Caregiver Lessons

The Wrong Signals: Shutting Down Change Before It Starts


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How do we help our aging parents consider making positive changes in their lives? We want to help, and feel we have good ideas that could improve their quality of life. For example, we would like for them to consider:…

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Seeking Forgiveness: Linda Kriger


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This deeply moving article by Linda Kriger was published in 2008: http://www.forward.com/articles/14255/ I have read and reread this tale of estrangement, bitterness, regret, and the search for “repair” because I heard endless versions of it from friends, colleagues, clients, and…

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Navigating Caregiver Dilemmas


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As the drama of aging parents unfolds, it reveals itself as layers of interconnected dilemmas that resist heroic attempts to keep everything together. Like an unruly Rubik’s Cube, alignment in one caregiver area seems to trigger chaos in another. Just…

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I Don’t Need Assisted Living!


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An older adult is ready to move into an independent living community and undergoes a “pre-placement” health assessment by the facility’s physician. Based on the findings, the physician indicates that the older adult “needs assisted living.” The older adult and…

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Conflicting Layers of Longevity


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As boomers approach the outskirts of being old, a new aging dilemma is beginning to emerge: simultaneous developmental phases with their aging parents. It is one thing to be fifty-something and have aging parents in their mid to late seventies.…

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The Transitional Care Dilemma: Good News


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Sooner or later aging parents get swept into the complex currents of transitional healthcare. It may be a simple back and forth between the primary care provider and one or more specialist, or it could be a major health setback…

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Pulling the Cardiac Plug


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Even the best laid plans of aging can fall apart. Katy Butler’s recent article in The New York Times, What Broke My Father’s Heart, tells a painful tale of the unwanted impact of medical technology in the last and most…

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When Am I Going Home From The Nursing Home?


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This is one of the predictable dilemmas of aging we all wish we could avoid. We can’t. At some point we run out of aging-in-place options and a parent winds up in a place they never wanted to be, a…

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Hospital Quicksand: Words Are Not Enough


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I was asked for suggestions on how to help seniors preserve control in a hospital setting where all control quickly vanishes. Interesting question I thought. What would make things better? And then I remembered David. David is a friend of…

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Caregiver Stress? Try Inspirational Walking


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Caregiver stress is well documented and extracts a heavy toll on both caregivers and their families. In the heat of trying to keep everything together, it is hard for caregivers to find effective strategies that offer some respite from the…

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