Caring Currents

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Last week I wrote about how my sisters and I arrived at the painful conclusion that we could no longer provide all our mom's care ourselves and that our mom couldn't continue safely living alone in her house without some help. We chose to use an in-home care agency, primarily because with full-time jobs, we wanted to have back-up care available in case the caregiver got sick or my mom fired her unexpectedly (a distinct possibility, as my mothers' moods were volatile.) The next thing we did was to sit down and figure out how many hours we could afford, and how to come up with the money. Here are some tips based on what we learned during this process.

1. Assess your parent's income and spending to see how much money is available for care. We started by making a monthly budget for my mom, based on her social security and pension income and her monthly spending. In my mom's case, she was using almost her entire income to live on, so there was only about $50 a month to put towards caregiving costs...  Read more

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"Christmas lights. Do not work." Three boxes, so labeled and tucked in the basement ceiling joists, were perhaps my favorite find while clearing out my parents' house. Well, those or the shelf of neat notebooks recording weekly bowling scores back to the 1960s. A dozen casserole lids, no casseroles. Spare stereo knobs, circa 1975. Enough yarn to knit a sweater that could encase the entire house and yard, Christo-style.

I tossed plenty of useless stuff while clearing out my parents' home of 40-odd years, recently. (100 pairs of elastic-waist pants, anyone?) But I had it relatively easy, because my parents weren't involved. (My mom had died and my dad, who was relocating, was sidelined by dementia.)

Most caregivers face the "junk wars" with still-living relatives. It can happen when you combine households because of the recession. Or help a parent downsize into assisted living. Or just try to make a crowded old house safer for an older adult in which to age-in-place...  Read more

Is your mom's Fido a faithful friend or complicating nuisance? What about Grandpa's Fluffy -- healing creature or potential deathtrap?

One look at the pleasure my 87-year-old Dad gets cradling Coco, the miniature (and I do mean tiny) dachshund he lives with convinces me of all the research established on how pets do older people a world of good. They help a person relax and are a form of socialization. (Even if he has to look at her collar every few minutes: "And this is…what's your name? Coco!" )

But Coco's tininess is also a worry to me. She gets, well, underfoot.

And companion animals can be a very real health risk, it turns out. More than 21,000 elderly Americans are treated in emergency rooms each year due to falls associated with their pet dogs and cats, says a [new report] (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5811a1.htm) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...  Read more

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When you're in pain, it's natural to ask for something stronger. And of course doctors want to make patients in pain more comfortable. For many seniors, the result has been that they walk out of the doctor's office with a prescription for Darvon, Darvocet, or a generic equivalent.

In fact, these painkillers, which contain the active ingredient propoxyphene, are so popular they're the 12th most prescribed generic drug in the country, with 23 million prescriptions written a year. Having been around more than 50 years, they're very popular with older adults. Yet health experts and consumer groups have for years been warning of the dangers of Darvon/Darvocet, particularly for seniors.

In 2006, The Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to ban propoxyphene medications, and on January 30th, an FDA advisory panel narrowly voted to recommend a phase-out. (In 2005, health authorities in the UK initiated a phased removal and it's almost completely off the market throughout the UK...  Read more

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There's little that's more frustrating than doing your best in a situation involving the welfare of an elder -- only to have your choices criticized or opposed by a sibling, parent, or other family member. Hello super stress.

Family disagreements are nothing new. But when you're all grown-ups, you can't slug it out in the backyard or send anybody to their room. At least, not if you plan to resolve anything. That leaves nitpicking, debating, raising voices -- or ceasing to talk to one another altogether. And when that's not productive, then what?

That's when you can try something relatively new: Elder mediation.

You might think of mediators in connection with the Middle East or high-profile corporate disputes. But many family mediators specialize in handling situations related to aging or ill relatives. They're a fast-growing subset of the mediation world.

If you're like me, the very word "mediator" may at first ring complicated – and expensive...  Read more

It's that time of year, my husband and I joke nervously as winter and the holidays approach. Nursing home time.

The last two holiday seasons have found my 88-year-old father in skilled nursing facilities, following emergency-room stints for various age- and season-related ailments. He's got emphysema and arthritis, and winter means flus that can lead to pneunomia, and weather that ups the risk of falls or driving accidents.

By the second time around, the hospital-to-nursing-home trajectory seemed crushingly familiar: the meetings with the hospital discharge planner, the visits to tinsel-draped nursing facilities, and then the long, slow car ride with my father dozing in the passenger seat as we took him to the last place on earth he wanted to be.

As soon as we got him settled in to the half-a-room he was to call home for the holidays, he'd start complaining loudly and lobbying for his car keys...  Read more

Providing care to an elderly relative can be costly not only emotionally but also financially. One study of 30 families providing care determined that collectively, they would sacrifice more than half a million dollars over their care giving years in lost wages alone.

Of course, none of us are in it for the money, but it certainly is nice when a government program comes along that recognizes the financial strain care giving can place on a family.

The Cash and Counseling Program -- which allows Medicaid recipients who would otherwise be eligible for in-home care benefits to receive the money themselves, and spend it on their own care as they see fit, including paying family members to look after them -- does just that.

Pioneered in the late 1990s, Cash and Counseling is now available in 15 states. The good news is that the federal government recently eliminated the requirement that states get a Medicaid waiver in order to offer the program...  Read more