However, I think many of you might enjoy reading the article entitled, “In India they Really Like Older People.” It is about a man who moved to India with his elderly parents. Both of his parents were ailing. One parent was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and the other had Altzheimer’s Disease. The care he found for them in India was outstanding and much, much more affordable than it is here in the United States.

Special “thanks” to Barbra Wells for sharing this article with me this morning.

It is informative: “Every 70 seconds someone in America is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.”  – Diane Sawyer

It is inspirational: Maria goes in front of Congress to explain how her father remembers the Hail Mary but does not remember her.

It is a bit sad: “It is never easy looking at your parent and having them not know who you are, no matter what your age is.”  – Maria Shriver

It instills a sense of hope: “What we have seen in these last years is an incredible and unanticipated progress in understanding Alzheimer’s diease.  The understanding is important because it leads to targets for intervention, ways to try to approach disease.  There are at least 91; for example, drug trials going on now.” — Dr. Richard Hodes.

Courtesy a4gpa via Flickr

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 resources. We also have the networks of caring people with which to share information and ideas. But sorting through the huge volume of information can be challenging and time consuming.

While surely not a definitive list, we thought we’d provide our picks of some of the best caregiver resources among the embarrassment of riches. Our picks were chosen to get someone a little more thoroughly grounded in role of caregiver. If we’ve missed a great resource, let us know in the comment section below.

Family Caregiver Alliance

While there’s much to be had on the Family Caregiver Alliance site, we honed in on the “Caregiving Issues and Strategies” section of the site. This page provides links to printable pages on a good number of topics, including:

• Caregiver’s Guide to Understanding Dementia Behaviors – Includes Ten Tips for Communicating with a Person with Dementia
• Caregivers’ Guide to Medications and Aging – “Any symptom in an elderly patient should be considered a drug side effect until proved otherwise.”
• Caring for Adults with Cognitive and Memory Impairments – A very thorough over of the topic, from tips on getting started to more resources.
• Caregiving and Ambiguous Loss – Addressing the stress caused by unpredictable memory loss that, “comes and goes—one moment here, the next moment gone”.
• Dementia, Caregiving and Controlling Frustration – A great guide to dealing with the personal challenges that we have to deal with.

There’s plenty more from Family Caregiver Alliance

Alzheimer’s Association CareFinder

This area of the Alzheimer’s Association website focuses on help for a person with Alzheimer’s, or their caregiver. This part of the site is well organized and serves as a good, high-level guide to addressing needs of someone with Alzheimer’s. The major sections of this site include:

• Planning Ahead
• Care Options
• Coordinating Care
• Support and Resources

The site also include an interactive tool called, “Your Personal CareFinder” that asks a number of questions about the patient so it can then recommended care options and questions to ask when screening a caregiver or facility.

Particularly helpful are the “Topic Sheets & Forms“. Included are a number of pages and PDF files categorized as, Forms, Daily Living, Financial, Legal and Insurance Issues and Home and Residential Care. Some, of particular note, are Individual Needs Assessment, Wandering: Preparing for and Preventing, Caregiver Stress and a couple of real thorough documents on taxes and Alzheimer’s.

AARP, Navigating the World of Caregiving

As you might expect, AARP has a good area on their site that helps caregivers find the kinds of information that they’ll need while helping a senior. The major, and best, parts of this site include:

• Planning Ahead
• Providing Care at Home
• Preparing Your Home
• Housing Options
• Legal and Insurance
• End of Life

There’s a lot of good detail here. While none of them are really deep, they’re helpful in that they give a good overview of each topic area.

The site has a couple of “interactive features” that are rather unimpressive. One is a quiz to see how stressed you are. You rate yourself on a number of factors and then it scores you on how stressed you are. I like that it has a button below your score that says, “Try Again”. Will me stress go down if I keep doing the quiz? There’s also a video section on the site with a lot of short videos on a variety of topics related to caregiving. Dr. Bill Thomas stars in many of them. The AARP also has a Caregiving area that has more timely articles.

Some Quick Hits

We also have a couple of quick hits for caregivers:
10 Tips for Family Caregivers (PDF) – Good tips from the National Family Caregivers Association
Stages of Caregiving – Also from National Family Caregivers Association on their Family Caregiving 101

Did we miss your favorites, or an obvious one?

I also recently learned that you can purchase a book from their site on The Altzheimer’s Project for $19.99 and a 3 dvd set for $24.98.  If you choose to purchase both the book and dvds at the same time, you can get them for $39.99.  Click here for a direct link to the HBO store.

Part 1: The Memory Loss Tapes

Part 2: Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? with Maria Shriver

Part 3: Momentum in Science

Part 4: Caregivers

Visit the HBO site for a trailer of the program. 

This worthwhile look at Altzheimer’s Disease is being backed by The National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association, Fidelity Charitable Gift fund, and Geoffrey Bean Gives back