After living happily in their retirement community for nearly fifteen years, my parents were declining. My dad’s memory was weak, and my mom fell frequently. In their nineties, they ate almost every meal in one of the cafes and gradually ceased to use the various gadgets in their lives —the dishwasher, the c-pap mask, the humidifier, etc. Using … Continue reading
Filed under Giving Up Activities … Like Driving …
Why I Disappeared from Blogging During My Parents Last Years of Life
Well, I thought that, given the support of my two parents throughout my years of blog writing on As Our Parents Age, I would keep writing until the end of their lives. However, it was not to be. I found that I wanted to protect them and help them live their last years in private. … Continue reading
The Things Not Forgotten: 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
Read More on Green House® Homes
I’ve just read the post, Two New Green House Stories, over at Allen Power’s blog. His post tells a story that illustrates how Green House® “at home” expectations and environment make an enormous qualitative difference for an aging senior. And be sure to read far enough along to get to the mattress anecdote — it ‘s a hoot. … Continue reading
Dementia, Assistive Technology, and the Telephone Search
As Mother’s dementia progressed, her ability to do basic tasks, the activities of daily living, decreased. Using the telephone, a critical communication activity, was increasingly difficult. Thus we were always on the lookout for a phone that required her to do less but enabled her to communicate and hear more. Over time she progressed from the regular … Continue reading
ADL’s and IADL’s: What’s the Difference?
Links to other postings about ADL’s are at the bottom. In an earlier post I was not as accurate as I should have been about activities of daily living. The functional tasks in the daily lives of older seniors are divided into two parts, activities of daily living (ADL’s) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL’s).
As Our Parents Age So Do We 