Aging Parents, Diseases of Aging, Salt!
The May 30, 2010, the New York Times published an article, The Hard Sell on Salt, about our high sodium diets, the reluctance to find ways to lower the amount of salt in food, and how the food industry continues to push for its inclusion in our foods, all despite documented risks to our health in medical research as far back as 1978. In the sidebar are several not-to-be-missed graphics providing information, new to me, about the various ways salt is represented on food labels.
All four of our parents have had chronic health conditions — congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, and stroke –and two died as a result of the illnesses. In all cases, they were instructed to cut back dramatically on salt but modifying their habits has proven to be extremely difficult, though they tried hard.
My husband and I are planning sometime next month to keep track of sodium for two days, though we believe we are consuming a fairly low amount of salt. We intend to avoid any diet modification, trying to eat the way we always do. I’ll be reporting our discoveries in a posting here on As Our Parents Age.
Senior Concierge: In-Home Services for Aging Parents
The Detroit News published an article, Seniors Get a Dose of Daily Care, introducing me to the concept of senior concierge services. The May 26, 2010, article describes a new business set up by Liz Pinto and Frank Gordon in the Detroit area. Their company, Senior Concierge, provides services to relatively healthy elderly adults who want to stay in their homes, but who need additional support and services to remain there. Both Liz and Frank supported their own parents in various ways, and their experiences provide a window on the services that seniors may require. Clients, while relatively independent, often ask for assistance with rides, house repairs, medication organization, small-scale emergencies such as when the circuit breaker flips, and a variety of other tasks. This business should not be confused with the assistance provided by a home health agency.
My mother-in-law could have used a service like this during the months following her stroke, when she was recovering and still fairly independent. As her speech therapy slowed down, what she needed was about two hours of talking practice every other day or so, and we never could find the right person to do this task. Read more »
iPad for Dad, #5 – Telephone Tutorials
Image from Apple iPad Picture Gallery
If you like this post, read some of the other descriptions of our Father/Daughter iPad adventure. iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3, iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6, iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8, iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad for Dad, #12, iPad for Dad, #13, iPad for Dad, #14, iPad for Dad, #15, iPad for Dad, #16, iPad for Dad, #17, iPad for Dad, #18, iPad for Dad, #19, and iPad for Dad, #20.
Two Telephone Tutorials
My father and I scheduled a session for Saturday morning, but he had an unexpected opportunity to go to the wellness center, so our phone help session occurred later in the day. Before the tutorial I fretted about whether I would be a less effective helper over the phone and without an iPad nearby. I also thought it might be more difficult for Dad. It wasn’t.
In a sense, my not being right there made him take more responsibility for his learning. Given my 30-plus years as a teacher, I should not be surprised. Dad is learning just the way my students learn, the way we all learn, demonstrating that our brains, baring serious illness, keep right on figuring out new information if we let them. Read more »
Caregiving: How One Couple Avoided Burnout
… by trying to work together
During three years of caring for a senior parent, my husband and I took many steps to ensure that neither of us would shoulder too many burdens, lose too much sleep, or just reach a point where one of us ran out of steam. We knew that any one of these could contribute to one of us getting sick, or at the very least not doing our best to help his mother through difficult times. We wanted to emerge from the period as much in love with each other as we had been before the caregiving started.
The two of us were our own mini-caring inner circle, but we were well-supported by professionals and friends, first in South
Carolina and then in Northern Virginia. Everyone we asked for help was happy to assist. In fact, when a hired caregiver did not show up for our daughter’s wedding, causing momentary but very dramatic chaos, friends pitched in to help, and one of them left the wedding reception, drove Mother home, and helped her get ready for bed.
Both of us are only children, so we had no siblings helping us. We had to work together, making sure that we shared, as much as possible, anything that could be shared. We knew that the chances of us caring for a second elderly parent sometime down the road are great, so figuring things out was important. Some of the challenges we faced, as described below, are no different than most people encounter, but I’ve explained how we went about finding solutions.
More on the National Library of Medicine: for Boomers and Aging Parents
In my last post I wrote about the tutorial at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) designed to help people learn how to evaluate health information on the web. NLM, one of 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health, provides much more on its website, information that is especially useful to families seeking medical information.
A part of the NLM website is set up for the public to use and is available in English and Spanish. The site has a strict privacy policy. Adult children and their parents should explore the site now, becoming familiar with health information and resources that will be useful when a family member needs to search quickly for reliable medical information. If you are a caregiver for an aging parent you know that time is limited and locating the best information as fast as possible is critical. Below I’ve listed a few features of the NLM website that make it easy for anyone to freely search for health information.
Aging Parents, Adult Children, Everyone: Evaluating Web Health Info
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) web site features a medical research user’s guide, Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine, with step-by-step techniques to ensure that the information you discover is good and reliable. The narrator speaks slowly and clearly. A link at the end takes the user to a more detailed NLM site on evaluating health information that is posted on the web.
The world wide web gives us the opportunity to access information about almost anything, but a problem is knowing how good (or how bad) that information could be for us. This tutorial is terrific and useful to any person, adult, child, senior parent, or parent of a young child, because it helps a person gain the knowledge necessary to assess what they access.
iPad for Dad, #4 – Learning Curves
If you like this post, read some of the other descriptions of our Father/Daughter iPad adventure. iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3, iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6, iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8, iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad for Dad, #12, iPad for Dad, #13, iPad for Dad, #14, iPad for Dad, #15, iPad for Dad, #16, iPad for Dad, #17, iPad for Dad, #18, iPad for Dad, #19, and iPad for Dad, #20.
Whenever I introduce new technology to adults — teachers, seniors, my dad, even my husband — a rush of exhilaration 
bubbles over when the lessons begin. The learner is always highly motivated to get going with the equipment. Lots of successes occur quickly. But then comes a period when the activities of regular life intervene and less time is devoted to the new learning tasks. Using the older technology is simpler even though the new one is faster, better, and even easier. Right now Dad’s life is competing with his iPad practice.
All of the seniors in my life are busy people, their lives chock full of activities. Sitting down to master new technology is not quite as much fun as their many other endeavors. Have I mentioned that I am also teaching my mother to text?
New Alzheimer’s Report: Our Window on a Scary Future
If there is one word synonymous with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, it is heartbreak, though this is hardly surprising to anyone who has lived with a loved one’s progression through one of these diseases. In the beginning we can do things to keep them stimulated and engaged. By the end we feel helpless and can do almost nothing. It felt like my mother-in-law died twice — once as her brain took away her ability to think and read and remember and understand, and then again when her heart stopped beating.
According to a newly released report from the Alzheimer’s Association, the heartbreak will only increase, as will Alzheimer’s, now that people in the generation born between 1946 and 1960 — more than 70 million baby boomers — move into their senior years. A lot more people are going to get the disease, because it strikes older people.
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and increasingly all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
AsOurParentsAge Tweets
Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
Copyright and Attribution Info
As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on work at AsOurParentsAge.wordpress.com and AsOurParentsAge.net
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.
What I’m Currently Reading
Check Out the New Medline Plus Website
Life With Father
