Camille Peri

Caring.com features editor

About

Camille Peri, features editor, has covered health and family issues as a journalist for many years. She was a senior editor at Salon.com, where she was cofounder and editor of the department Mothers Who Think. She coedited two collections of essays, Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood , which was a national best seller and received an American Book Award, and Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves . Camille has also written and edited for WebMD, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, Parenting, San Francisco, and Mother Jones, and has been a book editor for Pearson Education. She has a B.A. in American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.

Camille lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons. With her children in their teen years and her parents in their 80s, she often feels that she's dealing with the same issues -- driving, safety, scheduling -- with both generations. Her mother survived a heart attack and cancer in 1999, and Camille and her brothers have spent periods providing their parents with round-the-clock care. She recently helped them move into an independent living retirement community, where they have opened -- and are thoroughly enjoying -- a new phase of their lives.

Recently Published on Caring.com

  1. Friday April 23, 2010

    1. Talking With Leeza Gibbons: Providing Support for Alzheimer's Caregivers

      Interview - Most people know Leeza Gibbons from her ten years as host of the TV tabloid Entertainment Tonight, or her six years on the daytime talk show Leeza. But a growing number are beginning to know her for her efforts on behalf of those dealing with Alzheimer's disease, which grew out of her own family's experience...

  2. Wednesday March 03, 2010

    1. Talking With David Kuhl: Honest Conversations With Dying Loved Ones

      Interview - Many people want to connect with their loved ones on a deeper level -- emotionally and physically -- before they die, but how exactly do you do that? And how do you know if that's what your loved ones want? 11 Comments

  3. Monday December 28, 2009

    1. Talking With Concetta Tomaino: The Power of Music

      Interview - A man in his late 60s has a stroke and loses his speech. After two years of intense speech therapy, he still can't talk. From a treatment standpoint, he's considered "hopeless." 4 Comments

  4. Friday December 04, 2009

    1. What I Wish I'd Known About the Toll Caregiving Takes: Actor Hector Elizondo

      Reflection - Hector Elizondo isn't a psychiatrist. He just plays one on TV -- in the popular series Monk. So when Elizondo's real-life mother, Carmen, developed Alzheimer's disease in the '60s, he didn't fully realize the psychological costs to his father, Martin Echevarria Elizondo, who was her primary caregiver...

    2. Talking With Rasheda Ali-Walsh: Helping Children Cope with Parkinson's

      Interview - Of the many courageous things Muhammad Ali has done in and out of the boxing ring, one of the most courageous is putting his body -- once a symbol of athletic power and grace -- into the public spotlight as it shows the increasing effects of Parkinson's disease... 1 Comment

    3. What I Wish I'd Known About How Difficult Transitions Are: Caregiving Advocate Carol Levine

      Reflection - When the car Carol Levine's husband was driving skidded off an icy road and tumbled down an embankment in 1990, she was plunged in an instant into 17 years as a caregiver. Though Levine, a passenger in the car, was uninjured, Howard Levine sustained serious brain injuries.

    4. Talking With Carol Levine: What Policymakers Can Do for Caregivers

      Interview - In the heat of this fall's presidential campaign and the economic disaster that dominated it, most people may not have noticed that more attention was paid to the views of Joe the Plumber than to the plight of the family caregiver. One person who did notice was Carol Levine, the director of the Families... 2 Comments

  5. Thursday August 27, 2009

    1. Talking With Gretchen Berland: Life in a Wheelchair

      Interview - How can you truly understand what life feels like for a someone in a wheelchair? Borrowing from the old adage "walk a mile in my shoes," Gretchen Berland's documentary Rolling puts viewers in the wheelchairs of three individuals who must use them... 1 Comment

  6. Thursday August 06, 2009

    1. Talking With Michael Graves

      Interview - As an architect and designer, Michael Graves is famous for combining purpose with wit and beauty, from the Swan and Dolphin hotels in Walt Disney World to the Humana Building in Louisville to his martini shakers for Target. But in 2003, when he became paralyzed from the mid-chest down -- most likely... 3 Comments

  7. Monday July 27, 2009

    1. What I Wish I'd Known About My Father's Will: Caring.com Legal Expert Barbara Kate Repa

      Reflection - When her father died in 2003, Barbara Kate Repa had been an attorney for 22 years. She'd written often about eldercare issues and coauthored advanced versions of WillMaker, computer software that allows people to make their own wills and other legal documents, such as advance health care directives... 2 Comments

  8. Tuesday July 21, 2009

    1. Talking With Becca Levy: Age Stereotypes and Elder Health

      Interview - “People act on the basis of their perception of reality,” a pollster for Ronald Reagan once said -- and in modern America, people’s perceptions are largely shaped by the media. The fascinating research that Yale psychologist Becca Levy is doing on images of aging in the media and elsewhere shows howws... 1 Comment

