Tag: caregivers

  • Palliative Care – Not Just for the Dying

    I used to think that palliative care was just for people who were dying. Then I found out—about a dozen years ago—that palliative care had expanded its original focus on end-stage cancer patients to include people with serious illness throughout the course of their disease (or diseases). Palliative care, I realized, is far more than…

  • Caring for Nursing Home Patients under Medicare

    What drove me crazy about practicing medicine in a nursing home wasn’t the patients, although with their many medical problems often including cognitive impairment they were a challenge; and it wasn’t the families, though with their anxiety and attentiveness and sometimes their guilt they were an even greater challenge. What drove me crazy about nursing…

  • Living in the Land of Limbo

    This is not an impartial review. I’m a great admirer of Carol Levine’s work on family caregiving. Though we’ve never met in person, Carol has written seven terrific posts for Over 65. But despite my conflict of interest, I guarantee that if you read Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family…

  • Fathers, Sons, and Books

    In November, 2012, I wrote a post about my mother’s hospice care. Mom died peacefully on January 6, 2013 at the age of 93. This post is about my father. Over the past three weeks I have spent more “quality time” with my father than ever before. We have had a lot to review about…

  • Perry’s Graduation

    My granddaughter Perry graduated from high school in June. It was a wonderful event on a beautiful day and she made us proud by winning a prize for her work in the social sciences. What made that event extra special was that she has lived with us for all of her 18 years, and this…

  • Will guilt keep me from doing what is best for my Alzheimer spouse?

    I met Vickie in Your Father’s Mustache, a sing-along place in Greenwich Village 46 years ago.  She had long dark hair and wore a poncho like Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars. She was singing and swaying with such joy. She had the kind of face you could look at the rest of your life. …

  • Dementia and the Goals of Care

    Even though you think and behave perfectly normally, you might already have Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, you might warrant the label of “pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease” for a full 20 years before graduating to the full-fledged condition. That according to the latest definition of Alzheimer’s put forward by the National Institute on Aging together with Alzheimer’s Association…

  • A Retirement Community’s Private and Public Affairs

    Our move from the Washington area to a retirement community in Baltimore called Roland Park Place came five ago when, I was 81 and my wife, Pat, was 80. It was concerns about our health and a concerted push from our seven children that propelled us to decide to move. It had become more noticeable that Pat might have Alzheimer’s. For me,…

  • Who’s Responsible for Granny?

    On July 30, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill that created Medicare, he outlined an ethical vision for the nation’s obligations to its older citizens. “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine,” he said. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have…

  • What it Takes to Age in Place

    Time is measured in many ways. For Jane, the big turkey and overflowing trays of Thanksgiving fixings served up on her long dining room table each year were the indication of how much her family had grown. But this year, her daughter and daughter-in-law handled the side dishes and the turkey had to be delivered,…