Is “Broken Heart Syndrome” Real or Just a Romantic Idea?
Photo credit Pavel Danilyuk
Dear Carol: I read an article online where you wrote that you’d lost both of your parents within a few months. I’ve been there. My dad died from heart issues that he’d lived with for a long time, but when he died, he went quickly in his sleep so we couldn’t say goodbye. As you can imagine, his passing was hard on all of us but particularly hard on mom since they’d been together for over 60 years. After Dad’s death, Mom discovered that she had cancer and she passed exactly two months after Dad. Thankfully, we were with her during her decline and could hold her hand as she died but los...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 29, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Coping With the Decision to Put Your Parent in a Nursing Home
Photo credit Claudia Soroya
Guilt is one emotion that every family caregiver will experience at some point during their journey. When you take on responsibility for another person, there is an enormous amount of pressure to consider all factors and make the best decisions regarding their health and finances. Unfortunately, care decisions are rarely black and white. No one always makes the right call in every circumstance. Mistakes are part of human nature, but we do our best with the information and resources we have at the time. One of the most contentious and guilt-inducing decisions that many family caregivers fac...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 28, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Tips on How to Talk to the Doctor About Your Older Parent or Spouse
Photo credit: Rodnae Productions
A frequent problem expressed among family caregivers is that their aging loved ones aren’t honest with their doctors. At home, they may gripe about intense pain, struggle to complete activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or exhibit memory problems that lead to unfair accusations, but the moment they sit down in a doctor’s office, a change occurs. Like an actor on stage, the patient becomes animated and charming and has no complaints to report to their physician. What gives?
A Caregiver’s Experience With “Showtiming”: My mom was a supreme example. She fell ...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 27, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
A little holiday
Well, actually, for us it’s a BIG holiday: we’re driving to the Loire Valley tomorrow and will be traveling around the Tours and Blois area, visiting castles and pretty medieval towns for about 10 days. Bliss!
She hated the collar, but she didn’t complain, especially after she found a new…friend with a similar collar…
News snippets: 1. Petunia was sterilised last week and is doing beautifully. She is such a sweetie (unless you try to put her inside the cat carrier, in which case she goes absolutely ballistic and twists and turns and…well, those of you who have cats will know what I mean,...
Source: Margaret's Corner - May 26, 2022 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Margaret Tags: Blogroll Source Type: blogs
When One Parent Dies the Other Often Needs a Long-Term Care Plan
Photo credit Vlada Karpovich
Long-term marriages generally evolve into a support system so efficient that even adult children hardly notice changes in their parents. If Dad's hearing is poor, Mom becomes his ears. If Mom's arthritis is bad, Dad becomes her muscle. If one of them has memory loss, the other fills in the gaps so smoothly that it's barely noticeable to onlookers. Then, either Mom or Dad dies. The person remaining suddenly is more frail and needy than anyone would have expected. The surviving spouse is suffering the loss of their life partner, a shock from which they may never completely recover. Also, th...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 26, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Journaling for Caregivers: Rediscover Yourself and Reclaim Your Life
Photo credit Aaron Burden
At some point during your caregiving journey, you may find yourself in a rut. The awareness may come with a birthday, a change in season, an event, or the beginning of a new year. Whatever the reason, the sameness of each day can, at times, seem overwhelming and permanent. Yes, you experience adrenaline rushes when your loved one has an emergency. Yes, you have frequent medical updates and handle other changes in their care. But what about you? What about your need as a person to look forward to something fresh and exciting in your own life every once in a while?
Sadly, new beginnings for caregive...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 25, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Mom with Dementia Won ’t Accept Help at Home and Fights Going to Memory Care
Photo credit Pexels Nashua Voleauz Young
Dear Carol: My mom is 86 years old and lives on her own but it’s obvious that this can’t continue. She doesn’t eat well. She forgets her medications or may even take the wrong doses. She leaves the stove on. We’ve tried in-home care, but she won’t let them in. Mom refuses to believe that her mind isn’t healthy. Her doctor has suggested memory care in the past, but she’s refused that, of course. I know that moving people with dementia can make them worse, but she can’t stay where she is. The question is how do we get her there? – SN
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Source: Minding Our Elders - May 22, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Reconciling Grief & Relief When the Loved One You Cared for Dies
Photo credit Kat Smith
When my mother died in a local nursing home, my “career” of visiting this exceptional facility nearly every day for almost 15 years ended. Shortly after Mom’s passing, one of her nurses whom I’d become quite close with said to me, “We’ll still be seeing you up here. You won’t be able to quit.” It turns out she was wrong on that one. However, my case is a little different from most, since I’d spent nearly two decades caring for multiple elders. Also, my role hadn’t totally ended—I still had a family member at home who needed my care. Yet the loss of a loved one brings on ma...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 21, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Hospital Delirium: Cognitive Decline After Hospitalization
In the expected course of treatment, people are hospitalized because they are ill. Then, barring a terminal condition, they are released because they are better. Once home, people recover further, and continue on with their lives as well as their original illness allows them to. Unfortunately, with elderly people, this best-case scenario doesn't always happen.