  9. Friday June 05, 2009

    1. What I Wish I'd Known About a Parkinson's Diagnosis: Educator Rasheda Ali-Walsh

      Reflection - The daughter of Muhammad Ali talks about the importance of discovering Parkinson's early. 1 Comment

  10. Thursday April 30, 2009

    1. What I Wish I'd Known About Nursing Homes: Geriatrician Bill Thomas

      Reflection - When geriatrician Bill Thomas was the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York in the early 1990s, he was asked to a see a patient -- a very old woman who had a rash on her arm. "I went to see her and diagnosed her rash and told her I was going to make it all better," Thomas says... 1 Comment

    2. What I Wish I'd Known About Alzheimer's, From Jacqueline Marcell

      Reflection - For nearly a year, Jacqueline Marcell tried to get help dealing with her father, a man who had always had a temper but had abruptly become violent at the age of 82. Even after he physically attacked his daughter and was hauled off by the police, he would return to "normal" in front of a doctor or a judge and simply get sent home...

    3. What I Wish I'd Known About Stroke Recovery, From Jill Bolte Taylor

      Reflection - In the midst of suffering a stroke, Jill Bolte Taylor may have been the only person who ever thought, "Wow, this is so cool!" 3 Comments

    4. What I Wish I'd Known About Caregiver Burnout, From Author Barbara McVicker

      Reflection - During the ten years that Barbara McVicker was caring for her parents, working, and raising a family, she never took a day off. Impressive? McVicker -- who, with her daughter, Darby McVicker Puglielli, compiled caregivers' tales in Stuck in the Middle: Shared Stories and Tips for Caregiving Your Elderly Parents -- isn't bragging... 7 Comments

    5. What I Wish I'd Known About Life in a Wheelchair, From Doctor and Filmmaker Gretchen Berland

      Reflection - In 2001, the doctor in Gretchen Berland wondered if physicians, nurses, professional caregivers, and others in the new era of "patient-centered care" really have a good enough grasp on their patients' lives and perspectives to center care around them...

    6. What I Wish I'd Known About Wheelchair Design: Architect/Designer Michael Graves

      Reflection - One of the first things Michael Graves learned when he was paralyzed at the age of 68, in 2003, was that not all paralysis, or the pain that accompanies it, is the same. 'It's different for everyone, so it's very hard to plan for a device or even a therapy that will help everyone,' says a man famous...

    7. What I Wish I'd Known About Breast Cancer: Oncologist/Hematologist Hope Rugo

      Reflection - When the family caregiver to a woman with late-stage breast cancer is a doctor, she knows exactly what to do, right? Not necessarily. Hope Rugo was an oncologist, hematologist, and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco when her mother, Faith Weil Rugo, had a pelvic fracture... 1 Comment

    8. What I Wish I'd Known About Being a Working Mother and Caregiver: Filmmaker Julie Winokur

      Reflection - In The Sandwich Generation and Living With Herbie, filmmaker Julie Winokur and photojournalist Ed Kashi turned their lenses on themselves, documenting their family's day-to-day struggle to care for Winokur's father, Herbie, through dementia...

    9. What I Wish I'd Known About Elders' Nonphysical Needs: Xtreme Aging Trainer Peg Gordon

      Reflection - When Ida Hieb moved into a state-run nursing home in Ohio after a small stroke, it was supposed to be a short stay. She ended up living there until her death a few years later, at 98. During that time, her family -- including granddaughter Peg Gordon -- learned the hard way that many nursing facilities...

    10. What I Wish I'd Known About Being Old: Psychologist/Sociologist Lillian Rubin

      Reflection - Lillian Rubin would like you to know that 80 is not the new 60. In her latest book, 60 on Up, Rubin tries to dispel that and many other myths and slogans of the "new old age," including that "thinking young" and "brain nutrients" will somehow stave off age's inevitable corrosion. As she says in the feisty opening of her book: "Getting old sucks... 3 Comments

    11. What I Wish I'd Known About Strokes: Author Dudley Clendinen

      Reflection - When strokes left Dudley Clendinen's mother unable to speak or walk, he and his sister didn't know how to relate to her anymore. Should they deal with their mother as they did when the "whole person" was there -- or just with the fraction of her that seemed to be left...

    12. What I Wish I'd Known About Nagging My Parents to Exercise: Author Bob Morris

      Reflection - When his parents aged and slowed down, Bob Morris took it upon himself to get them back up and moving. After all, this is the "walk for the cure" era, and Morris is a member of a generation that, he writes, "has more faith in exercise than God...

    13. What I Wish I'd Known About Preserving Memories: Artist/Filmmaker Eleanor Coppola

      Reflection - One of Eleanor Coppola's childhood memories is of her mother, Delphine Neil, writing at sunrise in her seaside cottage in Sunset Beach, California. "For many, many years, my mom wrote when she got up in the morning," Coppola says, "just on an index card, a few thoughts, like meditation. And after a while, she had hundreds of cards, and then thousands of them...