Author Archive
Handicapped Parking Plates Tags by State (updated)
Caregivers often provide transportation to doctor’s offices, grocery stores, pharmacies and the like. When a parent has difficulty walking even short distances, a driver without a handicapped card, or tag, is often faced with dropping them off at the curb, parking the car and then running into the building in order to catch up. For [...]
How to Plan for a Disaster with Someone Who Has Dementia
Caregivers often have their hands full with their day-to-day responsibilities. Planning for a tornado, hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, flood or other natural disaster often isn’t on the radar. Happily The Hartford has developed a 44-page guide, called The Calm Before the Storm to help a caregiver to someone with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or some other form of [...]
Finding Meaning in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Memory Loss
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges of caregiving and lose sight of the important things in life. This is true for just about anyone, anytime, but particularly true when working through the challenges of a progressive disease like Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s. Much is said about caregivers and their need for respite [...]
Avoiding the Moving Blues
Relocating can be difficult for people at any age. For seniors it can be extra challenging, or even life threatening depending upon the situation. This post will focus on moves whose catalyst was to provide a little more support for someone currently living independently. This could mean moving from a home to an independent living [...]
The Best Way to Win an Insurance Appeal
The punchline is, “Not to have to do one.” We’ve posted before on Medicare insurance appeals for Part A/B, Medicare Advantage, and Part D. We’ve even posted on doing battle with insurance companies. The fact is, insurance appeals are time consuming and can feel like doing battle. If you can avoid one, why wouldn’t you? [...]
Tips for Communicating with Someone with Dementia
The skills that help us successfully navigate the world around us don’t necessarily work when we’re with someone who has dementia. Dementia can be caused by a number of things including neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, blood flow-related (vascular) disorders such as multi-infarct disease, inherited disorders such as Huntington’s disease, and infections such as [...]
Great Caregiving Resources to Recommend to a Friend
We’re always looking for the best resources on the Web that can help the busy, perhaps harried, caregiver do what they need to do with confidence and compassion, while maintaining a balance in life. Sometimes it’s not easy. One thing working in our favor is that we do have the Internet and its abundance of [...]
Doing Battle with Insurance Companies
Many of us have been in the situation of having an insurance claim rejected. Often it can be solved by simple documentation. It’s a nuisance, but they go away quickly. In other situations, the insurance company digs in and is adamant that you shall not be covered. In some situations, they’re dead wrong and with [...]
Tips for Making it to 100
Marking the event of our 100th hand-crafted post, we thought it would be appropriate to cover what it takes to make it to 100 years of age. Thanks Charlie for the suggestion! It was a good choice because it seems as though there’s an infinite amount of information on becoming a centenarian. Frankly, we always [...]
How Green Are Your Wishes?
For those seniors who are a little more in tune with the environment there is an emerging ‘green burial’ movement. The interesting thing about the green burial movement is the variety of options offered. Most can be classified into two major categories: cremation and whole-body burial. From there many of the choices have to do [...]