How to Handel "End of Driving'"

A dear friend recently shared with me her struggles in getting her mother to realize she is no longer safe driving. She shared with me a time her mother borrowed a car from a family member to use while she was away and within a week of having the car her mother had a wreck. Fortunately she was safe but the car was not. Hoping this would be a wakeup call for her mother she addressed the issue with her mother again and still she was unwilling to give up her driver’s license.

Read How to Handel the End of Driving

Living with Elderly Parents:What have I gotten myself into?

You did it, didn't you? You promised, long ago when your dad died, that you'd take care of Mom and she'd never have to go to a nursing home. You promised Mom – after her visit to a nursing home, one of the worst in the state, to visit a friend – that she'd never have to go to a care facility of any kind.
No, you would always take care of her. After all, she always cared for you. Or, even though she wasn't a very good mother, and you never really got along, one cares for one's own, right? Or, your mother was pretty healthy and doing okay and you were divorced and trying to take care of two children, so you moved in with your mother. She cared for the kids for awhile, but then began showing signs of strange behavior. You feared for your kids, your mother and yourself. "What have I gotten myself into?" You thought.
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When a Home Can be a Hazard

People want to stay in their own homes. You hear it and read about it all the time. And there's some merit to that. Most of us can relate to the fact that relocating is emotionally charged. Add the fact that our parents get sick and tired of suffering the indignities of aging and often feel bossed around by everyone from the government to their kids, and you can understand why they often get stubborn. Where they live may be, in their minds, their "last stand."
Many elders do well in their homes. They graciously accept the help they need, have cleaning people come in, and are even able to throw away the old newspapers that are piling up in the corner. They are content with adding some safety measures and feel cozy with a bit of clutter.
Then there's the other side. Many seniors are living in the same home they raised their children in. These homes are modest, but worked well for raising their family and even for the early empty nest years. Often, however, they are two-story cottages, with the bedrooms and the only bathroom up a long flight of stairs. They have small closets and full basements, generally stuffed to the rafters with things they've forgotten but feel they can't live without.
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In an Assisted Living but Not Social?

Sally has lived in her home for 60+ years with the love of her life Edward. After Edward’s passing, Sally remained in their home but no longer goes out because during her marriage Edward did most of the driving and she is uncomfortable behind the wheel. Her friends who used to come around are slowly dying or moving off to be with family. Now suddenly, Sally feels alone for the first time in her life. Sally's family notices the change in her social behaviors and recommends that she move to a senior community where she would have more opportunities socialize. After the move however, Sally's family notices she is not taking part in activities and has maintained in her 'hermit-like’ ways despite the high level of social opportunities. But why?

Having worked in the senior living industry for some time, this is a story I am quite familiar with. Some may blame the elder for not taking advantage of her surroundings, others blame the community for not having enough going on, while others search for a medical diagnosis and miracle prescription drug to solve the issues. What can we do to help?

Read More about ways to Encourage Elders to Be Social

Gardens as Medicine

The Healing Garden at Massachusetts General Hospital. (Photo courtesy Mass General)
Want to feel better? Think nature. Healing gardens are a growing trend. Many major medical centers, including the 6,300-square-foot rooftop garden at the Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care, part of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the NIH Clinical Center, and long-term care facilities, are adding them. And so are homeowners.
The basic elements of a healing or therapeutic garden include:

• Plants and wildlife
• Walkways
• Private sitting areas
• Shade
• A water feature

Most are outdoors. Some have raised planters so patients and family members can plant, weed, and work the garden. Sometimes they have medicinal herbs, such as primrose or foxglove.
Scientists say natural settings can lower stress, blood pressure and heart rate, and muscle tension and negative thoughts. The idea is that lowering stress can boost the immune system and speed healing.
Physicians at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida realized that some patients who could see—they didn’t even have to be in—the hospital garden had less pain, needed fewer medications and had shorter stays than patients without a garden view. I don’t know how they figured that out, but what an endorsement!
The gardens’ restorative and medicinal benefits have many converts: substance abuse, pediatric, burn, HIV/AIDS, hospice, cancer, stroke, brain injury, psychiatric, and dementia patients.
But they’re really intended for a wider audience: not just patients, but visitors, family members waiting for surgery to be over, exhausted caregivers, and staff looking for a breather. Some support groups meet in healing gardens.
How come it took so long for us to catch on? They’ve been around forever from the Middle Ages to ancient Egypt and Greece to Japan (as in Zen gardens). In 1879, Friends Hospital in Philadelphia started a program for psychiatric patients who staff noticed were acting calmer after being in the ground gardens.
Don’t have a healing garden? Relax! Here’s what you can do:

