After I my recent post on hospital induced delirium, people begin chatting with me, unsolicited, about their elderly parents’ hospital experiences. Admitting an aging parent to a hospital appears to instill significant anxiety and resignation in adult children. The spontaneous conversations usually focused on the ways that hospitals, despite commitment to good medical practices, cheerful … Continue reading
Funerals, Memorial Services, Cocktail Parties & Other Ways to Say Goodbye
I’ve attended two farewell cocktail parties in the past two years, both scheduled as a substitute for aging parent funerals. Another friend invited everyone to a ballgame to celebrate a parent’s life with a memorial picnic afterward. And most recently I attended an engaging theatre production to honor a deceased friend. While some of these … Continue reading
Can We PLEASE Stop Using the Word FACILITY? Redux
(An older post from 2015 that I’d like to share again.) On a daily basis I hear people use the word facility, and it’s almost always modified by the adjectives such as assisted living, nursing, and care. I’ll stand in the supermarket line and overhear a conversation between two people about moving a frail relative into a … Continue reading
Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory: A Review
My husband and I have now offered support and reassurance to four older parents with memory loss. While each individual has experienced some type of dementia, all at fairly advanced ages, each of their situations has been unique. Each time the assistance we offered to our parents depended upon putting together a fairly complex puzzle … Continue reading
Oh Shenandoah National Park, We Love to Visit You
Next summer my parents will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. Newly married in 1949, they first visited the Shenandoah National Park during their honeymoon, and have since returned on their 40th, 50th, 60th, 65th anniversaries. We have the photos to prove it. My family members hope that we will all be able to help them … Continue reading
The Increasing Cost of Assisted Living
An interesting article, Why Aging Middle-class People Can’t Afford Assisted Living, recently appeared at Philly.com, the online site of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Writer Stacey Burling describes research published by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a project that examined the future challenges of paying for the costs of assisted living, especially for … Continue reading
On Caregiving & Considering My Own Late Years of Life
Every time I chat with my friends and colleagues who are helping parents navigate through their older elderhood years, one person or another inevitably makes a comment about how easy it is and yes, a bit nerve-wracking, to picture being in the same fragile position as their parents. No one disputes that we all age. … Continue reading
Older Elders and the End of Life
If you are an adult child with ninetysomething parents, you are probably familiar with the drill. Like me you may receive phone calls from an elderly parent a couple of times each week, usually asking a question, describing a problem, or just expressing anxiety. Or you may hear from caregivers about a problem — a … Continue reading
More on Fraudulent Phone Calls and Scams
I do not think a week goes by when one of my elderly parents doesn’t mention a strange phone call. They are always disconcerting and often scary, and older adult are prime targets. An excellent article, Die, Robocalls, Die: A How-to Guide to Stop Spammers and Extract Revenge, appeared this week in the Washington Post. The … Continue reading
Is Forgetting Really Forgetting?
Last summer I went off to part one of my scheduled yearly Medicare Wellness Visit the same morning I had an unscheduled visit to the dentist for an unexpected root canal. At the Primary Care Practice where I go, my physician divides the visit into two parts. The first part was with a physician’s assistant … Continue reading
Not Forgetting: A Road to Elder Loneliness & Isolation
Loss of connections, associations, and skills, that at one time were easy, seems to exacerbate cognitive decline in older elders because many are aware of what is happening. I’ve now closely observed five elderly family members move through late-in-life years, four of them having lived into their 90s with two of them still living. Four … Continue reading
Older Elders, Adult Children & THE CAR
At what point do you encourage or insist that parents in their late 80s and early 90s stop driving? Every adult child speaks quietly and with angst about this aging parent car conundrum. Almost no one is satisfied with the end result. It seems to be a painful, no-win dilemma in just about every family. More … Continue reading
The Courtesy of a Starbucks Barista With an Older Elder
The woman, an older elder, moved slowly with her shopping cart, using it as a support as well as a receptacle for her groceries. She had placed a few things in the cart when she noticed the Starbucks and pushed her cart over to order a cup of coffee. My husband and I were just approaching … Continue reading
Antibiotics and Elders
This article about antibiotics and older adults appeared in the March 15, 2019 New York Times. While these medications cure bacterial infections, many antibiotics cause side effects that can be especially pronounced for older seniors, so they should be prescribed carefully and avoided when possible. The article, written by Paula Spann, interviews geriatric physicians, lists some … Continue reading
Being Retired and Supporting Elderly Parents
At least once a week my day belongs to my mom and dad. We leave our house early and drive the 100 miles to their home. We visit and always have lunch together in their community dining room or at a local restaurant. Sometimes all of us attend a special event in their retirement community. … Continue reading
Dad Just Needed an Old-Fashioned Radio
I wondered whether memories and information about the older model radio, a type that he used many years ago, might be stored in his long-term memory and make a similar radio easy to use. If I was right, he might automatically turn the dial and get his music. Continue reading
FaceTime: I Feel Like I’m Right There Watching Him Grow
The first time I set up a FaceTime call between my parents and their adult granddaughter, I was astonished at just how much my parents, sitting in their apartment, enjoyed just waving and watching, while letting my daughter do all the talking. That was nearly four years ago when my daughter was pregnant and had … Continue reading
Elders’ Tech Skills Require Lots of Practice: 7 Recommendations
So your older aging parent really wants to get going with a digital device? If so, please think carefully about the learning process. In a well-known New York City joke about Carnegie Hall, someone asks a cab driver, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Without missing a beat the answer is “Practice, practice, practice.” This … Continue reading
Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, and the Miracle of Music
Click to purchase this amazing CD at Amazon. We were driving home from a delightful lunch at a Thai restaurant — my husband, me, and my mother and dad. In one of those quirks of the digital age, my iPhone connected with the car’s bluetooth function, and suddenly the car was filled with music. We … Continue reading
Every 19 Minutes A Person in the U.S. Dies from a Fall…
Check out Jane Brody’s February 25, 2019 New York Times health column Falls Can Kill You, Here’s How to Minimize the Risk. I’ve already put the most shocking information — a person dying from a fall every 19 minutes — in the title of this post. Brody talks about the dangers of falls for older … Continue reading
