It’s been almost a year since nursing home workers began fighting on the front lines of COVID-19. They’ve witnessed and experienced extreme trauma. They’ve seen seniors they care for suffer in fear and loneliness during prolonged and repeated lockdowns. They’ve seen residents fall catastrophically ill and too many of them die.
More than 17,000 seniors are dead from COVID-19 in Canada; Read more…
With the rapid growth of modern medicine and awareness in lifestyle and environmental influences, individuals can live longer and healthier lives. Approximately 15.2 percent of the U.S. population consists of individuals 65 years and older. To make the added years of life expectancy fulfilling, older adults need to stay socially connected and involved. One key method is through the development of meaningful …
An excerpt from Tough Decisions In Care Of Elderly Loved Ones (A guide for caregivers).
Empathy is more than just loving an elderly loved one. It is more than simply making the decision we may feel is best for our loved one. Empathy is different …
Most Canadians are familiar with nursing homes or long-term care facilities that provide 24-hour care to seniors who are no longer able to care for themselves independently – but we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. Given our rapidly aging population, and the likelihood that someone we love, or maybe even ourselves, will be living there one day, maybe we should.
What might surprise …
As I enter the exam room, I hear, “Don’t get old honey!”
As a physician caring for a large population of geriatric patients in Florida, I hear this approximately five times a day. To this statement, I always reply, “There’s no alternative, though!” I also try not to get offended by repeatedly being called “honey.” Although I am waiting to someday state; “it’s Doctor Honey.” Usually, my level is offense is …
First, you have to call up your daughter to pick you up and take you to the lab. It’s hard for the nurse to find your vein. The pain from his fishing around in your arm is not nearly as bad as the pain you always have in your hip, and back, and shoulders, but it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and you cry a little bit. The …
On October 1, 2019, Nevada began allowing individuals to avoid living in late-stage dementia. The new statute recognizes the legitimacy of an advance directive that instructs health care providers to stop hand feeding food and fluid by mouth. Individuals have already been completing such directives in New York and Washington. The Nevada law is the first that explicitly authorizes such instructions.
Growing …
The decision seemed straightforward. Bob McHenry’s heart was failing, and doctors recommended two high-risk surgeries to restore blood flow. Without the procedures, McHenry, 82, would die.
The surgeon at a Boston teaching hospital ticked off the possible complications. Karen McHenry, the patient’s daughter, remembers feeling there was no choice but to say “go ahead.”
It’s a scene she’s replayed in her mind hundreds of times since, with regret.
On the operating table, Bob …
Literature surrounding the effects of social isolation and loneliness for older adults is no longer lacking. Studies and articles outlining the dreadful consequences of these epidemics have even pierced large media outlets like Time magazine, where they emphasize how one in three older adults are lonely.
While any attention brought to the fact that the age group containing people age of 85 and up is …
Reuters recently published an article on skilled nursing facilities and post-hospital stays. They discussed the often-lengthy time between hospital discharge and the patient being seen by a physician or “an advanced care practitioner.”
Older, more infirm and cognitively impaired patients tend to be seen later than other patients. The later you are seen, the more likely it is that you will be sent back to the acute care …
I’ve known Pat McCann (identifying information changed) for many years. He carries a diagnosis of COPD and has a preventative and a rescue inhaler, but he has never really had any serious flare-ups.
He fell and broke his hip. Then he went to skilled rehab, one of a half dozen near Cityside Hospital. His stay turned longer than expected because he fell, luckily didn’t break anything, but had to go back …
I left a full-time academic position five years ago because I was literally, “check-all-the-boxes,” burned out. In looking back during that time prior to my decision to leave, I recall months of feeling overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted, depressed, and in a sense grieved for the loss of what I envisioned my career path to be until retirement. It was not until one of my favorite patients, Mr. Young, who knew me …
I dedicate this to each of you who have cared for or are currently caring for an ill parent or family member.
Recently, due to the stress that several of my dearest friends have been experiencing in caring for their elderly parents, I am even more appreciative and respectful of my privilege in caring for elderly patients who have attentive and loving adult children who accompany them to our ER.
Although this …
Caregiving is often described as a sacrifice. One individual bears a burden to care for another. There’s a connotation of drainage, evocations of burned-out batteries and tired limbs.
I was a premedical student. I was aggressive in pursuing an MD. I wanted to be the best doctor I could be. I did not realize that required me to become a much a better person.
I left school to care for my grandmother. …
It was my first day of orientation at medical school. In a hallway stood a coat rack overflowing with white garments. I set down my accumulated papers, reached for a hanger and — for the first time ever — shrugged first one arm and then the other into a white coat.
It was too large, but I had no other options. The unisex coats ran from XXS to XXL, but the …
When I finished my training, I was taught that the vast majority of dementia was Alzheimer’s disease, with occasional cases of multi-infarct dementia as well as odd syndromes such as Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease and genetic, traumatic, toxic and tumor-related syndromes. Parkinson’s disease, we were taught, caused a tremor and freezing up of a person’s movements and only very rarely was associated with any kind of memory loss.
These teachings helped us modern …
Because of my father
When you lose a parent during childhood, it effects just about everything you become. Decisions about life naturally stem from enduring this trauma. Some try to form families early and replace that which they feel has been lost. Others spurn close connections and create a wall so firm that no one else can encroach. An attempt to protect against pain. Because of my father I …
On a curiously warm morning last February, the minister arrived at my childhood home to guide my father to the other side. When he approached the bedside where all of us were gathered around with the Eagles Pandora radio humming in the background, my dad emerged from a semi-conscious state and sat up as best as he could. “Listen. I am not dying,” he declared. As an early-career researcher focused …
Martha (not her real name) was not an overly complex case in my field of geriatric psychology. But the case was complex enough to require multiple approaches and reliable follow up. And in rural Mississippi, follow up can be elusive. Soon it occurred to me that Martha’s case is emblematic of how caring for this vulnerable population often runs up against a huge problem — the Medicare merry-go-round.
A 78-eight-year-old with …
Part of a series.
We are all aging every day, but mostly we ignore, do not recognize or deny it. Then all of a sudden, we look in the mirror and realize that older age has found us. Even then each person deals with aging differently. There is Dr. Seuss’ “Cat in the Hat” who sees nothing but adversity in aging. There are others who accept aging but …
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