1. Create your own mini-garden. Even on a city balcony, you can have an area of plants. You don’t need all of the features (water, pathways, private sitting areas) to have a lovely oasis.
2. Have land and want a more professional therapeutic garden? Use a landscape architect.
3. Call medical centers and ask if they have gardens. Go visit. If you’re considering a home mini-version, see what you like and what you don’t like. Or just enjoy.
4. The next time you’re visiting a relative or friend in long-term care, take them outside. If there are gardens and pathways on the grounds, hang out there awhile. Walking around the grounds is good exercise for both of you.
5. If there’s no formal healing garden that you know of, don’t sweat it. Head to your local park or arboretum.

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Accepting the Need for Hospice Care

Beth's mothers is in her 80's, and has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She also suffers from mid-stage dementia. A friend of her's received wonderful care from an area hospice, and would like to see her mother have that kind of care. The problem  is making herself go through the process. Beth's mom knows that hospice means she has been designated terminally ill, though they don’t know how cognitively aware she’ll be when Beth puts everything in place. Beth know's Hospice is right for her mother, but she is still struggling with it.
Read about accepting the fact that our parent is nearing death:

Siblings Caring for Aging Parents

Jamie, Tracey, Billie, and Terry all love their parents Bill and Geneva, but after their mom Geneva's recent hospitalization, Terry and Jamie felt it was time for their parents to make the move to a senior living community that offered more assistance to the both of them. However, Billie felt that their mom and dad could still live at home with minimal assistance, while Tracy thought they needed to move in with her. Sounds like a mess huh?

Read more about siblings caring for aging loved ones 

Read what happens when sibling disagree on Care

Dr. Bill Thomas and Alive Inside...Wow!

Keeping Retired Elders Active Can Avoid Depression

Rob is a music minster at a local church. One year he decided to start a choir that featured older retired seniors. He then decided they would rehearse each week during the day, thinking that retired meant that the seniors weren't doing anything. So began his search for choir members. Most seniors found it easy to fit choir rehearsals into their schedule, however, Rob was surprised when he received a call from an elder neamed Betty. Betty, an active church member, told Rob she simply could not join his choir. Rob trying his best to be helpful said, "if driving's the problem I can pick you up." Betty then replied "No Rob I between my dance class, volunteering at the hospital, shuttling my grandkids to practice, teaching bible study, along with my commitments at the community center I just cant fit you in!'

The old model of retirement living, painted a picture of front porch swings and sunsets. However with a new generation of retiree's we are finding the old model is not enough. Read how caregivers are keeping the seniors in their lives active and how important this is in avoiding depression.

Balance an Elder's Sense of Purpose and Dignity with Their Safety

By Carol Bradley Bursack

Seniors need to feel useful, by doing activities and hobbies they enjoy. When should caregivers interfere if they see danger in elders' activities?

Joe was in his 80s and lived in his own home. He was my first care receiver. Joe was totally deaf, so to communicate with each other, he spoke and I wrote on a large legal pad. 

One day, when I hurried into his house through the back door at my usual visiting time, I sensed something odd. Generally, Joe would be sitting at his kitchen table waiting for me. This time, there was no sign of him.

I ran down the basement steps, since he'd fallen down there before. No Joe. Then, back upstairs, I heard a rustling noise coming from his bedroom. There was Joe, whose gait on a flat surface was wobbly at best, standing halfway up a metal ladder. He was jabbing, with needle-nose pliers, at a light fixture in his closet. There was no bulb in the fixture and the electricity was on. Dangerous territory. Joe saw me and gleefully screeched, "Hold the ladder, honey! I'll be down in a minute."

Needless to say, I was frantic. I grabbed the tablet and wrote in big letters "GET DOWN!" He just laughed. This scene ended with me turning off the fuses in the fuse box so he wouldn't electrocute himself. He eventually tottered down off the ladder and we had some laughs. Joe couldn't understand why I was upset. He was just trying to fix the light. It was his house, after all.

A question on the AgingCare.com forum brought this scene back to my thoughts. The person wrote, "My 81-year-old father still thinks he can do handyman duties around the house (including climbing ladders, using power tools, etc.) How do I convince him this is dangerous and he must stop?"

Indeed. How do we get elders to stop doing "handyman" tasks, doing yard work that should be hired out or even extensive kitchen work? Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning. If a person has no purpose in life, why go on living? For elders whose bodies – and sometimes minds – seem to betray them more each day, this becomes an issue.

