Learning About Retinas: Aging Parents and Adult Children
Image from National Eye Institute (NIH)
You may also want to read my other posts about eyes and retinas: Detached Retina, Part I and Detached Retina, Part II.
After going through five cataract surgeries with four senior parents and listening to people fret about floaters in their eyes, I thought I knew a lot about middle age and senior eye problems. But now I know that floaters can lead to flashes which can lead to retinal tears. More importantly a retinal tear may lead to a detached retina. A detached retina means that “… the light-sensitive tissue in the back of the eye has separated from its supporting layers.” (Medline Plus)
In retrospect, I did not know enough about retinal disorders to be of any help to members of my family or even to myself. I’m betting that other adult children are a lot like me. I knew I had a few floaters in my eyes, and I was aware that my eye doctor regularly asked me if I experienced flashes. So a light went on — albeit a dim one — after a few days of regular flashes (in my case sort of like lightning bolts) in my right eye.
When I called the ophthalmologist to schedule a routine check-up, an alert receptionist put me on hold and quickly came back to tell me to come right into the office. At the office I went right into an examination room to see the doctor. My physician used bright lights to look into both eyes, but especially into the eye with the flashes. Nothing was obviously wrong, but one spot worried her, so I returned the next day, just to be sure the spot was not developing into a retinal tear. Read more »
Aging Parents, Adult Children: Back Aches!
Most of us have experienced back aches of some type, and a fair number of our senior parents have back pain even more often than we do. For me, the only solution is to wait out a back ache and keep moving, even if it doesn’t feel so good to move (and it doesn’t). Most of us hurt, obsess, and use pillows — I do especially when I play the piano — wondering all the time why modern medicine cannot provide minimal medical care (a visit to a doc, a prescription, a quick co-pay, voila no pain) to solve the problem. Then one day the pain starts going away, at least a bit, though sometimes it doesn’t for a long time. While back pain can be, well — a pain — I do not want to even think about surgery.
Note: If I exercise and stretch regularly (4-5 times a week) my back pain is minimal. If I don’t exercise for a while, say for a week, the back pain returns at some point, and for the exercise and stretching to start working again takes some time. Check out this MedlinePlus tutorial about preventing back pain. When I am working hard to keep back aches at bay — which I should be all of the time — I use these exercises from the Mayo Clinic website in addition to walking and exercising on an elliptical trainer.
Senior Gait Speed and Life Expectancy
Bob (not his real name) is an active man in his mid-90′s. Whenever we made early morning visits to his senior community, we found him up and walking before breakfast. If the day was especially cold, he made rounds of the various corridors, regularly changing floors and always waving a cheerful good-morning to residents emerging from their apartments. Suffice it to say, he was vigorous. Watching Bob made me wonder about walking and older seniors and also made me think about the need to keep moving.
Early this month (January 2011), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article, Gait Speed and Survival in Older Adults (abstract — article is not freely available). Researchers analyzed data from nine studies that examined gait and older adults, and the participants in all of the studies were community dwelling seniors, 34,485 in all. All were age 65 and older, and African-American and Hispanic communities were well represented. An individual’s gait speed was calculated in meters per second after walking from eight feet to six meters.
Dale Carter – Transitioning Your Aging Parents Book Tour
Click to purchase this book.
Dale Carter’s book, Transitioning Your Aging Parent, is a must read for anyone with senior parents who need extra support. The book has been well reviewed — a resource that helps right now, and honestly, it still may be a useful resource years from now when we require support from our children. Follow Dale’s blog, Transition Aging Parents, her blog radio podcasts, or just chat with her for a short time. You’ll discover she’s a born communicator who uses web 2.0 digital tools to share her expertise.
Now Dale is heading off on a author’s tour, traveling in a few days to the Atlanta area and then on to Florida. In this day and age of instant digital communication, a book tour seems almost a quaint literary device from the past, so I am always glad to hear that a friend or colleague is off on a tour to share a book and meet potential readers up close and in person.
