If you are in control of the majority of the care for older parents while your siblings distance themselves from caregiving, you are far from alone. In fact, 50 percent of all family caregivers are providing care for an elderly loved one alone, based on a recent report from AARP.
Caregiving With Your Siblings: Working With a Mediator
When you’re caregiving with your siblings to make sure the needs of your aging parents are satisfied, even the closest brothers and sisters can find themselves in disagreement. Stress levels and emotions are, of course, running high. Add to that your past family history and dynamics, which have a tendency to resurface during the course of challenging times, and it’s not hard to see how troublesome this stage in life…
Top Tips for Staying Healthy With Kidney Disease
Itching. Hiccupping. Changes in sleep and appetite. These are just some of the seemingly innocuous warning flags that may perhaps indicate kidney disease. And with as many as 20 million people in the United States alone managing the disease, plus many more who are not yet diagnosed, it’s essential that individuals experiencing these symptoms bring them to the attention of the physician.
Let Go of Feeling Overwhelmed by Caregiving During the Holidays. Simplify.
The holidays are an ideal time to spend time with friends and family, but it’s not quite what you would call a relaxing time of year. The hustle and bustle, from shopping to social gatherings to family get-togethers, can be incredibly stressful and leave you feeling overwhelmed during the holidays, and when you have someone you love to care for, your own tasks can be neglected.
Give the Gift of Self-Care for Family Caregivers This Holiday Season
It’s the most merry and bright time of the year! However, if you’re one of the millions of people in the U.S. who is caring for an older loved one, the approaching holiday season may feel more like the most stress-filled time of the year. Carving out time for self-care for family caregivers is often relegated to the very bottom of the to-do list, but the home care professionals at…
Innovative Approaches to Communicating With Someone With Alzheimer’s
Communicating with a senior loved one struggling with all the challenges of Alzheimer’s, particularly in the middle and later stages, is often frustrating – both for you personally as well as for the person with Alzheimer’s. Brain changes impact the ability to listen, process, and respond to conversations, and it’s up to us to implement different approaches to communicating with someone with Alzheimer’s to more successfully connect with them.
A Caregiver’s Role in Managing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pertains to two lung diseases: emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Basically, patients’ breathing is severely affected by an obstruction to airflow. Frequent symptoms include an excessively wet cough, wheezing, shortness of breath, and tightness in the chest.
Tips for Bringing Senior Parents Into Your Home Safely and Happily
COVID-19 cases in nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been absolutely devastating, as the sickness spread like wildfire through our most vulnerable population in such close living quarters. As a result, many families decided to move their senior parents home, which raised a number of challenges.
Tips on How to SMILE Through Caregiving Challenges
Stop for a moment to close your eyes and visualize yourself like this: You’ve spent most of your life providing care for and helping others – as a mother or father, in your occupation, through volunteering in your community, and as a grandparent. After a lifetime of living independently and being in control of all of your decisions, you have now aged to the point that you actually are the…
Are These Risk Factors for Elderly Abuse Present for Your Loved One?
Providing the helping hand that empowers seniors to stay healthy, independent, and happy is the intent of not only our professional senior care staff, but of most family caregivers as well. Because the quality of life of older adults is so important to us, it’s crucial that we review a topic that can be really difficult for many of us to even imagine – elder abuse.