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National Alzheimer's Plan Unveiled

As part of the government’s national plan, unrolled today, to fight Alzheimer’s, is a new Department of Health and Human Services caregiver website, www.alzheimers.gov.

Along with information (legal, financial, medical), resources, strategies for dealing with daily challenges, and tools and links, the government website has a caregiver section with tips for caring for yourself as well as video conversations with caregivers.

This site stems from the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA), which President Obama signed in January 2011. Many specifics of the plan, crafted with input from aging and Alzheimer’s experts, were unveiled today.

The collaborative approach to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s involves federal, state, private and non-profit groups. The national plan is geared to support research, and inform and educate clinicians, caregivers, and the public.

To further rev up results, the president’s proposed FY 2013 budget provides a $100 million increase for Alzheimer’s, including $10.5 million in caregiver support.

Currently, 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s or other dementias, and the rate is rapidly rising as the country’s 78 million baby boomers age.

Besides the website, more highlights of the NAPA plan include:

• The funding of two clinical trials by the National Institutes of Health that will use new technologies and approaches in clinical testing. The aim: to come up with novel ways to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s.
• Monies through geriatric education centers to train healthcare providers to better recognize and manage Alzheimer’s.
• A TV media campaign launching this summer to reach family members and anyone else who needs information on Alzheimer’s and dementia.

The caregiving component of the NAPA plan is further recognition that caregivers are also deeply impacted by the Alzheimer’s diagnosis and need support, too.

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A Culture Change is Coming to Texas

 In the United States a movement has begun that is changing the way long term care communities are being operated. This exciting culture change has taken off across the country and is slowing making its way into long term care institutions of Texas. The Eden Alternative model revolves around creating human habitats that promote growth and purpose for both Elders and their caregivers. 

          It all started when the founder, Dr. Bill Thomas, began serving as a local nursing home doctor. As he was making his rounds one day, he asked one of his aging patients if there was anything he could do for her today. Her response was, “Doctor, I’m so lonely!” He went home that night and scanned every medical index in existence in search of a treatment for loneliness, but there was nothing. The following day, Dr. Thomas went to the nursing home and observed the environment. What he saw were his Elders suffering – not from physical ailments but from plagues of the human spirit: loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. He began to imagine a different kind of world … a place where humans could actually live and not sit around waiting to die. And so began the story of The Eden Alternative.

The core concept of The Eden Alternative is simple. Through a set of principles and training strategies, this alternative can help transform the places where Elders live, and create places where these Elders will live and thrive.

Currently there are over 300 communities nationwide that have qualified as Eden Registered homes. Texas, however, is home to only three of these Eden homes. In Flower Mound Texas, there is a community that has recently began their Eden journey  in hopes of becoming the only registered Eden Alternative assisted living in the entire state. Kim Geron, the Administrator at Flower Mound Assisted Living said, “When I personally began looking for a home for my aging parents, it became very clear to me that these senior ‘institutions’ were just that … institutions. Institution being a word that is commonly associated with white walls and locked doors. I knew they deserved more! The Eden Alternative is an amazing culture change that was developed to give Elders the kind of life they deserve. A life that is full of purpose, meaning, spontaneity, laughter, companionship, and growth.  Just because you become older, doesn’t mean you are done living.”

Flower Mound Assisted living is hosting a training for anyone interested in becoming an Eden Associate on June 12^th, 13th, and 14^th at their community. They are inviting leadership teams, organizations, and anyone along the entire care continuum, who are interested in initiating a positive culture change and journey into their organization, to please join them. If you would like information on this exciting training opportunity, contact Tiffany Smith at 972-539-9444 or on their website at flowermoundalf.com.

Helping Aging Parents (and Ourselves) Avoid Scams

Read the FBI senior fraud prevention suggestions.

Read Prime Targets for Spam Artists, Paula Span’s April 20, 2012 column over at the New Old Age Blog. The fact that victims may not report fraud due to embarrassment is troubling and of special concern to adult children. Span posted her second column on the topic, with fraud fighting suggestions, on Monday, April 23, 2012,

In response to the huge number of phone calls and strange e-mails received by my parents and my husband’s parents, I’ve written a number of times about scams and seniors. Our family’s most irritating scam interactions are the phone calls made by Rachel at credit card services, though I suspect “she” has changed her name, given the large amount of venting about these calls on the web.

To learn more you can read some of my past blog posts about scams.

• Scams and Seniors
• Scans and Seniors Redux 
• Scams of Springtime
• Seniors: Avoid Fraud Online
• Protecting Aging Parents from Telephone Fraud – 5 Tips

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Alive Inside: Brings Music to Elders with Alzheimer's