology is the field within psychology devoted to the study of aging and the provision of clinical services for older adults. See…we’re already smarter.

Ann, in her “ample leisure”*, is also a marathon runner. She finds that a lot of her experiences with running translate into her business, and personal life. This from her most recent blog resonated with me and ties in so well with her workshop:

Get Help: The first time I signed up for a marathon, I was so worried about not finishing that I didn’t tell a soul I was running. So while there were no rallying crowds of supporters screaming, “Go, Ann!”, I did hear the occasional, “Ann? Is that you?” from puzzled friends on the sidelines. Why did I do this? I think I was terrified of failing and looking foolish in front of the people who cared about me. This is a don’t-do-what-I-did message: You may be able to handle things on your own, but you don’t have to, and you’ll likely make the going a lot harder. Invite people to support you in meeting your goal. If you can’t find a training partner (say, a friend who will encourage you to keep working on that novel), join a club (such as a writers’ group). But build yourself a small network of like-minded individuals who will support you. Good partners will hold you accountable, lend an ear, and share a fresh perspective, just when you need it most.

The workshop will be given Mondays during the month of February. Click here to order your tickets. And don’t forget to check out the first Blogging Boomers Carnival for 2010, lots of good posts to get your year off to a great start!

* as used by my former partner when you have none…

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Posted in aging, caregiving, dementia, family | 1 Comment »