Archive for August, 2010

Long Distance Care Givers Receive Help with Aging Parents in Riverside CA

Living in a different city or state — miles from aging parents — can be very difficult. Keeping in touch by telephone and making long trips to help parents or aging relatives with their needs can be time consuming and not nearly as effective as being available full time in person.

Mark Sessions spent two years juggling his restaurant business with multiple daily phone calls to his elderly parents, checking on their needs and answering their questions. Family vacations were spent traveling the 500 miles to his parent’s home to personally take care of home maintenance and provide health care visits to their doctor. During his last visit, Mark noticed his father had difficulty walking and his mother was confused as to which medications she was to take and at what time. This alarming change in his parent’s condition concerned Mark that his parents’ care needs required more than frequent phone calls and vacation visits. Running his business and handling his parent’s long distance care was now becoming very challenging.

According to a report by the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles & Riverside, California, there are approximately 3.3 million long distance caregivers in this country with an average distance of 480 miles from the people they care for. The report also states that 15 million days are missed from work each year because of long distance care giving. Seven million Americans provide 80% of the care to ailing family members and the number of long distance caregivers will DOUBLE over the next 15 years.
Long Distance Caregiver Project – Alzheimer’s Association LA & Riverside, Los Angeles, CA (May 15, 2002, National Web Seminar by Judith Delaney, MFT, Clinical Coordinator)

Read More ….

For information about how Age Advantage can help you care for a loved one in the Riverside CA area, please visit www.ageadvantageriverside.com.

For Elderly, Giving Up Driving Can Be Tough
By Jenifer Goodwin, HealthDay Reporter

It’s a wrenching decision that doesn’t necessarily depend on age, experts say

For many Americans, driving equals independence — the ability to run errands, go to church or visit family and friends as you please. So the decision to hand over the car keys for good can be a difficult one.

To help doctors, seniors and their family members spot the signs of someone who is too old and too frail to drive, the American Medical Association this week released the Physician’s Guide to Assessing and Counseling Older Drivers. It includes screening tests, information about medical conditions and medications that may impact driving, and ways of talking to seniors about what can be an emotional issue.

Though largely directed at doctors, the guide is full of information that can help seniors and their families in determining if it’s time to park the car in the garage for good, experts say.

Read more HERE 

For help with care and assistance in the Corona CA area, please visit  www.ageadvantageriverside.com.

Should Mom Be Living Alone?
Jacqueline Marcell

Recently I received a call from Michelle, an exasperated adult daughter asking if there was any legal way to get her elderly father to stop yelling, screaming and berating her, and to accept a caregiver so she could move out of his house. She had moved in to help him after her mom passed, but was now trapped as he refused to move to assisted living or accept live-in help.

Michelle started to cry, saying she had just called an agency where a man “laughed at me,” saying her father could do whatever he wished in his own home short of physically abusing her. Since I have survived the same situation with my own father, I knew the misery she was going through.
 

Continue reading HERE
 

As always, visit us at www.ageadvantageriverside.com if you need help caring for an aging parent in the Riverside CA area. 

Caring About A Care Giver
By Byron Pulsifer

So many emotions and so many thoughts of being helpless come to our mind. If you know of someone who is dying, or who is seriously ill, our hearts always seem to rest squarely on that person. For those who are concerned about this seriously ill or dying person, we usually want to help, but can’t. We are not miracle workers; we are not able to heal them no matter what we may think of doing or wanting to do. But, in all our concern shown towards this person there may be someone else who desperately needs our help but seems to be far away in the shadows of our minds.

The person, who we can help, however, is the care giver especially if this person is the primary person extending at home care. Day in and day out, they are constantly vicariously living with their loved ones pain and anguish. The ups and downs that seem to come and go as if in a blur are there continuously. There is no way to escape the pain, the sorrow, the incessant question of being able to cope after their loved one has died. So, what can you do?

Frequently, the care giver needs to know there is someone there who they can talk to, to confide their inner emotions, their own anguish, and their feelings of deeper and deeper entrapment in a spiraling course of disease that they can not alter. The endless trips to the doctor, medical tests that seem to be repeated endlessly, the attempts to control pain or the progression of the disease, or the 24/7 knowledge that their life will be forever changed with the death of their loved one, is their constant diet.

If you are unable to visit because of distance, you can call the care giver on the phone every week. Of course, you’ll want to know how their loved one is, but you also want to know how the care giver is coping. This is the time when you want to develop your listening skills. Often, a good listener is more valuable than a conversationalist. You want the care giver to feel free, to open up, and to spill their emotions out to you. And, your role is not to offer trite "I know they will get better soon’ meaningless phrases.

Source

If you need care for a loved one in the Riverside CA area, visit www.ageadvantageriverside.com for more information.