Author Archive
Breaking Bad News to Elderly Parents
Recently I had to break the news to my parents about the death of my brother. While it was a difficult experience to face, I knew I had to do it so I didn’t put it off. It was a relief that I didn’t muck it up and my parents handled it well. It got [...]
How to Reduce Anxiety for those with Dementia
It’s often easy to accidentally put someone who is suffering from dementia into a state of anxiety. 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 HIV. Whatever the cause, [...]
Medicare Part D and Prescription Drug Roundup
We recently ran across a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that was written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber and thought it was a good time to pull together a number of great prescription and Part D resources that we’ve come across over the past few months. Choosing a Medicare Part [...]
How can a long-term care ombudsman help?
If you, or a loved one, is a resident of, or is considering, assisted living, or a nursing home, a long-term care (LTC) ombudsman may be able to help. LTC ombudsman help resolve residents’ complaints, provide information and assistance, advocate for residents’ rights and quality of care, and advocates for system and legislative changes. The [...]
Can Your Senior Be Safer? Senior Safety Tip Roundup
If you asked ten people about senior safety issues, you’d get ten different answers. The reality is that as we age, the risks to life, limb and even our finances grow. Today, we thought we’d tackle the topic of safety from a number of different levels and guide you to resources for the ones that [...]
Some Great Alzheimer’s Resources
SHF is not a site specifically dedicated to Alzheimer’s. There are many great sites that cover the topic. The most obvious is the Alzheimer’s Association site. And anyone with average Internet search abilities can find a good number of resources online. What we wanted to cover here are some of the gems you may not [...]
How to Help a Caregiver
There’s much said about caregivers’ need for support, but it’s often difficult to know how to help a caregiver when they need it. The tips here approach caregiver help from the perspective of the caregiver’s helper. You may have already offered to help a caregiver, but not yet been asked. Often caregivers have many reasons [...]
Medicare Explained for Those Who Like to Watch TV
Here’s a nice succinct explanation of Medicare. It gives a good framework for parts A through D if you’re new to the types of Medicare. The clip is produced by Humana and is 3 minutes long.
Alzheimer’s Audio & Video
We like to shy away from covering news because many others are great at covering what’s new, and instead try to focus on practical tips, advice and ‘how to’ information. This post is a bit of a cheat. While there are threads of tips and advice in these resources, we wanted to cover them because [...]
How to reduce stress while helping your parents
If you’ve been helping your parents sort out the vagaries of Medicare, or with their prescriptions, or running errands, or…you know the time it takes out of the day. If you’re of the sandwich generation and are managing kids schedules too, you either have the constitution of Martha Stewart, or don’t feel like you’re doing [...]