If you live in the Atlanta area or in Florida, check out Dale’s post on her blog to get additional information about the book tour and take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about gently and respectfully helping parents — not to mention yourself — through a time of life that can be challenging for everyone involved.
Maybe her next tour can be in my area — Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC,
Waiting for a Doc or for Anything Else: Possible Things to Do
Waiting for an appointment in a medical office is a pain in itself and not just senior parents. All of us hate sitting around, inactivity enforced, while we wait for someone to help us. If I don’t plan ahead, bringing something to do so I can use the time, I gently chide myself, because it’s a given that people wait at certain appointments.
Over at SeniorHomes.com blog, the post 15 Things to Do While Waiting in a Doctor’s Office by Shelley Webb R.N., has good suggestions that can make productive use of waiting time — just the right tone for the start of a new year. While I find that the seniors in my life tend to be more impatient than I do, anyone can make use of these suggestions no matter where the waiting occurs. (The other day I sat at the bank for over 20 minutes.)
Below are my three favorites from the list, things that I often put off, so working on them when need to wait in one place for more than a few minutes is an intriguing idea. I’ve added an editorial comment or two and a suggestion at the end. Read more »
Many Seniors Don’t Know About Medicare Extra Help Subsidy
According to a January 4, 2011 Kaiser Health News (KHN) article, many American seniors who qualify for a Medicare Part D subsidy that reduces prescription costs have not signed up. The article, 2 Million Medicare Beneficiaries Missing Out On Discounted Drug Coverage, explains that the program, called Extra Help, lowers medication costs and reduces money spent in Part D doughnut hole.
This is a significant program that the children of senior parents should learn about, especially if their parents’ incomes are limited. A Kaiser Family Foundation research study estimates that nearly 2.3 million people qualify but have not signed up for the program, despite a huge amount of publicity, direct mail and even ads and video broadcasts (see video below) with Chubby Checker — the rock musician who popularized the twist in 1960. Checker, now age 69 is eligible for Medicare benefits. The KHN article provides more detailed information.
The article describes who is can sign up for the Extra Help benefits: Read more »
Each Time the Violence Feels Closer
We are praying for your recovery.
Three older seniors died Saturday at the Arizona shopping mall where a young disturbed man started shooting with a gun, killing six, including a 9-year-old girl, and injuring more than a dozen others. Some of the dead were simply waiting their turns to ask their congressional representative a question, probably about Medicare or Social Security. (If there is confusion about a benefit, usually it can be straightened out, but sometimes people need extra help, and each congressional office has at least one person who works hard to straighten out constituent problems.)
As I write this, Representative Gabrielle Giffords is fighting for her life, and six other families are in mourning, including the family of one of her staff members.
It could have been my parents — who are tuned into politics, love to work in elections, and are loyal but always respectful of their elected officials, even if they did not vote for them. It could have been one of your parents, standing there patiently waiting for information about one of their benefits. The victims could have included any one of our parents, children, or grandchildren.
Be Proactive With Atrial Fibrillation!
Check out the AF animation at the NHLBI website.
It’s been a year and a day or two since my husband’s mother died, and frequently we think about her stroke and its effect on the last 30 months of her life. To support the health of our other senior parents and to be sure we know enough to be advocates for our own health, my husband and I try to learn as much as we can about strokes and how to prevent them.
Today I read a Reuters Health article, Warfarin May be Underused to Prevent Strokes, reporting on a study published in the journal Stroke. The journal article, Cost Efficiency of Anticoagulation With Warfarin to Prevent Stroke in Medicare Beneficiaries With Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation (abstract), points out that, “Approximately 2.3 million people in the United States are currently diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF).” Many of those people, for various reasons, are not treated with anti-coagulant medications such as warfarin, even though AF is associated with increased risk of stroke, and the drugs may decrease the risk.
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.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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