Daughterhood Updates
4 Tips for Talking to Your Parents About Death
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog about how important it is to prepare for end-of-life decisions you might have to make on behalf of your parents. I wrote about advance directives, and having important conversations with doctors and family. I culled so much good...
3 Reasons You Might Not Be Getting the Help You Need
It’s 5 am on a Saturday morning and I’m lying awake with that cold, sweaty, anxious feeling that comes from deep existential angst masquerading as too many things to do. I know something has to change – that there’s GOT to be another way to look at my life..to live so...
4 Sanity-Preserving Truths Your Good Friends Want You to Know
Do you realize that 70 percent of the human food supply depends on a bunch of women dancing? This is my interpretation of what my beekeeper friend, Nicole, taught me about how honey bees do their job. It inspired the most important advice I’ll ever give about...
Making Medicare Choices for Your Parents
“My dad doesn’t have Medicare!” A friend said to me recently. “What?” I responded. This seemed unlikely. Pretty much everyone over age 65 has some form of Medicare and my friend’s dad is at least 90 years old. Then he explained, “Dad has something called ‘Blue Cross...
6 Must-Know Tips for Making Hard Decisions
This summer at a caregiving event, a man wanted to know if it would be better for his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, to live at home with family or to live in a facility. He asked me, “What’s the right thing to do?” More recently, a woman worn out from caring for her...
Navigating Medicare and Medicaid
If you’re caring for someone over the age of 65, chances are that you know something about Medicare, the health insurance program that covers nearly all older Americans. But there’s another really important program that you need to know about: MediCAID.
3 Powerful Ways to Avoid the Hospital
Americans have a love affair with hospitals. We tend to think of doctors and nurses as the people who were working hard to make good grades while the rest of us were skipping class. I am pretty sure my brilliant, doctor friend Heather was walking around with a...
4 Things You Must Know When Picking a Home Care Agency
Everyone says that they want to stay at home as they age. And, actually most of the frail older adults living in this country today are, in fact, living in a home setting. Really very few live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. Now you might think that...
Medicare Therapy Rules Made Easy
Most of us take for granted that we can get out of bed in the morning and do all the things necessary to head out and face our day. You know... the simple everyday things like moving around our house, showering, getting dressed and eating breakfast. I might be a...
The Burden of “Self-Care”
Every time I turn on my computer, I see some story or advice about the importance of self-care, especially for women. We read about how Arianna Huffington is on us to get more sleep, which has the effect of keeping me up all night worrying about the bad things that...