As a full-time working mom and a full-time medical caregiver to my 4-year-old son, I have many workspaces. My workspace is wherever my son needs me to be in that current moment, and bonus points if the space offers a sturdy seat or a dry spot of grass for my laptop....
It was early evening, and Rebekah Zammett was about to leave her north Oxfordshire home to work a nightshift looking after teenagers at a local residential institution. But then a thud came from the bedroom of her son Jack, who has cerebral palsy. For many, like...
Taylor searched desperately for help, signing Amari up for therapy and putting her on waitlists for intensive, in-home mental health services that are supposed to be available to New York kids with serious psychiatric conditions. But the programs were full, and it...
We undervalue both caregivers and care providers because we don’t value the people who need care. The voices of caregivers are getting louder across the country. They need help. To answer this call, the Azrieli Foundation has launched the Canadian Centre for...
Sabrina, who was given a diagnosis of autism coupled with a rare genetic disorder, has exhibited aggressive behavior since she was a little girl. Now she towers over her parents. When she is happy, she gives them great big hugs, knocking them slightly off balance....
In 2014, I suffered a horrendous roller derby injury hurting my coccyx and dislocating both hips over the span of nine months. I never even made the team; However, I did make numerous doctors appointments, x-rays, physical therapy appointments, and pill after pill...
Quinn empathized with her mother, who feared both a rapid and slow decline. Eva was living in a care home in Victoria when she requested medical assistance in dying (MAID). At 100, she could see the writing on the wall, and she didn’t want to be bedridden. “My brother...
Adult Protective Services agencies in every state receive reports of possible neglect, self-neglect, abuse or exploitation of older people and other vulnerable adults. But agency workers consistently face a bedeviling question: Does the adult in question have the...
How much of yourself do you have to give to your partner in support, and what is the true cost if you forget yourself in the process? The fact of the matter is this: Living with a spouse with depression isn’t impossible, but the question of how to support someone with...
While the book is replete with many humorous Conway family stories, such as her dad introducing his children to his favorite pastime — the art of horse betting at Santa Anita racetrack — or how she and her five brothers would run around the CBS sound stages to visit...
Just lately it is even harder to stay in my house, my geographical middle. This is because my siblings and I are sharing caregiving duties for our elderly mother, trying to help her stay in her own house, which is a twenty-minute drive northwest from my suburban...
Being away from Casey after growing up with him for almost 20 years is difficult. I worry about him, and sometimes, the worry clouds the way I see him. But when I left home, strangely, so did that confidence in his abilities. Over the years, in my mind he's become...
A few years into the illness, Janie could sense it worsening. Buzz, who had never yelled at her, now did so at the drop of a hat. Once, when she was heating up some water to make tea, Buzz towered over Janie screaming “No!” for no apparent reason. His ability to take...
Every society must choose which goods and services—from education to roads to health care—to provide publicly and which to relegate to the realm of individual responsibility. Over the past five decades, political actors have used the dominant ideological paradigm,...
Where do people most want to be when they die? At home, they tell researchers — in familiar surroundings, in comfort, with the people they love. an article this month in The New England Journal of Medicine that pointedly asks, “Is There Really ‘No Place Like Home’?”...
Marriage is hard for everyone, but it can be even harder when one person has a chronic condition. Disease, illness, and disability can make a partner seem like a different person. That’s no one's fault, says Laurel Wittman, board president of the Well Spouse...
The Covid-19 pandemic has especially disrupted the lives of people living with chronic illnesses and disabilities and those who care for them. Here, Laura Mauldin examines how the spouses of people living with chronic illnesses and disabilities navigated the care of...
Several years ago, I told my sister that I wouldn’t be upset if we never spoke again. Recently her husband, with whom I have a good relationship, asked me to reconsider. I’m torn. My sister is a few years younger. We were never close but we used to get together for...
Ms. McWhinney-Morse was in her mid-60s when she and a handful of others her age started laying the groundwork for Beacon Hill Village. But younger villagers are surfacing. Jenn Prunty founded My Glacier Village in the Flathead Valley of Montana four years ago, when...
Ms. Biteranta now receives all of her health care through PACE, which monitors her, along with 120 other seniors, meticulously. PACE supplies much of her social life, too. “Here, they schedule you for appointments,” said Ms. Biteranta, 74, a retired nurse. “They send...
On March 1 every year, disability communities gather to mourn disabled people murdered by their caregivers. The first vigil was held in 2012, outside Sunnyvale City Hall. “It was a small group. We had some local [advocates] there. And we had some people from the...
On top of her work in entertainment, she’s also held the role of caregiver. In 2018, Latifah lost her beloved mother, Rita Owens, to interstitial lung disease (ILD). Now, Latifah is set to appear in Beyond Breathless, a new documentary that explores the experiences...
The long-term care home is so small, it could be mistaken for a large suburban house. Ten beds, a kitchen and a shared living room — this is emerging as one key option for reforming Alberta's pandemic-battered elder-care system. Many families of dementia patients are...
When I hear the stories of Black and brown girls and gender expansive youth who provide care to sick or disabled family members, themes of love and devotion emerge. They love their mamas, uncles, sisters, and abuelas through hospital stays, late nights, and early...