Caring Currents

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One of the more stressful aspects of taking care of an older adult is the not knowing. Nobody knows the future, obviously, but a caregiver's is doubly affected by the mysteries of someone else's reality, over which you have little control: How long will this phase of your life go on? How will the person's medical condition(s) progress? And what will that be like? How long can a parent live alone? How long can you stretch out the money? What about your own health, or marriage, or job; will they hold steady?

Many caregivers deal with the stress by using one of the following coping strategies. Unfortunately these comforting old saws are often more like traps: less calming than they first seem. Escape by giving them a few tweaks.

Trap: "Take it one day at a time."

Better: Take a peek around the corner.

Taking a hard situation day by day brings the undeniable benefit of making 24 hours seem less overwhelming...  Read more

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Yesterday the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) issued an alarming report announcing that vitamin D levels are at dangerously low levels across the globe, increasing the risk for osteoporosis and bone fracture, particularly for older women. The study, to be published in Osteoporosis International, tested population groups around the globe, and found that in almost all geographic regions an enormous proportion of the population has insufficient levels of the key nutrient.

The numbers in the report have experts talking. Among men ages 70 and up, 76 percent of whites, 88 percent of hispanics, and 93 percent of black men had too little vitamin D in their blood; among women, the numbers were comparable except that 95 percent of black women tested too low. Previous studies had put the percent of the population that was D-deficient around 40 percent, so these numbers are quite a revelation...  Read more

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The hospital is a stressful place for everyone –- and when the sick also have Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, both patient and loved ones face some extra hurdles, like these:

• Hospitalized people with dementia forget where they are.

"Where's my wallet? When can I check out already?" My dad is ready to leave the "hotel" – a.k.a. the medical center where he''s just spent the past five days following a small stroke. (He's weak but, miraculously, seems okay.) He wants to pay the "hotel bill" and split. Only my Dad has dementia, so he keeps forgetting that he's in a hospital, not a hotel, much less that he's had any sort of medical crisis.

Yesterday it was (in a hopeful tone), "So is there a bowling alley here?"

I couldn't tell if he were making a joke or really expected he was in some kind of resort. Probably a little of both, knowing both my old dad and the newer one who has cognitive trouble...  Read more

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Have you given much thought to your money style? While you're at it, you might want to consider the money styles of your parents, siblings, and other family members. I'm betting a light bulb will go off, like it did for me when I did the exercise, below. When it comes to the choices we make about money, even those who consider themselves close can behave like apples and oranges. Some money styles go well together, while others cause major sparks to fly.

I spent my life listening to my mom say she had no money, that there was no money, that everything cost more than she could afford. As a teenager, she even made me and my sisters buy our own shampoo and other personal supplies, complaining that there was no room in the budget for such items. Yet once I took control of her finances in her final years, I discovered that in fact, she had a substantial cushion of savings that I'd known nothing about...  Read more

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Are you a natural-born caregiver or is the role an uncomfortable fit? The answer doesn't necessarily correlate to the quality of the care you provide. Anybody can be a good caregiver. But clearly some people have an inborn gift for knowing what to do and how to behave with ease in care situations. They take pleasure and pride in caregiving – which helps them stress less about it. (Or at least grants them a longer fuse.)

That's good news for the rest of us – because we can crib from their special traits to help improve our own caregiving relationships and manage our own stress levels. Notice I said "rest of us," meaning myself included. I'm your classic un-natural caregiver. Whether looking after my parents or my four kids, I'm glad to do it –- but I've always been the type who's more comfortable using my head than my hands, more at ease talking to doctors than talking to patients. ...  Read more

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She may have started her public career as a fluffy pin-up girl, but Farrah Fawcett couldn't have ended it with more dignity in her role as a public figure. Diagnosed three years ago with anal cancer, Fawcett talked openly about her battle with a type of cancer that's particularly embarrassing to talk about.

With her mane of beautiful hair, white teeth, and sun-tinged skin, Farrah was the picture of health and the quintessential California girl (though she hailed from Texas), adorning many a teenage boy's wall in her famous red tank top. Thanks to the gritty documentary "Farrah's Story" that she allowed her friend Alana Stewart to film, we saw her as she finished her life lying in a bed, barely moving, unable to recognize her own son. She brought the horrors of cancer and the infallibility of cancer treatment into our living rooms and got us to talk about really hard topics, like what it would be like to suffer like that, and how far we'd be willing to go to stay alive...  Read more

Michael Jackson's death from cardiac arrest at the age of 50 stopped me short, just as it stopped short much of the world. How could such a thing be possible? The King of Pop may have been a controversial figure in the past few years, but he's also the iconic image of eternal youth. How could his heart have stopped?

We don't know yet many of the details about how Michael Jackson died; it's certainly possible drugs could have played a role, as could have many other factors. But it's also possible that Jackson, busy preparing for a comeback concert series, succumbed to stress, which puts enormous strain on the heart.

What we know for sure is that when something like this happens, it causes all of us to face our own mortality. It's a "sit up and take notice" opportunity to think about our own health, and the risk factors like stress that increase our chances of having a heart problem. If, like me, these thoughts are occurring to you, now's the time to resolve to do something about them...  Read more

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Thanks to an experimental new drug regimen, two men with inoperable prostate tumors who would have been "getting their affairs in order," are now cancer free, the Mayo Clinic announced this week. The results for the two men were so astonishing the clinic publicized them, even though it's unusual to announce a breakthrough based on only two cases.

The miracle treatment used an experimental drug called MDX-010, also called ipilimumab, an immune system antibody. It was developed to treat melanoma, and is still in trials for skin cancer, but the studies have shown mixed results and no one's been paying much attention to Ipilimumab. But the research team, headed by urologist Eugene Kwon, came up with a triple whammy protocol that perfectly exploits the antibody's primary function, which is to trigger an overwhelming immune system response.

Here's how it works: The men were given androgen hormone therapy to lower testosterone levels...  Read more

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If there's one thing that can make most of us feel slightly less alone when a relative or friend has Alzheimer's disease, it's realizing that Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia strike all families -- even those in the most glamorous corners of our world.

A rash of celebrities have been facing the disease in their loved ones – parents, partners, friends – and a public soapbox can help draw attention to Alzheimer's. But I'm sharing their comments because sometimes a high-profile reminder about What Works sticks with us longer.

First Lady Laura Bush

Care situation: Moved mother into a retirement home five years ago; dad died of Alzheimer's.

"There are things you can do as a long-distance caregiver. One thing: You can build a support group in your parents' neighborhood, get to know all the neighbors, exchange phone numbers."

Interesting aside: While living in Washington DC, Bush traveled regularly to Texas to help arrange her parents' care...  Read more

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As many of us in the role of caring for older family members have found out the hard way, a fall that leads to a broken hip or other fracture can set of a chain reaction of health problems that can leave a formerly strong and independent person weakened and frail. Thanks to the "cascade" effect, a fall can trigger a series of serious health problems, and often leads to death. The Centers for Disease Control reports that falls are the leading cause of injury deaths among older adults, as well as the most common cause of hospital admissions for trauma. So it's important to take steps to prevent falls, including these:

1. Prevent and Treat Osteoporosis. Making sure everyone's getting enough calcium and vitamin D is key here. Many older adults stop drinking milk, and don't realize that the lack of low fat dairy in their diets is sabotaging their intake of nutrients necessary for bone health...  Read more