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With expert advice from Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN and elder law attorney, who has direct experience helping hundreds of families like yours, this crucial guide offers you all you need to competently handle what lies ahead, in the legal, financial, and heath care issues that come along with caring for aging parents.
After fighting through the medical system and depleting her parents' life savings and much of her own, Marcell solved her eldercare nightmare medically, behaviorally, legally, financially, and emotionally-and shows you how you can too. Elder Rage answers difficult questions such as how to get obstinate elders to: discuss long-term care options, accept cleaning and caregiving help, see different doctors, and and teaches you how to manage stressand grief.
Caring for elderly parents is challenging. It's a season of life requiring strength that comes only from God. In The Caregiving Season, Jane Daly openly shares her stories from the front lines of battling guilt, negotiating new boundaries, and dealing with exhaustion. Her message of grace and hope will help you honor your aging parents well, and deepen your personal relationship with Christ along the way.
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
How does a doctor cope when she specializes in older adults and struggles to care for her own ailing parent? Dr. Woodson shares her experience as daughter and geriatrician in this new resource for family caregivers. She shoots from the hip and the heart, using everyday language, real caregiver stories, compassion, and humor to bring practical information to overwhelmed caregivers. Although it focuses on elder care, the book helps with caregiving for any age, or any illness.
Have you ever wondered how you will feel when you are suddenly given the responsibility to make important decisions for your parents, because they are no longer capable of doing that for themselves?
With expert advice from Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN and elder law attorney, who has direct experience helping hundreds of families like yours, this crucial guide offers you all you need to competently handle what lies ahead, in the legal, financial, and heath care issues that come along with caring for aging parents.
After fighting through the medical system and depleting her parents' life savings and much of her own, Marcell solved her eldercare nightmare medically, behaviorally, legally, financially, and emotionally-and shows you how you can too. Elder Rage answers difficult questions such as how to get obstinate elders to: discuss long-term care options, accept cleaning and caregiving help, see different doctors, and and teaches you how to manage stressand grief.
Caring for elderly parents is challenging. It's a season of life requiring strength that comes only from God. In The Caregiving Season, Jane Daly openly shares her stories from the front lines of battling guilt, negotiating new boundaries, and dealing with exhaustion. Her message of grace and hope will help you honor your aging parents well, and deepen your personal relationship with Christ along the way.
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
How does a doctor cope when she specializes in older adults and struggles to care for her own ailing parent? Dr. Woodson shares her experience as daughter and geriatrician in this new resource for family caregivers. She shoots from the hip and the heart, using everyday language, real caregiver stories, compassion, and humor to bring practical information to overwhelmed caregivers. Although it focuses on elder care, the book helps with caregiving for any age, or any illness.
Have you ever wondered how you will feel when you are suddenly given the responsibility to make important decisions for your parents, because they are no longer capable of doing that for themselves?
At the age of 60, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: She now weighs less than her neighbor's retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience - the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance - of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches.
Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at 18, married at 24, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was 27, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.
No one really expects it, but at some time or another, just about everyone has been—or will be—responsible for giving care, for a sustained period, to someone close to them. Gail Sheehy, who has chronicled every major turning point for 20th-century Americans, as well as reported on everything from politics to sexuality, knows firsthand the trials, fears, and rare joys of caregiving.
Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care - to become an ICU physician - and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the brink of death. But then during her first code she found herself cracking the ribs of a patient so old and frail it was unimaginable he would ever come back to life. She began to question her choice. Extreme Measures charts Zitter's journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another - a doctor who prioritizes the patient's values and preferences.
In this book, author and biologist Marcy Houle shares her personal journey of caring for her father, a surgeon, who developed Alzheimer's disease, and later her mother, who succumbed to other medical conditions.Like many children of aging parents, Marcy often felt powerless traveling this sad trajectory - watching them fall through the cracks of a fragmented and confusing healthcare system, where professionals often wrote off their symptoms as "just old age".
While the world seems to be in love with the idea of tiny houses and minimalism, real women with real families who are constantly growing and changing simply can't purge it all and start from nothing. Yet a home with too much stuff is a home that is difficult to maintain, so where do we begin? Add in paralyzing emotional attachments and constant life challenges, and it can feel almost impossible to make real decluttering progress.
The fascinating science and history of the air we breathe. It's invisible. It's ever present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe, which, it turns out, is also the story of earth and our existence on it.
You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all.
In 2011, when she was in her late 50s, beloved author and journalist Joyce Maynard met the first true partner she had ever known. Jim wore a rakish hat over a good head of hair; he asked real questions and gave real answers; he loved to see Joyce shine, both in and out of the spotlight; and he didn't mind the mess she made in the kitchen. He was not the husband Joyce imagined, but he quickly became the partner she had always dreamed of. Then, just after their one-year wedding anniversary, her new husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
There is a vast literature on death and dying, but there are few reliable accounts of the ways in which we die. The intimate account of how various diseases take away life, offered in How We Die, is not meant to prompt horror or terror but to demythologize the process of dying, to help us rid ourselves of that fear of the terra incognita.
How to Live a Good Life is a practical and provocative modern-day manual for a life well-lived. Drawn from the intersection of science, spirituality, and Jonathan Fields' years-long quest to learn at the feet of world-renowned masters from nearly every tradition, this book offers a simple, yet stunningly powerful tool for life.
