Archive for the ‘Aging & Caring’ Category

AGING & CARING: 5 legal documents you need for your parents

BY SUSAN KOSTAL OF CARING.COM

These documents will ensure that you can assist your parents in a medical or financial emergency and, at their deaths, ease the distribution of their estate:

A medical directive

Also known as a living will or advance health care directive, this document sets out what kind of care your parents want to receive if and when they become ill or incapacitated.

A durable power of attorney for healthcare and HIPAA release

A durable power of attorney for healthcare allows you to make healthcare decisions for your parents. A HIPAA release gives you access to your parents’ health records and physicians.

A durable power of attorney for finances

A durable power of attorney for finances allows you to manage your parents’ financial affairs, pay bills, sell property, and so on.

A revocable living trust

It allows your parents to retain control over their estate while making transfers of assets to beneficiaries. Your parents designate what property (home, …

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AGING & CARING: The secret guilt of caregivers

BY PAULA SPENCER, CARING.COM SENIOR EDITOR

Many of us looking after an elder have heard the nagging whisper of guilt, like a pesky monkey parked on the shoulders who just won’t quit poking us: Feeling guilty when you lose your patience, feeling guilty for complaining about lack of sleep or lack of money, feeling guilty about not having enough time for the person or for the rest of your family.

There’s even happiness guilt – when caregivers feel bad about feeling good.

It’s a strange paradox that having positive feelings should be yet another source of self-flagellation, but there you have it. Take, for example, the caregiver I talked with recently who’d been agonizing over whether it was time to place her mother in a care facility. Her mother, an obese diabetic, had incontinence that was getting harder to manage, and there were increasing signs of advancing dementia. The daughter just couldn’t decide what to do. Then the mother needed a foot amputation related to her …

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AGING & CARING: How to get your health insurance company to pay up

BY MELANIE HAIKEN, CARING.COM SENIOR EDITOR

While the government wrestles with national health insurance legislation, it seems like a good time for some in-the-trenches advice. The sad truth is that even if your family is fortunate enough to have health insurance, you can still find yourself in a financial nightmare if a family member becomes seriously ill.

I hear the stories every week, it seems: The last one was about a friend’s mother, who received an enormous bill after her insurance company deemed a treatment for atrial fibrillation “experimental.”

So, here are some tips for making sure your health insurance actually pays for your healthcare, as it’s meant to do.

Read your policy’s fine print. It’s tough to understand all that legalistic mumbo-jumbo, but do your best when it comes to understanding what your policy does and doesn’t cover. If you have
questions, don’t be shy about asking.

Ask for help from your employer or insurance agent. If your insurance is through your …

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AGING & CARING: 8 warning signs an older adult’s finances are off track

BY STEPHANIE MILES OF CARING.COM

Financial problems can easily spiral out of control if older adults don’t tackle them quickly. And if they’re tight-lipped about their finances or fearful of losing control over their money, they may be less likely to confide in a caregiver or family member about any money difficulties they may be experiencing — giving problems time to snowball.

Even if you’re not privy to the details of their finances, if you pay attention you’ll see early indications that problems are brewing. Here are some of the warning signs that their finances are off track:

1. Mail is piling up unopened in their house.

Take a look around the kitchen or mail area. Are there stacks of unsorted mail? What about piles of statements from mortgage or credit card companies, utilities, notices from the Internal Revenue Service, or other unopened envelopes that appear to be bills?

As people get older, the monthly chores of paying bills may become mentally or physically …

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AGING & CARING: Foods that prevent memory loss

BY PAULA SPENCER OF CARING.COM

“You are what you eat” goes an old saying. How about “You remember what you eat”? More proof that diet can influence cognitive health and dementia was announced this week from a long-term study involving more than 3,000 people ages 65 and older who had no sign of dementia at its start.

Over the 11-year course of the study, the subjects who showed the least mental decline were those whose normal diets most closely resembled the low-fat, high-fiber DASH diet — Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. DASH is a diet commonly used to combat high blood pressure, which is one of the risk factors for dementia.

