Just Die Already???
Read the post at Changing Aging.
Check out today’s post, No Need for Death Threats! over at Changing Aging, Dr. Bill Thomas’ blog. He snapped this picture of this magazine cover at the airport in Philadelphia. I am beginning to believe that the next 30 years will be generationally tough, not only for our parents but also for us, the adult children who are following right behind.
I am going to Philly for a conference next month. I won’t buy the magazine this time. The blame for this type of thing can be placed squarely on the shoulders people who opine about budgets, intentionally creating generational rifts, to get political attention, but the same people do nothing to really solve our problems. Already twenty and thirty somethings indicate in a variety of ways that boomers are the problem — precisely the type of rifts that make people think this magazine cover is appropriate.
Head on over to read the post. B.T.W. I shared this on Facebook and retweeted on Twitter.
Caregiving: Feelings and Emotions
Caregiving is complex, confusing, and mostly uncontrollable. When we provide caregiving support, we discover that despite our most valiant organizational efforts we never quite make sense of the situation. Caregivers are never really in control, no matter how well we believe we are doing the caregiving, and we must be comfortable with the situation.
During our years of caregiving support, my husband and I frequently commented that we felt as if we lived in a parallel universe. Yes, we went to work and continued with things in our lives, but his mother — not the two of us, our jobs, or our interests — was the center of our lives.
Aging Parents and Telephone Fraud – Five Rules that Protect
I have just hung up the phone on yet another call asking me just to “update” some sort of personal information. Still another caller, a day or two ago, was trying to convince me that I have a problem at my bank (one which I do not use, by the way). A few weeks ago a neighbor heard, via phone, that her credit card was stolen and all she had to do to confirm that the card the number was hers. No, no, and no!
Older parents, especially those living alone, need something posted by the phone to remind them about what to do when they answer the phone and discover it is one of these unpleasant and fraudulent phone calls.
Five Telephone Rules for Older Parents and Everyone Else to Keep by the Telephone
(Click here for a PDF of these rules.) Read more »
Google Search Suggestions Support Suicide Prevention
Google Gets It … According to the New York Times, when a person searches with terms that could indicate suicidal thoughts, Google results will automatically include suggestions about suicide prevention, including a hotline telephone number. This policy, thought it cannot respond to every potential end-of-life search term, may make the difference in helping a person decide to live. I’ve pasted in a graphic of the Google response. Bravo! 
When a suicide occurs in a family, it is never really forgotten. On a beautiful April day more than ten years ago, my parents lost a son and I lost my bother to suicide. I read somewhere that in spring, as the days get longer and the flowers come out, people with depression or bi-polar disorders can’t figure out why they are so unhappy. Some of them decide to kill themselves. Recently when my aging parents and I visited my brother’s grave, I realized again how raw the pain is and that while they have moved on in life, the grief continues. How much it has affected their health in subsequent years, I’ll never know.
Thank you Google. If even a few people have second thoughts, an enormous amount of grief and pain will be prevented, especially for aging parents who never stop asking, “Why?”
Geriatrician Crisis in the U.S.
Found this interesting article about the need for geriatrician. Here’s the intro.
“Think about it… If the number of students doubled and the number of teachers didn’t, that would be a problem, right? Well, a parallel to this scenario is actually taking place in the health care world: our elderly population will double by 2030 and the number of geriatrician will remain the same.”
from Baby Boomers Beware: Geriatrician Shortage Could Impact Care
Check out the above article. Here is the link to the home page of the University of South Florida Health website.
For boomers like my husband and me, who are providing ongoing support for aging parents, this is an ominous sign of the future in store for us. I wonder if there will be significant changes in the next 20 years?
Moving Aging Parents, Mother’s Move, Part I: When?
This New York Times article, Deciding on Care for Elderly Parents in Declining Health, made me think about the process my husband and I experienced with his mother following a stroke. This is the first of several postings describing our journey.
Read Part II of Moving Mother Series Part III Part IV
Why/When We Decided to Suggest A Move to Mother
At age 88, after acute care for her stroke and six weeks in a skilled nursing facility, Mother lived independently in her retirement community condominium for over a year. She went to meals in the dining room, and because maid service was provided her apartment was not hard to maintain. Each day lots of activities were scheduled, and because the retirement community ran a home health aide division, we were able to hire people to help as needed.
- A nurse came once weekly to organize Mother’s medications.
- Several times a week a home health aide helped her bathe and ironed Mother’s blouses.
- Occasionally a home health aide sat in the apartment for a few nights at a time when post-stroke fears and visions occurred.
However, over the course of the year things began to change. Read more »
Aging Parents and Dementia: JAMA Study Redux
Wow! I discovered the JAMA article about dementia, hospitalization and the elderly and mentioned it here on the blog several days ago, on March 4, 2010 — before the Vital Signs blog at the NY Times discussed it on March 8th. How exciting to once-in-a-while be ahead of the Times (which by the way I revere)!
However, the Times piece includes far more detail than I reported. If you want to learn more the link will be useful since most people will need to go to a library to look at the JAMA article. I am also adding the Vital Signs link, Aging: Cognitive Decline and Hospitalization, to my dementia resource list.
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 for a while 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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Finalist Again!