Cognitive Decline Following Hospitalization: Sometimes an older adult experiences a noticeable cognitive decline post-hospitalization. Families and caregivers are left wanting to know what happened and wondering if their loved one will ever be cognitivel...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 20, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Hindsight Can Be a Blessing or a Curse for Caregivers
Photo credit Abigail Keenan
They say hindsight is 20/20. But things from the past that may seem “clear” to you now can still be distorted by difficult emotions—especially when it comes to something as impactful as caregiving. Now that you have some experience under your belt, imagine that you could go back in time. What would you say to your novice self about how to be a caregiver? As a seasoned caregiver myself, I can choose to ruminate over my perceived failures, or I can choose to forgive myself for being imperfect and recognize that I did the best I could at the time. You have the same choice. Much like an ...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 19, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
5 Questions to Determine the Impact of Caregiving on the Caregiver
Photo credit Mathilde Loland
Are you prepared to take on the responsibility of caring for a family member? Will you be able to handle the commitment of moving your parent(s) in with you? How will you know when caregiving has become too much to handle? Will caregiving negatively impact your relationships with immediate family members? When is it time to think about other eldercare arrangements? When aging parents or an ill family member need help, many of us dive into caregiving with full hearts and little forethought. Sometime later, we come to realize that we’ve been in this role for months or even years and that it has...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 18, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
A “No” To Mandatory Voting
Walter OlsonAustralia andsome other countries make voting compulsory by law, a perennial ideare ‐floated two years ago in this country by a working group convened by the Brookings Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School ’s Ash Center and now by E.J. Dionne Jr. of Brookings and Miles Rapoport of the Ash Centerin a book. But as I argue in a newpiece in theNew York Post as well as a newCato podcast, the right answer remains “no way.”The Brookings/ Ash Center group — which deserves due credit for honesty on this point — acknowledges that when they polled about the idea, they f...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 17, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Are People Living with Advanaced Dementia Aware of Their Surroundings?
Photo credit Matthew Bennett
I was recently chatting with a group of students from a university class that uses my book as a text, and a young woman shared a story about her grandmother that started an interesting discussion. The young woman was in her twenties and her name was Anna. Although she had never known her grandmother without AD, they still had a close relationship. Twenty years is a long time for the disease to progress, and some people decline much more quickly than others. Anna was fortunate to know her grandmother during the years when she was still able to communicate. Of course, as her grandmoth...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 17, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
When a Loved One with Alzheimer's Doesn't Recognize You
Photo credit D Mason
Watching a loved one move through the stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be one of life's toughest and most heartbreaking challenges. If we had to list examples of emotions by the distress they cause us, at the top of the list would be watching someone we love experience physical and mental pain that we cannot relieve. For many caregivers, next on the list at least for many caregivers, would be having to live with the fact that a loved one no longer recognizes us for who we are.
When my family members were residents of a care facility, I asked one of the nurses at the nursing home if my moth...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 16, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Coping with Caregiving: How to End the Habit of Emotional Eating
Photo credit Tetiana Bykovets
As far back as breast or formula feeding, most of us learned that a sweet taste meant care and comfort. As we grew into more sophisticated foods, we learned to equate certain items with happiness. Our parents picked up on these preferences and would offer these things as treats and on special occasions. Ice cream, anyone? Somewhere deep in our subconscious, most of us learn to associate food—at least certain types of food—with nurturing, comfort and happiness. For this reason, caregivers who are overloaded with responsibilities and stressed to the max often turn to food as a source ...
Source: Minding Our Elders - May 15, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
