Visiting the doctor’s office with an aging parent can be one the most puzzling situations for adult children as they provide increasing support. The dynamics of the situation can be confusing, especially in a time when family roles and responsibilities are changing. My husband visited the doctor with his 90-year-old mother on several occasions. At … Continue reading
Tagged with medical care …
What is a Meta-Analysis and How Does It Help Find Better Information?
If you are researching a course of treatment or a cause of disease for an aging parent, family member, or friend, the chances are that you will read scientific studies. Perhaps you will check PubMed, the National Institutes of Health site that has abstracts of all published scientific research. You can visit the National Library … Continue reading
End-of-Life Documents — Don’t Mess Around
Many years ago, shortly after my daughter was born, my parents asked my husband and me about our will. It turned out, however, that they were less concerned about a will than they were about whether we had signed medical directives or health care proxies that defined what should be done is case one of us, … Continue reading
The Spirit Catches You: Medical and Cultural Misperceptions
For several months I’ve listed Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, as my current read. While the story describes a struggle between a refugee Hmong family with a sick child and the medical world, the book, with its emphasis on cultural assumptions and misperceptions, is well worth the attention of … Continue reading
Another Article on the Geriatrician Shortage
Read the Associated Press article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, about the the shortage of geriatricians. In Boomers’ Aging Casts Light on Geriatrics Shortage, reporter Matt Sedensky describes the increasing shortage of geriatricians –physicians who are trained to treat aging seniors. For those of us who are moving toward retirement, this is a serious problem. Given … Continue reading
How Does One Decide to Stop Getting Medical Tests?
I am astonished at the number of diagnostic tests prescribed for older seniors. When my husband’s mother was 90, she had a gynecological exam — we suggested it and the doctor carried it out — and though I knew the doctor was gentle, Mother cried out because of the discomfort. Afterward we wondered why we put … Continue reading
New CMS Video on Medicare Preventive Benefits
Check it out. Read the CMS press release about preventive benefits.
Washington Post Article on Hospice and Palliative Care
Today’s Washington Post features an article, Progress Needed on End of Life Care, by Janice Lynch Schuster, describing the urgent need for improvements to palliative and hospice care. The article describes the problems that still exist for many patients at the end of their lives who experience unnecessary suffering and pain. I’ve written about our … Continue reading
Aging Parents, Adult Children: Caregiving and Empathy
When you have senior parents who need increasing support, empathy is critical. You try hard, and not always with success, to understand what they are experiencing. That’s called empathy. The concept of empathy has received a bit of a bad rap the past year or two with politicians actually taking the time to deliver statements … Continue reading
Redesigned Medicare Caregiver Site: A Graphical Tour
To discover Medicare and caregiving resources, check out the redesigned caregiving website, debuting Tuesday, April 12, 2011. It’s user-friendly and graphically interesting with a focus on easy information access. At the same time updated site promotes learning, sharing, supporting, and collaborating. Adult children, even if they are not providing a huge amount of caregiving support, would … Continue reading
Medicare Projections: Congressional Budget Office
Read CBO: Seniors Would Pay Much More For Medicare Under Ryan Plan in the Kaiser Health News. A graph using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data depicts the costs to a Medicare beneficiary (what a person will pay) in 2022 and 2030. In the article Congressman Ryan says, “Washington has been making empty promises to Americans from a … Continue reading
The Good Caregiver: Rules of the Road for Adult Children
I have just read The Good Caregiver cover-to-cover. The recently published book, by Robert L. Kane, M.D., is an all-in-one user’s guide with thorough, indexed, and therefore easy-to-find information about every aspect of elderly parent caregiving. Though he is a world-renowned specialist on aging and long-term care (Read Dr. Kane’s faculty bio), and he produces lots of … Continue reading
Will Concierge Medical Practices Cause Medicare Decline?
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
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
Communication is Critical in Aging Adult Health Care
A friend’s 85-year-old mother had surgery requiring two different types of cardiologists. Besides the primary care physician (PCP), her parent was seeing the two heart physicians and two additional specialists for other reasons. When my friend, on a visit to the primary care physician with her mom, asked a question about dizziness and the possibility that … Continue reading
Long-lived Seniors Give Advice to Med Students
A delightful article appearing in the September 7, 2010 Cleveland Plain Dealer describes a panel discussion presented to second year medical students at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Panel members, all in their 90’s, told the medical students what physicians need to do to be more helpful to elderly patients. The article, Elders … Continue reading
Palliative Care on the Diane Rehm Show (NPR)
Listen to an amazing episode of The Diane Rehm Show (NPR) that explores the recent study on palliative care in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Diane’s guests include Dr. Jennifer Temel of the Harvard Medical School, a lead author of the study, and Dr. Diane Meier, who leads the Center to Advance Palliative Care at … Continue reading
End-of-Life Decisions: Article by Dr. Atul Gawande
Dr. Atul Gawande has done it again — writing another compelling and riveting article that everyone will be talking about in the coming weeks. It can be downloaded at The New Yorker website. In Letting Go, published in the August 2, 2010, issue of The New Yorker Magazine, he examines how people make end-of-life decisions and how … Continue reading
Thoughts on Healthy Aging: Boomers and Aging Parents
What can be fixed by a doctor and what can’t be fixed? What can be addressed by medication and what can’t be? We boomers only have to look around to see people we know, or maybe even ourselves, indulging in plastic surgery, tooth whitening and remodeling, and much more. Plus we have access, if we … Continue reading
Hospital Acquired Infections: Kojo Nnamdi Show
The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU in Washington, DC, broadcast a program on hospital acquired infections on Monday, June 28, 2010. Once you go to the program link — it has not yet been posted as a podcast — the part of the program on hospital acquired infections begins at 18:22. Kojo’s guests included:
As Our Parents Age So Do We 