Help For Caregivers: 10 Steps Toward Taking Care of Yourself

The number of people serving as caregivers has exploded in recent years, and according to PR Newswire the number of caregivers now tops 65 million people (29% of the population of the US.) This includes people providing care for elderly adults, special needs children, young adults with disabilities, and more. These caregivers are people who… Read More »

Portrait of A Caregiver: It May Be You!

If you are a Caucasian woman, aged 35 or older, possibly married, definitely working at least part-time—then there is a good chance that you are now or will soon be serving as a caregiver for an aging parent or relative; at least, this is according to the new report released by the National Alliance for… Read More »

A Daytime Solution for Working Caregivers

According to a study done by the AARP over 34 million people provide care to ill or disabled adults aged 50 or over, and with the aging baby boomer population (and their aging parents) that number is only likely to grow. This presents a growing problem, because providing care to aging parents or grandparents is… Read More »

“Second Childishness and Mere Oblivion”

Shakespeare wrote about the seven ages of man, in which he describes the human journey from helpless child to adult and back to helpless child again: “…Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood, ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’”. Anyone who has had to watch as their parents age knows how… Read More »

There’s No Place Like Home

The decision to place a loved one in a nursing home (or the decision to leave your own home and move to a nursing facility, if you are making the decision yourself) can be one of the most difficult and harrowing decisions we ever make.  Stories about disreputable facilities where seniors are neglected or abused… Read More »

Maria Shriver and HBO: Bringing Alzheimer’s out of the Back Room and into the Living Room

Every 70 seconds someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s 5.3 million people are currently suffering from Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s is now the sixth leading cause of death There are 9.9 million unpaid caregivers in America One in eight people over the age of 65 suffers from Alzheimer’s             (from the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2009 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and… Read More »

Swine Flu: What Should You Do?

All the news lately seems to be about swine flu.  Every day brings at least 3 new stories about it, and it’s all people on the street can talk about.  But how worried should we really be?  We know that many of our readers are caregivers for the elderly, and are concerned about swine flu… Read More »