Inside Aging Parent Care

On Senior Health Care

By Bill March 29th, 2012

Pneumonia

A few observations and ideas regarding health care for aging parents and elders:

1. What is it about the medical assistants and nurses in the doctor’s office who do not tell you what your vital sign numbers are? Must we ask for such basic information?

2. Cholesterol and statin (Lipitor and generics) medication. After retiring last year, I switched to the VA for my medications. That also means a couple of appointments per year with a primary care physician (PCP), free immunizations, and free lab work.

I have been taking statins to keep my cholesterol under control for a number of years. My VA PCP looked at my numbers and took me off Lovastatin, the drug I have been on for most of the time. Well, OK, let’s see what the numbers look …

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We Just Want You to Be Safe

By Bill March 8th, 2012

Emerging Into Life

When Carol and Judi’s father Frank was discharged from the hospital after one of his bouts of pneumonia he was sent to a nursing home instead of back to his assisted living facility. The nursing home was part of the same chain as the assisted living facility, but a stay in the nursing home meant increased revenue with double billing, or so we have always suspected.

We saw that Frank’s care was not any better in the nursing home than in his own room at assisted living, and asked that he be transferred back to assisted living. The social worker and the physical therapists were opposed, saying “we just want you to be safe”.

Frank was essentially bedridden, so safety was not much of an issue at that time. Safety …

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Caregiving: What’s in It for Me?—Redux

By Carol February 19th, 2012

I’ve been poking around the blog this week pulling out a few posts to use as a basis for a submission to a local writing contest. In the process I came across a post that I wrote about a year after Dad’s death. I like it so much that I think it’s worth re-posting. So here it is

Exploring the Gifts of Caregiving

Caregiving can be hard. Really, really hard. As Bill has said, it can feel a lot like rolling a boulder up a steep hill only to have it plunge back down to the bottom over and over again. I have also heard caregivers describe the job as an endless roller coaster ride or a long slog through a muddy marsh in the rain.

Part of what makes caregiving so challenging is …

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What is the Caregiver’s Role in an Aging Parent’s Death?

By Carol November 20th, 2011

My dad, Frank, died over a year ago at the age of 91. When he finally came to live in Denver two years before his death, I thought I would be able to help him have a better life, a happier old age. It turned out that the real job was to support him while he moved closer and closer to death.

As the days of his life grew shorter, my confusion multiplied. As much I knew he would die one day, I was caught up in Dad’s insistence that he would live to be “at least” 100. I think it seemed easier to accept this idea than to understand that death was creeping nearer to us with every passing day.

The last days and weeks of Dad’s life were very difficult for all …

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Respite Care

By Bill November 3rd, 2011

Independence Monument

Respite care for caregivers is a broad definition that boils down to “Give me a break!” Caregivers do direct care for their elder, cook, clean, run errands, provide transportation,entertain, deal with the medical system, agonize over finances, and a myriad of other tasks. This is more than a 24/7 job. It is all-consuming. The caregiver has to get away at times to relax, recharge, enjoy something, fight with the siblings, and collapse. That is respite.

Judi wrote a post about the new VA respite care program. It seems the VA is a pioneer in providing low cost respite care for caregivers. The private sector also has a broad range of respite care programs, but at a significant cost. Most communities have senior day care programs.

That is about it. Most caregivers, …

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