Dear Furious: Excuse me while I pry apart my clenched teeth and take a few deep breaths. There, that’s a little better. I think that in this case you might have done the right thing by simply protecting your dad’s dignity and leaving because this woman needs more than education: she needs a soul transplant. Read more →

Dear YT: I’m sorry about your mother’s poor health. She’s obviously a fighter to have survived so much. It makes sense that she wants to take charge of her own future so she can determine how much more she wants to continue to fight for what sounds... Read more →

Life-changing, yes! And perhaps a moment of divine intervention. An elderly man with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) was rushed to the cardiac cath lab after being diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction (MI). He was struggling to breathe, yet pleaded with me to not insert the breathing tube Read more →

Many adult children would love to have their parents take advantage of new technology that can track their health, or allow a caregiver to monitor them during the day whether they are aging in place or in a care facility. Read more →

As people age, they are likely to find that balance issues, arthritis, neurological diseases, and other health problems become a threat to their quality of life. People facing these problems Read more →

...Their program, Meet me at the Coolidge" and make memories, is an interactive film program for people with memory loss and their care partners.  Read more →

The people we love and care for often reach a point where we can no longer be sole care providers and we need to look at options. This is painful because up to this point we’ve likely been partners in their care Read more →

It’s easy to feel grateful when life is going well, and certainly, it’s desirable to acknowledge life at its best with appropriate gratitude. What’s not easy is finding gratitude when life hard. Is it even realistic to try? Yes. Discovering gratitude during difficult times can be a giant step toward peace.  Read more →

For many, it’s not as much the fear of the elders’ reactions to our words as it is an effort to preserve our own denial. If we don’t voice the fact that our parents are aging and may eventually need assistance, and then, yes, die — it won’t happen. This is a version of covering our eyes when we were small and saying “you can’t see me.” Read more →

...But most people wait until they're well into middle age before taking care of this important legal work. For those who die young, or are disabled because of an unexpected event such as a car accident or ill-fated dive into an unfamiliar lake, it’s too late. Their families may have to fight in the courts and in hospital wards in order to carry through with the decisions that they believe this young person would have wanted them to make. Read more →