Inside Aging Parent Care

Sisterhood and Brain Health for Recovering Caregivers

By Carol December 20th, 2011

Once we got our new iPad email working and used the Photo Booth app to take some funny pictures of ourselves, we wondered what to do next with our intriguing Little Buddy. The problem is not a scarcity of possibilities. According to official Apple sources, there are over 140,000 iPad apps available—many of them free. Too many to sort through on our own.

No problem. Sister Judi–an iPhone owner and aficionado—to the rescue. She undertook to coach me in advanced techniques of using the “Home” button and also suggested a few challenging and enlightening apps. High on our list are Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. I also learned that she is the creator of her own app—Smart Tot Rattle!

Her next move was to challenge me to a game of Words with Friends.

I’m …

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My Elderly Father's Change Of Heart

By Carol October 4th, 2011

I am excited to realize that we have been publishing Inside Aging Parent Care for a year and a half now. In celebration of this most recent anniversary, here is our very first post:

For many of us, it begins with a phone call. In our case, the call came from my 89 year old father late in the spring of 2008. He had been released from Waterman Hospital after his third bout with pneumonia a few weeks earlier. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “why am I here when you are there?”

We had often encouraged Dad to consider moving from his home at an assisted living facility in Central Florida to join us in Denver where Bill and I have lived for the past twenty years. Up until now he had always resisted …

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Caregivers and Their Aging Parent Plan Ahead

By Carol May 15th, 2011

Were we smart or lucky? Looking back, I’m just not sure. Either way a little bit of preplanning made a big difference when Dad took a fall one night in his pleasant Florida patio home where he lived alone after our stepmother Elizabeth died.

We were smart when we hired a geriatric care manager, the amazing Elinor Gorgas of Central Florida Medical Legal Consulting, to look in on Dad every month or so. She advised us on his present needs and future needs that might arise. So, just in case, we toured a few of the local assisted living communities in the area on one of our visits.

Dad wasn’t ready to move then, and we did not belabor the point with him that staying in his home might not be forever. The day …

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Inside the Assisted Living Experience

By Carol May 3rd, 2011

Dad chose assisted living after a serious fall at home left him on the floor overnight. He had just come through a difficult rainy season when he weathered three hurricanes in two months time. The downside of living alone had never been more apparent to him.

First thing that morning he told his home health aide he was ready to move and by evening she and her husband had him ensconced in his new studio apartment up the hill at Laurel Springs. Bill and I arrived the next day to help him get settled in. Although I know he wavered about his decision more than once, I was proud and relieved that he chose his own safety and made the decision for himself.

Dad lived at Laurel Springs for a few years …

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Caregiving is Transforming

By Bill April 21st, 2011

I have a lot of experience as caregiver. Carol and I were long-distance caregivers while Frank was still living in Florida then were with him after he moved to Colorado. Many previous posts here document his last months and death. I was briefly an inept caregiver for my father in the two weeks from a heart attack until his death. More recently, I was caregiver for Steve after major surgery. I also act as caregiver for a relative and have been doing so for some time.

All this caregiving has transformed me. I spent much of my early life dedicated to myself. I sought gratification in many ways and always went away dissatisfied. Always a seeker, I sometimes found temporary answers but they didn’t last.

My change began with Carol. I knew from …

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