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Patricia K. got the e-mail just a few weeks after Christmas. "The holidays had come and gone, and once again no one had heard from my sister Betsy -- not even a card," Patricia says.

Then suddenly, there was an e-mail in her in box. "The subject line was pure Betsy -- `I hear Mom's sick; why didn't anyone call me?!' Well, gosh, we didn't have her number -- we didn't even know what state she was living in."

Betsy, just three years younger than Patricia, had had a stormy relationship with her parents and sister since high school. She married young, a guy they thought was a lowlife. She had a baby, and proceeded to live one of those lives that lurches from disaster to disaster.

For a long time, the only time anyone heard from Betsy was when she called to ask for money, usually with her son as the excuse. She needed money to take care of Petey, she needed money to send Petey to school, she needed money to take Petey to the doctor...  Read more

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Best to be blunt: Of course it's awkward and embarrassing to discuss a loved one's incontinence with him or her, let alone to have to change adult diapers (a.k.a. adult briefs these days). Private matters turned team project usually are.

Unfortunately, the net effect of nobody wanting to talk about his or her adult diaper stories is stressful caregiver isolation. A new survey on dealing with incontinence by Caring.com and SCA, makers of Tena incontinence products, finds that one in three caregivers avoids discussing the subject with a loved one altogether because it's too "embarrassing and difficult." (Most of the 500-plus respondents, all caregivers with incontinence-care experience, were boomer-age women.) And 42 percent say they get depressed about dealing with a loved one's incontinence.

That's a disheartening conspiracy of silence. It's also a silence that prevents worn-down caregivers, as well as those struggling with incontinence, from getting the help they need...  Read more

If you or a woman you know has early stage breast cancer that's HER2-positive, she needs to know about some new research published yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

An early stage tumor that's as tiny as one centimeter or smaller still has a high risk of deadly recurrence if it's HER2-positive, new data show.

Researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reviewed recurrence data on breast cancer patients whose tumors were one centimeter or smaller -- typically considered to present a very low recurrence risk. (See size chart; one cm is about the size of a black-eyed pea.) What they found was that if a woman's tumor, no matter how tiny, was HER2-positive, her 5-year recurrence rate was 23 percent -- almost one in four.

Led by Ana Gonzalez-Angulo, MD, the researchers analyzed the center's breast cancer research database, which contained data on 965 women whose tumors were less than one centimeter when diagnosed, and who did not receive treatment with Herceptin...  Read more

As you may have read elsewhere, November is National Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. But surely, the public is already well aware of this horrible disease. After all, Alzheimer’s has directly affected approximately one in every two families, and the others must have certainly noted its prominent coverage in the news. We don’t really need more awareness, right?

Wrong.

Some of the information below may surprise you. That's to say, it's information about which you're not presently aware. However, by merely learning the seven facts below, you'll be helping to reduce the Alzheimer’s problem. That’s right…making you aware of this information and encouraging you to share it with your social networks will facilitate a more informed and more effective approach to combating the threat we face from this disease.

First, here are a few facts and figures that you may already know. Alzheimer’s currently affects more than 5 million Americans, and that number is likely to triple by 2050...  Read more

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Here's some important news for older adults. Researchers are reporting that contrary to the messages we've been hearing over the last six months, the H1N1 swine flu virus can be extremely dangerous for those ages 50 and older.

New research, to be published in the November 4th Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reviewed the first 1088 cases of H1N1 reported in California after the disease first surfaced in April 2009. The findings, presented by Janice Louie of the California Department of Public Health, were both surprising and scary. A quick summary:

• hospitalization and death can occur at all ages

• 30 percent of all hospitalized cases were severe enough to require treatment in an intensive care unit

• Although 32 percent were children under 18, 58 percent were adults

• Those ages 50 or older had the highest rate of death once hospitalized

• Overallll...  Read more

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I've heard so many variations on this one I could fill a page just with the individual stories. Here on the West Coast, it often involves one of the many freestanding casinos on tribal land, which are all too easily accessible from nearby towns. Or bus trips to Las Vegas or Reno organized by senior groups. A friend in Shreveport tells me her mom couldn't stay away from the riverboat casinos; another friend's dad got in over his head playing Saturday night (and then Friday night, and then Wednesday afternoon) poker. And it isn't just our parents; I recently listened as a group of people shared stories of family members -- often brothers, nephews, cousins -- who got sucked into online gambling.

You've heard the rationale before: "I just play the penny slots. What's wrong with that?" "I've played poker for years; you want me to stop now?" And the kicker: "I have so few sources of enjoyment left...  Read more

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Caregiver stress has no shortage of causes. But sometimes you hit a tipping point: On top of everything else, you get swine flu. You get into an argument with a sibling or an insurance company rep. Or there's a new diagnosis (on top of the two or three other chronic conditions you're helping a loved one manage). And there you are, seriously wondering if it's possible for a human head to explode.

Rest assured, it can't! Try these seven ways to buy yourself time to regain a little sanity:

1. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

"Keep breathing," a yoga therapist friend always urges me when I get to that mush-on-the-floor point. The slower and deeper the breaths, the better.

Tracy Gaudet, the physician who directs Duke Integrative Medicine, taught me a handy force-yourself-to-slow-down breathing pattern that she learned from her former mentor Andrew Weil:

4/7/8 Breathing (Paced Breathing)

• Rest the tip of your tongue on the ridge behind your front teeth throughout the exercise...  Read more

Going through cancer treatment is traumatic enough, and no one expects cancer patients to do anything more than try to get well. But some cancer survivors and their families turn around and use their experience with cancer to create foundations and services to help other cancer patients. And many times these services are among the best, because they're created with the insights that only another cancer patient can have. Here are a few inspirational -- and useful --- stories about cancer services created by cancer-stricken families. They're my cancer heroes and heroines of the day.

A Matching Service to Help Breast Cancer Patients Find the Right Clinical Trials

A new and incredibly valuable service,BreastCancerTrials.org was conceived by two San Francisco breast cancer patients, Joan Schreiner and Joanne Tyler, who met when a breast surgeon put them in touch with each other. Joan, whose cancer had metastasized before it was detected, found out firsthand how hard it was to find information on treatments that might help her...  Read more

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Let me say straightaway that Alzheimer's isn't funny. And yet… there sure are plenty of moments that make you want to laugh. Or me, anyway.

No doubt dementia is a horrible affliction, in the progressive way it erodes the memories and connectedness of someone you love. But it's exactly that long slow progressiveness, the years of everyday living situations, that present so many opportunities for absurdity and comedy —as well as so much need for stress release. And laughter (even cracking a smile) really is a proven stress reliever with healing benefits.

Many people cringe at the idea of finding anything remotely lighthearted about their dementia stories, and I respect that. Humor is a pretty individual taste, too. The black humor batted heartily around in some families (mine) is seen as distastefully verboten in others.

Before you strafe me with indignant comments over daring to suggest...  Read more

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Watching those close to us age is stressful for everyone, but certain situations seem guaranteed to set family members against one another and start families unraveling at the seams.

And nothing causes more distrust and divisiveness among siblings than feeling they're not being treated equally or that one sibling is taking advantage of a parent at the others' expense. Case in point: Our message boards at Caring.com are filled with discussions about difficult family situations involving money, uneven sharing of caregiving responsibilities, dishonesty, or all three.

When One Sibling Repeatedly Borrows Money From a Parent and Other Siblings Resent It

This story plays out in all sorts of ways, but the central player is an adult child (or cousin, or nephew...) in difficult straits who frequently goes to aging parents asking for "loans," help with living arrangements, or out and out handouts...  Read more