Utah State University researchers say that this same group had also scored the highest on memory, attention span, and problem solving skills at the beginning of the study.

So what’s in the DASH diet?

  • Whole grains (at least three whole-grain foods per day)
  • Low-fat or fat-free dairy products
  • Nuts, seeds, and dry beans
  • Vegetables and fruit — at …

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AGING & CARING: 5 must-do rules for preventing medication mistakes

BY MELANIE HAIKEN OF CARING.COM

If 1.5 million serious medication mistakes happen every year, and 100,000 people die from them, how do you make sure you and your loved ones aren’t among the casualties? Take these five steps to make sure medication mistakes don’t happen to you.

1. Be prepared.

Make a list of prescription drugs, nonprescription drugs, and any supplements such as vitamins, minerals, or herbs that you and your family members are taking. Keep a copy in your wallet, and update it regularly.

2. Have regular medication reviews.

At least once a year, have your general practitioner or primary doctor review your list of medications to make sure there are no dangerous combinations, incorrect dosages, or medications inappropriate for your age and circumstances. Remember, as time goes by, your body changes, and a medication that was perfectly fine five years ago may not be healthy — or even necessary — today.

Another possibility, suggests Anne Meneghetti, M.D., director of …

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AGING & CARING: Farrah Fawcett wanted us to take her, and cancer, seriously

BY MELANIE HAIKEN OF CARING.COM

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 …

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AGING & CARING: Paid caregiving options worth a look

BY MELANIE HAIKEN OF CARING.COM

How much time do you spend caring for a parent or other aging relative? Think about this question carefully. Do you shop, cook, and clean for someone? Do you help with daily life tasks, like medication management, bathing, and dressing? If you’re helping someone with the same activities of daily living that a home health aid would provide — and taking time away from your own work to do so — you have probably wished you could be compensated for this care.

I know that for many of us, this idea raises uncomfortable feelings — maybe it feels like a family duty. But think about it — is this care similar to the type of care your relative would be paying for in a residential facility? Is it through your efforts that your family member is able to continue to live independently? If the person you’re caring for lives with you or you with him, you’re providing overnight care, and likely interrupting your own sleep to help him or her get to the toilet. And …

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AGING & CARING: Reconciling with siblings after fighting over parental care

BY PAULA SPENCER OF CARING.COM

Some of the saddest caregiving stories concern brothers and sisters who come to loggerheads over some aspect of their parents’ or another relative’s care – and wind up saying ugly things, or not speaking, or worse. (By worse, I mean court feuds, permanent family exile, and even violence.)

Common reasons for family conflicts over caregiving include (in no particular order): Different standards for quality of care, how to proceed after a diagnosis, where the older person should live, who should have control of legal or financial affairs, who should pay for procedures or care, wills and other gnarly issues about how estates are or will be divided. Did I mention money?

“You never really know a family member until money is involved,” a Caring.com member recently, and memorably, observed in a discussion about siblings.

If a family estrangement, large or small, is gnawing at you, what can you do? Some ideas that have worked for others:
Start by …

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AGING & CARING: Take the new 5-minute Alzheimer’s “test” – and then do this

BY PAULA SPENCER OF CARING.COM

Have you tried the new-and-improved screening test for Alzheimer’s disease yet? It’s hard to resist, because it’s so straightforward and so quick. Proposed by UK researchers in last week’s British Medical Journal, the new screening test is said to be more accurate than the commonly-used mini-mental state exam (MMSE). And unlike the MMSE, it doesn’t require a trained professional to administer it.

First things first. Here’s how to take the Test Your Memory test (PDF) and how to score it (PDF). Bear in mind, though, that it was designed for British subjects. So “Who is the prime minister?” would more effectively be, “Who is the president?” for Americans, for example. And of course researchers want to test the test in more settings, with more population groups. But early reviews are glowing.

What’s also great for caregivers: Although it’s designed for use in a medical setting, this screen can be done at home in a pretty non-threatening way. You …

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