Caring Currents

During these rocky economic times, an increasing number of people are sacrificing their health to save money and cut back on spiraling health care costs, reports the Wall Street Journal.

When faced with skyrocketing premiums, deductibles, and prescription drug costs, more people are choosing to skip doctors visits and forego their prescription drugs, according to the article, which found that:

• 22 percent of people surveyed said that they were going to the doctor less often because of money woes, while in a different survey, 11 percent said they were cutting back on filling their prescriptions.
• The number of total prescriptions filled fell 0.5 percent in the first quarter and 1.97 percent in the second, compared with the same periods in 2007 -- the first negative quarters in at least a decade.
• Drugstores like Walgreens are reporting slower sales of prescription drugs.
• Health services company LabCorp...  Read more

When my children were very young, the parenting books I valued most were those that helped me understand what the world looked like from a child's point of view (books by Penelope Leach, and The Magic Years by Selma Fraiberg come to mind.) Now that I'm the parent of two teenagers and a teen wannabe, I reach in moments of distress for Get Out of My Life, by Anthony Wolf, which helps me comprehend the often-baffling workings of the teenage brain.

So far, I've found two (nonfiction) books that provide an empathetic and illuminating perspective on aging. I've already discussed one of these books here: How to Say it to Seniors by Caring.com expert David Solie.

The other book I return to again and again is Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders, by psychologist Mary Pipher. In her book, Pipher shows how our mobile, fast-paced, and fragmented modern culture has failed to create a productive, meaningful role for older people, and instead shoves them aside and ignores, infantilizes, or isolates them...  Read more

A recent discussion about adult diapers and humor caught my attention. In her blog, “The New Old Age,” New York Times writer Jane Gross reflects on a series of stories in Slate for what it calls its Geezer Issue or "Slate Goes Gray."

While appreciating some of the information in the series, Gross found a few articles offensive because they poke fun at aging. She was particularly bothered by a first-person review of adult diapers, written by a 27-year-old guy who admittedly had no experience with the products before being asked by Slate to do a test drive and write about it. 

I’ve written about adult diapers a few times in this space. For many seniors and caregivers diapers are simply a necessary part of daily life. This includes writing about  another diaper test drive, or in this case, a test drive threat. This was by the health minister of Ontario, Canada in a flap about the quality of care in state-run nursing homes...  Read more

A coincidence last week leads me to mention a new addition to Caring.com -- and one that’s already making a difference in at least one person’s life.

A close buddy’s step-dad, 84ish, went to the hospital with vague symptoms of tiredness and lower body pain. He was admitted and a couple of days later diagnosed with kidney cancer that had metastasized to his intestine and possibly other places. His prognosis is terminal.

This same week Caring.com launched a new feature: “To-Do” lists. These online checklists guide you through a variety of challenging caregiving situations including What to Do When a Loved One is First Diagnosed With Cancer, and What To Do When Someone Dies. A complete list is below.

My friend had never dealt closely with a cancer diagnosis. His main “job” is to support and steer his mother, who is caring for his step-dad...  Read more

As anyone who's ever had to ask their parents to turn over their car keys knows, losing the ability to drive can be traumatic for elders, and can even precipitate an unwanted move to a retirement home. Those of you who've dealt with this, or just worried about it as you've watched your parents inch their way out of a parking place, should be heartened to learn of a flurry of futuristic developments aimed at keeping seniors safe on the road -- which will likely mean they can stay in their own homes longer, too:

•  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are fine-tuning an "autonomous vehicle" that can navigate city streets without the aid of a human driver. Not only did Carnegie Mellon's "Boss" model just beat out rivals from across the nation in a defense-sponsored obstacle course on an abandoned military base, the director of the team that developed the car is thinking ahead not to the next war but to the next phase of life for graying drivers...  Read more

Medicare patients looking for help with the notoriously complex and confusing government health insurance program are often told to first call 1-800-Medicare for help. But according to a new congressional report, that may be the last place they should turn.

In response to complaints, Senator Gordon Smith, the ranking member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, conduted a three year survey of the Medicare hotline. In response to 500 test calls, the call center gave "inadequate answers to test callers 90 percent of the time," according to a Dow Jones Newswires account of a hearing on the matter.

And things may be about to get even worse: In two months, call center volumes are expected to go through the roof when Medicare Part D open enrollment begins. About 34.5 million seniors are expected to call 1-800-Medicare next year.

Laying out some of the more egregious errors, Senator Smith...  Read more

When it comes to caring for older adults, signs of overall health and well-being often come in unexpected places. Here's a clue: Have you checked out your parent's toes lately?

It seems the little things matter big time for seniors. That's the premise of an eloquent article by Atul Gawande, The Way We Age Now, in the New Yorker last year, which showcased the systematic and thoughtful practices of physicians who specialise in caring for the aging and ailing. The piece has done more to advance the cause of geriatric physicians, one geriatrician told me, than any medical association could ever do (with all due respect to the American Geriatrics Society).

In the story we meet geriatrician Juergen Bludau, who spends a good deal of time carefully examining 85-year-old Jean Gavrilles' feet -- the soles, the toes, the web spaces -- though she presented with a myriad of ailments, including back pain, arthritis, high blood pressure, glaucoma, incontinence...  Read more

My friend Jessie prided herself on living as independently as she possibly could as her body weakened in a kind of variety pack of aging. Of all her debilitating ailments (broken hip, weakening heart and kidneys), one of the hardest things for her to deal with was her arthritis. Her hands and fingers were stiff and painful.

Not quite a fashion queen but a woman who took pleasure in clothes, Jessie was particularly bugged by the difficulty she had dressing. She couldn’t do small buttons; same with bitsy zippers. Tying laces; forget about it. I remember watching her struggle with her favorite winter jacket. I offered to help, and she snorted (as she usually did): “No, I can do it myself.” The truth was, she couldn’t.

This isn't an unusal problem for older people, and it's one that really takes a hit on self-esteem. Arthritis isn’t the only condition affecting the ability to dress...  Read more

The tough economy is forcing more seniors than ever into bankruptcy, according to a new report, and leading many older people to seek out -- and find -- bargains and discounts available only to them.

In 1991, people 55 years old and up accounted for about 8% of bankruptcy filers, but by last year this group accounted for 22% of all bankruptcies, according to the report by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project.

"While the bankruptcy filing rate for those under 55 has fallen, it has soared for older Americans," according to a USA Today article. "The older the age group, the worse it got — people 65 and up became more than twice as likely to file during that period, and the filing rate for those 75 and older more than quadrupled."

Seniors -- especially those on a fixed income -- are being hit disproportionately hard by factors like the rising costs of consumer goods and gas...  Read more

There's nothing sugary about this news. Last week fellow blogger Stephanie Miles reported on the catchily-named but confusing "doughnut hole," a coverage gap in Medicare Part D prescription drug benefits that choked millions of seniors last year by forcing them to pay full freight for prescription drugs they had been getting cheaply.  Faced with this out-of-pocket expense, a sizable chunk of them simply stopped their treatments.

The elderly with chronic conditions are often hardest hit by the doughnut deductible -- this year capped at $4,050 for out-of-pocket costs -- and those with diabetes are no exception. About 10 percent of people with the disease stopped buying their drugs in 2007, according to the report. For those who do keep paying, finances can get pretty tight...  Read more