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Join Our NewsletterIt’s Not Your Fault
The emails come into our inbox. “Please help,” is usually how they start. What so often follows is the same story with only slightly different details. A 90-something parent, living on social security, has fallen, gone to the hospital and now needs rehabilitation to...
It’s All About Connection: Caregivers Survival Guide
Other than death of a loved one, few things are more disorienting than making the shift from being cared for by your parents to caring for them. This transition is made even more challenging because it usually comes as such a surprise. And it’s not just the...
4 Tips for Talking to Your Parents About Death
Previously 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 advice from...
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...
3 Resources to Ease Caregiver Money Worries
In a recent survey, AARP found that about three-quarters of all caregivers spend, on average, 26 percent of their household income on caregiving. This is on top of the estimated $470 billion in unpaid care that they provide; and doesn’t include the potential lost...
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...
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...
3 Medicare Benefits You MUST Know About
“What do you mean Medicare doesn’t cover this?” My friend Sarah was caught off guard when I told her that her parent’s health insurance program doesn’t cover her parents’ care. What I explained is that there’s a lot Medicare doesn’t cover and one of the biggest gaps...
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...
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.
