Dear Carol: My 88-year-old father lives with me. I’m divorced and have a teenage son at home. My son has some responsibilities regarding my dad, his grandfather, who had dementia, and this is causing problems between us. I feel so torn between the two. Any advice? Teen’s Mom Dear Teen’s Mom: Making choices between the needs of our children Read more →
When my dad needed to move into a local nursing home because brain surgery backfired, leaving him with severe dementia, I learned a great deal about different types of “restraints,” and what was and was not legal for the home to use. This nursing home was excellent, and was in no way looking to retrain anyone because of behavioral problems that caused extra work for the staff Read more →
Accepting that a loved one has any type of dementia can be difficult. When someone we care about develops frontotemporal dementia, also known as Pick’s disease, the shock can be particularly hard to absorb, because one of the defining characteristics of frontotemporal dementia is personality change. Spouses of many years will often feel that their husband or wife has totally changed, and they are at a loss to explain the “stranger” their spouse has become. Read more →
Sometimes it seems as though an older person - and I'm not just talking about people with memory impairment, but most older folks - want to tell the same stories over and over. As caregivers, we can wonder if there is undiagnosed memory impairment with our elders. If they have been diagnosed with memory impairment, we often just sigh and mentally plug our ears while they ramble. Read more →
Researchers say that the ability to hear is the last sense to surrender as a person's body goes through the death process. That statement assumes, of course, that the person has previously suffered no profound hearing loss. Most of this research has been done on people who are in a coma. Read more →
Much of what we read in the news is about how to care for our aging elders, many of whom are living their last years sadly diminished. However, there are remarkable exceptions. Our culture tends to ignore the fact that many people do age well and remain productive citizens until the end. A PBS documentary Read more →
Throughout the years I’ve spent writing and answering questions on elder care, I’ve gotten many questions from readers about the condition of an elder after hospitalization. The notes tell sad stories about an elderly person going into the hospital for surgery only to return home with dementia Read more →
Dear Carol: My mother’s been in an assisted living facility for five years. She still likes living there, though she is having more health problems lately, so it’s been a struggle for me to get her to her clinic appointments and keep up with the medical care she needs. Her assets are now used up. Read more →
Lately, I’ve been reading about doctors finding “mixed dementias,” as they attempt the tricky diagnosis of people with dementia symptoms. This makes sense to me. Several people have told me about an aging parent who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, only to find out later that the diagnosis should have been vascular dementia with some additional symptoms that could point to possible Alzheimer’s disease. Read more →
Whether caregiving has renewed your spirit and made you feel blessed to help your aging parents, or turned your life upside down and made you often feel like running away, most caregivers feel that their lives have dramatically changed since they became a caregiver. Read more →