Gosnell is the untold story of America's most prolific serial killer. In 2013, Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted of killing four people, including three babies, but is thought to have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands more in a 30-year killing spree. ABC News correspondent Terry Moran described Gosnell as "America's most prolific serial killer".
In telling the intimate story of caring for her aged and ailing mother, Jane Gross offers indispensable, and often surprising, advice for the rapidly increasing number of adult children responsible for aging parents. Gross deftly weaves the specifics of her personal experience - a widowed mother with mounting health problems, the attendant collision of fear and ignorance, the awkward role reversal of parent and child, unresolved family relationships with her mother and brother, the conflict between her day job and caregiving - with a comprehensive resource for effectively managing the lives of one's own parents while keeping sanity and strength intact.
Packed with information, A Bittersweet Season explains which questions to ask when looking for a nursing home or assisted living facility; how to unravel the mysteries of Medicare and Medicaid; why finding a new general practitioner should always be the first move when relocating an elderly parent; how to weigh quality against quantity of life when considering medical interventions; why you should always keep a phone charger and an extra pair of glasses in your car; and much more. It also provides astute commentary on a national health-care system that has stranded two generations to fend for themselves at this most difficult of times.
No less important are the lessons of the human spirit that Gross learned in the last years of her mother's life, and afterward, when writing for the New York Times and The New Old Age, a blog she launched for the newspaper. Calling upon firsthand experience and extensive reporting, Gross recounts a story of grace and compassion in the midst of a crisis that shows us how the end of one life presents a bittersweet opportunity to heal old wounds and find out what we are made of.
Wise, unflinching, and ever helpful, A Bittersweet Season is an essential guide for anyone navigating this unfamiliar, psychologically demanding, powerfully emotional, and often redemptive territory.
This is a fantastic listen--honest and helpful. I am writing from the unusual perspective of an internist who is providing care for the elderly and have aging parents who live 400 miles away (83 and 84 yr--my mother with dementia and my dad aging rapidly under the responsibility of care-taking and the recently learned jobs of cooking, shopping, cleaning, etc etc etc) and 4 brothers who also live at various long-distances. I would recommend this book to any open-minded adult over the age of 45. It should be mandatory for ministers, doctors and nurses. If you belong to a book club, recommend this book. If you don't face some of these issues with your own family members, your friends will. The author gives lots of perspective and information in a fresh and honest way. You won't feel so guilty about those nasty thoughts when you realize that we all feel them (and most of us don't act on them). You will start to have insight into the things you don't know as well as some of the things you feel and do. If you are someone who doesn't have to make every mistake yourself, if you can learn from others experiences, then this is a must-read for you. You will be more likely to cut yourself and your brothers or sisters or parents or children some slack. Sadly, the author may be right that most of those who read the book will be reading it 'too late' because they will have already found themselves in her shoes. All of that said (and I could go on and on), Kate Reading is, as always, a great narrator. You will have no trouble listening. You will have trouble putting the book down.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
Where does A Bittersweet Season rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is easily one of the most helpful books I have listened to. It is an extremely informative book on handling care for an aging parent. The author's mother chose a nursing home. The author's experience demonstrates that the nursing home's basic menu of services is not the complete answer.
What was one of the most memorable moments of A Bittersweet Season?
The author watched her mother's physical capabilities diminish in the last years of her life. With her mother's mind intact, but her voice failing and her ability to hold a pencil gone, the author helped get her mother accepted to a creative writing class offered at the nursing home.
What did you learn from A Bittersweet Season that you would use in your daily life?
This book helped me understand the importance of having an end goal for an aging parent. You can't put a date on when a parent will lose physical and mental abilities. By planning ahead and knowing what the next steps are, you can be better prepared for the eventuality of full time care.
Any additional comments?
Read this book if you will soon be caring for an aging parent.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Where does A Bittersweet Season rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Bittersweet Season is at the top of my list. It is an amazing source of information, compassion and even laughter when you least expect it. Jane's description of her Mother's abundant character somehow softens the blow to this otherwise serious situation. Her description of out broken healthcare system, supporting documentation and metrics highlight just how unprepared everyone is for the future. The Caregivers, families, healtcare providers, insurance companies and especially the government. This is by far my favorite book on my least favorite subject.
What did you like best about this story?
Jane's practicality, humbleness about being, at times, clueless and her tell it like it is approach. The latter of which sounds like her Mother's apple didn't fall to far from the tree.
Which scene was your favorite?
Too many to mention. Most having to do with us as caregivers, rolling with the punches, being baptized by fire, being grossly unprepared and feeling utterly inadequate for the plethora of minutia which impacts, no, derails our normal starting with
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Welcome aboard! You are on your own. Best of luck.
Any additional comments?
Thank you Ms. Gross. Some of the things I had been thinking had me approaching a self assessment of Narcissism. I am glad to know I am far from being alone. -kc.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I learned a lot substantively about what to consider about elder care, both in the home and in a residential setting. It will be useful both in caring for my elderly father and in planning for my future. From an emotional perspective, it's not a cheery book, but it helped me better understand my father's feelings and behavior as well as my own.
Any additional comments?
Have been listening to several books on this subject, this was last one I listened to prior to my mother's passing this week. As a society in US, we have care of elderly all wrong - wish there was an answer.....