Life Done Right™

Here’s the setup: an 85-year-old Baltimore woman who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cataracts and a benign brain tumor can function fine in an assisted living facility but doesn’t qualify for Medicaid aid unless she goes into a nursing. The state of Maryland was told to reconsider her plight [...]

Did you require a night light as a kid? Did the dark frighten you so bad that falling asleep seemed more like an episode of the Twilight Zone instead of a Disney nursery rhyme? Since fear is hard-wired into our emotional system (don’t get all academic on me), it’s no surprise that our experience of [...]

The task of getting old is not for loners. The ability to maintain your daily living activities can unexpectedly become interrupted by disease, an accident, or just plain old age. That’s when you need the help of a caregiver or home health aide. Like anything that can be billed to the government, though, fraud rears [...]

New Alzheimer’s disease research suggests gene therapy might reverse the disastrous damage done by Alzheimer’s disease. The cure for this bastard condition seems within reach. Whether it turns out to be merely a mirage or actually restores the mind to its rightful condition is up to the researchers. Let’s hope it works. There’s too damn [...]

A new puppy is pure delight. There’s nothing like seeing a bundle of energy tearing around the house and nibbling at everything in sight. Aside from the occasional mess on the rug, a puppy that grows up to become a trusted companion is worth the time and investment.
Does the same apply for your aging [...]

Nightmares that force you awake in the middle of the night usually involve some kind of jeopardy that threatens your existence. Maybe you’re being chased by wolves or about to ride off a cliff going 100mph or perhaps you imagine being run over by a drunk driver. Whatever the nightmare, it more than likely will [...]

Some call it “aging in place,” some call it staying put, some just cuss and say, “ain’t no fricking way you’re gonna put me in one of those nursing homes or assisted living facilities!!” Baby Boomers are waking up to the crappy nature of places that isolate seniors in old age. Honestly, who the hell [...]

Money truly does buy just about anything, including a nurse to tag along on your around the world adventure, despite the fact that you might be suffering from a terminal illness or just ain’t moving the way you used to as a young tot. Companies that provide trip nurses to accompany you on your vacation [...]

Broadway attracts the ego like mosquitoes are attracted to a pale woman’s arm. Over time, though, the ego undergoes a transformation that places less emphasis on public approval and gravitates toward an inner audience that could care less about satisfying a stranger’s penchant for entertainment. Patricia Ben Peterson once plied her personality on Broadway but [...]

Employers have to make tough choices these days. Hire here or abroad? Pay a fixed pension or not? Contribute to health insurance or not? Now throw in whether they need to grant a leave of absence to an employee who is faced with caring for an aging relative. Is it the employer’s problem that so [...]

Ready for some depressing news: “A bout of depression may raise the risks of developing dementia later in life.” That’s right. Researchers have found a link between the chemistry produced by depression and its effect on our brains later in life. It’s astounding that the mind remembers what the memory forgets. Keep moving, man, otherwise [...]

The National Family Caregiver Support Program provides states with Federal Grants to help caregivers in their daily chores of looking after seniors who are no longer capable of living on their own. This grant was awarded to programs in North Carolina. Nice to see some of that taxpayer ching providing a real service instead [...]

© Gilles Barbier, L’Hospice (2002)
Where do superheros go when they retire? Gilles Barbier imagines them in a nursing home. Check out Superman with his walker and Wonderwoman standing beside Captain America on a gurney. C’est tragique, non?
Click here to view the full image

This is one delicious fact: “A survey of 100 people aged 99 years and older released earlier this month by U.S. health care co-ordinator Evercare found four percent of respondents had listened to music on an iPod.” The iPod revolution is bringing new life to those stuck in a nursing home. With little or no [...]

It happens at some point: you work for hours and hours on a project, save it to your handy flash memory stick, and then suddenly when you go to print it out later, it’s gone. Vanished. Poof. Like it never existed in the first place. The thought of reproducing hours of work can be so [...]

The bad news: The Picker Institute Europe for the Patients’ Association recently concluded that a whopping two out of five patients in nursing homes were in constant pain. That’s a whole lot of suffering that sure seems like it could be alleviated by some good prescription drugs. But since the vast majority of people are [...]

The glory days of being an NFL superstar may make for a great conversation starter at cocktail parties, but beware, all those hits to the head may turn your brain to mush, Alzheimer’s mush. A couple of NFL wives got together and pressured the NFL to pay for a program called the 88 Plan, which [...]

Biology is always asking which has a greater influence on humans: nature versus nurture. A couple of gerontologists set out to answer this question by examining the relationship between housing and a senior’s well-being.
Specifically they wanted to know how the quality and type of living situation contributes to a sense of well-being and sense [...]

The one complaint I hear over and over again from people living in nursing homes is they hate the fact that everyone in the place is old! They can’t stand it. Without a cross-section of life, every day living gets stale and repetitive — the last thing a person needs if they’re going to keep [...]

The fun thing about science is anyone can dream up an experiment and then test their hypothesis for its validity. With the right controls in place, even a 10-year-old just might discover his or her insight provides a breakthrough in medical knowledge.
Some researchers recently tested the idea of whether social isolation contributes to the [...]