Read High-end Medical Option Prompts Medicare Worries, an article posted by the Associated Press today (April 2, 2011). The article, by health reporter Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar, examines the increasing number of practices that are moving toward concierge medicine (also called retainer-based physician practices). Concerns abound about how this might affect the access to care by Medicare beneficiaries. Although … Continue reading
Filed under aging parents …
Why We Will Pay for the Digital NY Times
Posts on As Our Parent Age sometimes recommend or feature links to New York Times articles. For complicated topics, articles from the Times as well as other newspapers may provide background or additional information, adding texture to a post (as do other newspaper stories). It’s been many years since we’ve had a paper edition of the New York … Continue reading
Just Die Already???
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 … Continue reading
Caregiving and Mobile Technology: We Need to Learn More
Mobile technology is moving into our lives — whether it’s the phone we carry, the newspaper we read, the heart monitor we must wear for a few days, the smart pass we use at tollbooths, or the gadget that helps to monitor a senior parent with balance issues but who lives alone. Increasingly, mobile gadgets … Continue reading
Aging Arthritis Patients Should Keep Moving
I’ve observed quite a few people, seniors and not quite seniors, who are diagnosed with arthritis and then gradually slow down and stop moving. They stop climbing stairs and taking walks. According to a recent study this may be precisely the wrong thing to do. In 2000 the Department of Health and Human Services came … Continue reading
Teens Mentoring Seniors and Mobile Phones
Saw this article, Want to Know What Your Cell Phone Can Do? Ask a Teenager, published in a Patch.com Reston,Virginia edition. The article describes how middle and high school students, from schools in the Reston, Virginia area, volunteered to be cell phone tutors with seniors, showing the elders how to use mobile phone features such … Continue reading
Friends or Friends of Friends: What’s the Difference?
Many of our senior parents use Facebook, and they are having great fun. However it’s important to help them understand the importance of carefully accepting friends. Seniors need to understand that strangers should never be accepted as electronic friends, and understanding the difference between “friends” and “friends of friends” is critical. The potential for privacy … Continue reading
Does Parental Longevity Predict How Long We Live?
Those of us with parents who are living long and rich lives tend to assume that we have inherited their genes and therefore possess the capacity to live at least almost as long. However, a recently published study in the Journal of Internal Medicine, published by the Karolinska Institute (a Swedish NIH), questions that assumption. … Continue reading
Different People – Different Dementias
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a March 14, 2011 article, The Many Faces of Dementia which describes different types of the brain diseases as well as the importance of accurately and carefully diagnosing the type of brain abnormality that is affecting each person. Collecting information for a diagnosis involves not only the physician and patient, … Continue reading
Senior Emergency Centers at Hospitals
If you have taken aging parents for a noisy, confusing, not to mention long, emergency visit, you will want to keep well-informed about hospitals that are developing facilities expressly tailored to seniors. Yesterday, March 14, 2011, The New York Times New Old Age Blog posted an article, Emergency Rooms Built With the Elderly in Mind. … Continue reading
Health Reform Law Quiz from Kaiser Family Foundation
Foes of the new health care law spend a good deal of time circulating misinformation. To check your knowledge of the health reform law take this quiz at the Kaiser Family Foundation website. After you take the quiz, share it with others, to see if they really have accurate information. And don’t forget to see … Continue reading
Aging and Decision-Making
No matter how old we are, making decisions and choices can be more difficult when we are presented with lots of options. As we age, we may take more time to make decisions compared to our children or grandchildren, and the situation can become a source of frustration for family members. Read Why It Takes So … Continue reading
As We Age: Keeping In-Touch with Tech Changes
A couple of weeks ago in my post, A Gardening Product for Everyone but Great for Seniors, I wrote about a gardener’s product that I discovered — one that was modular and light-weight, thus making it easier for me to continue creating flower and herb gardens without all of the heavy lifting. The product was … Continue reading
Does Part D Stand for Deficit? Read Medicare and More Column
Many of us appear to want to as much as we can get without planning or paying for it. We hate taxes, but we want a lot done for us anyway. A distant relative says about Medicare, “I deserve every penny I get, I paid for it.” My answer, yes she deserves every penny she … Continue reading
Are Robots an Answer to Caregiving Needs?
Read Does Seamus the Robot Care for Me at the Albany Times Union. The February 27, 2011 article, by Michael Brannigan, explores the use of robots for elder caregiving. Brannigan references Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Ourselves, a recently published book that explores the ever-changing degrees … Continue reading
A Garden Product for Everyone — But Great for Seniors
Since we’ve been helping our parents with various tasks, we are keenly aware that some products might as well have the words AGING (or aged) etched into them. Since I avidly read posts from the MIT Age Lab, AgeTek, Laurie Orlov’s Aging in Place Technology Watch, and Eric Dishman, I know that new products aimed exclusively at “old people” … Continue reading
Brain 101 for Seniors and Adult Children
If someone in our families experiences a brain disease — depression, stroke, dementia, Alzheimer’s — the illnesses transport us into the complex world of neurons, plasticity, neurotransmitters, serotonin, hemispheres, and much more. Despite all that is known, the large and complex organ that determines who we are and how we think is a foreign universe. Even the … Continue reading
iPad for Dad, #17: Who’s Managing Dad’s iPad?
Last April, when I purchased Dad’s birthday iPad, I set it up to download and sync on my computer. For the past ten months I have updated the iPad and kept track of apps they might like, downloading applications when I visit. Things have been just peachy. Until now. This past Saturday when I was … Continue reading
Is Your Senior Parent a Library Devotee?
Memories from the not-too-distant past … Early this week, on a tour of the Library of Congress (LOC), I took this picture of the pre-electronic era card catalog area. I also found these statistics posted by the LOC librarians on a nearby wall. Most of our parents know how to use card catalogs backwards and … Continue reading
Our Aging Parents: Looking Out With the Same Eyes …
On Sundays I love to read the longer wedding stories that appear in The New York Times and the Washington Post. The Times story on Dorothy Furlong, age 75, and Charlie Hall, age 80, caught my eye for a number of reasons, not the least of them being the opportunity to read wonderful and romantic late-in-life … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 