David Solie’s blog

The Delirium Epidemic in Hospitalized Older Adults

“Medical care has evolved to be absolutely inhumane to older people.” Sharon Inouye, MD Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Hospital-induced delirium, the sudden disruption of consciousness and cognition marked by vivid hallucinations and an inability to focus, affects 7…

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Wisdom Cards

Aging Parents Dance Cards are a deck of the 20 cards designed for anyone involved in the care of an older adult. Each card is an aphorism I created on a topic, issue, or situation common to the caregiving experience.…

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Higher Levels of Depression in Married Caregivers

“We also found that caregivers who are married and caring for a family member with a diagnosis other than cancer, such as Alzheimer’s disease, had higher levels of depression,” says Debra Parker-Oliver, professor of family and community medicine at the…

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Home Unfurnishing Your Parent’s Stuff

This is an excellent article by Richard Eisenberg that offers eight strategies for systematically paring down the stuff of aging parents that apparently nobody wants. It’s a necessary but ultimately awkward ritual of sorting with an eye towards aggressively casting…

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Augmented Eternity: Ready or Not

Read this amazing and disturbing article by Adrienne Matei that is published in “Quartz” entitled Beyond The Grave Technology is rewriting yet another chapter in the book on death. In addition to forestalling physical death with machines that can breath…

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A New Set Design for Nursing Homes

This is a fascinating innovation in the physical design of a nursing home. Forget the clinical model of mini-hospitals and consider bringing the outside inside with a neighborhood look and feel. How comforting to have a front porch with your…

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Geriatric Depression Scale

Despite how older adults are depicted in the popular media, depression is not a natural part of aging. As important, with proper recognition and treatment depression can be reversible. That’s the good news. The bad news is that left left…

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The Ceremony of the Shoes

Embedded in the living towards the end lies a narrative about love under fatal duress. It is a space that refines courage and fosters an unexpected elegance. Frannie Lindsay’s poem below is about how this elegance, born of love and…

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Aging Parents Dance Cards 17-20

Below are the titles and graphics for Aging Parents Dance Cards 17-20. Whether heading to their home, the hospital or the telephone, Aging Parents Dance Cards offer adult children access to good caregiving ideas when they’re needed most. Sets of…

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