Laura Juel

Caring.com Expert

About

Laura Juel is an occupational therapist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and an adjunct lecturer in the graduate occupational science program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She participates in the Duke Driving Program, with a special interest in evaluating the older driver and community mobility. She has 18 years of experience working with adults with neurological illness and injuries.

Laura earned her B.S. in rehabilitation science from Springfield College and a M.S. in occupational therapy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives with her husband and three children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is actively working with her parents as they navigate through the healthcare system with recent diagnoses of cancer and dementia. She is experiencing firsthand her own emotional stress as well as the challenges of communicating with family and caregivers while providing support from a distance.

Recently Published on Caring.com

Monday November 10, 2008
1. How can I help my mother deal with her pain and keep her from driving?
  Answer - This is where you need to enlist the help of the physician who is providing the prescriptions.? Your mother's mild dementia and frequent falls can certainly be made worse by her medications. Most pain pills have caution labels for driving due to their sedative side effects....
2. How can I get my mother to clean up after her pets?
  Answer - If the litter box is not an issue for your mother, then chances are she is not going to change her behavior.? I recommend that you look into some specialized odor control cat litter to help reduce the odors. Some cat litter is flushable, so if the box is located in the bathroom with a scoop and a reminder...
Sunday August 31, 2008
1. How can I convince my mother to move to a safer place near me?
  Answer - Many adult children are going through this same complex scenario -- when do I step in to help a parent who's living alone?
Thursday August 28, 2008
1. How can I help my father, who is a hoarder, clear out his house so that it is not a hazard?
  Answer - Hoarding is defined as the excessive collection of items that seem to have limited or zero value. When a person like your father has reached the point where he is endangering himself, it may be difficult to correct the problem? -- particularly if he does not acknowledge that his behavior is a problem at all...