Older adults contemplating major surgery often aren’t sure whether to proceed. In many cases, surgery can be lifesaving or improve a senior’s quality of life. But advanced age puts people at greater risk of unwanted outcomes, including difficulty with daily...
The building that once housed the last drugstore in this town of fewer than 600 is now a barbecue restaurant, where pit boss Larry Holtman dishes out smoked brisket and pulled pork across the same counter where pharmacists dispensed vital medications more than 30...
Old. Chronically ill. Black. People who fit this description are more likely to die from COVID-19 than any other group in the country. They are perishing quietly, out of sight, in homes and apartment buildings, senior housing complexes, nursing homes and hospitals,...
The kidney doctor sat next to Judy Garrett’s father, looking into his face, her hand on his arm. There are things I can do for you, she told the 87-year-old man, but if I do them I’m not sure you will like me very much. The word “death” wasn’t mentioned, but the...
Vicki Bartholomew started a support group for wives who are caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s disease because she needed that sort of group herself. They meet every month in a conference room at a new memory-care facility in Nashville called Abe’s Garden, where...
With a bullet in her gut, her voice choked with pain, Dee Hill pleaded with the 911 dispatcher for help. “My husband accidentally shot me,” Hill, 75, of The Dalles, Ore., groaned on the May 16, 2015, call. “In the stomach, and he can’t talk, please …” Less than four...
When a routine physical revealed mildly elevated blood-sugar levels, Michael Phillips was strongly encouraged to sign up for a diabetes self-management class. Phillips never asked about the cost of the two half-day sessions he attended in a conference room at St....
“Oh my God, we dropped her!” Sandra Snipes said she heard the nursing home aides yell as she fell to the floor. She landed on her right side where her hip had recently been replaced. She cried out in pain. A hospital clinician later discovered her hip was dislocated....
Benjamin Hynden, a financial adviser in Fort Myers, Fla., hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks last fall. He’d had pain and discomfort in his abdomen. In October, he finally made an appointment to see his doctor about it. “It wasn’t severe,” he said. “It was just...
Back in 2008, Mary Hogden was homeless, living on the streets of Berkeley, Calif. “I got beat up really badly out there,” says Hogden, 62. “It’s not a safe place for women.” She landed in the hospital and then in a boarding home for adults with mental illness. But her...
Three years ago, William Mamel climbed a ladder in Margaret Sheroff’s apartment and fixed a malfunctioning ceiling fan. “I love that you did this,” Sheroff exclaimed as he clambered back down. Spontaneously, Mamel drew Sheroff to him and gave her a kiss. “I kind of...
After a devastating horse-riding accident in January 2017 landed him in the hospital for about 30 days, requiring trauma care and hospital-based therapy, Jeff Woodard considered himself lucky. The bills amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Woodard’s...
After Keith Beck died of bile duct cancer last year, family members said more than 900 people showed up to pay respects to the popular athletic director at the University of Findlay in northwestern Ohio. Many were former students who recalled acts of kindness during...
We’ve all seen it happen: An older friend or family member retires, is diagnosed with a serious illness or loses a spouse. Suddenly, this individual’s world is altered, sometimes seemingly beyond recognition. He has reached a fork in the road; will he get stuck or...
Two years ago, Dr. Daniel Cole’s 85-year-old father had heart bypass surgery. He hasn’t been quite the same since. “He forgets things and will ask you the same thing several times,” said Cole, a professor of clinical anesthesiology at UCLA and a past president of the...
In April, the government began sending out new Medicare cards, launching a massive, yearlong effort to alter how 59 million people enrolled in the federal health insurance program are identified. Historically, Medicare ID cards have been stamped with the Social...
A social worker, Lisel Vargas, recently visited Don Gregorio at his storm-damaged home in the steep hillsides of Humacao, a city on Puerto Rico’s eastern coast near where Category 4 Hurricane Maria first made landfall last September. Gregorio, a 62-year-old former...
The surgery went fine. Her doctors left for the day. Four hours later, Paulina Tam started gasping for air. Internal bleeding was cutting off her windpipe, a well-known complication of the spine surgery she had undergone. But a Medicare inspection report describing...
“Edith + Eddie,” a short documentary vying for an Academy Award Sunday, is a gripping look at a couple in their 90s caught up in an intense family conflict over caring for an aging parent. As a columnist who covers aging, I’m familiar with such stories. But as I...
When she was a young physician, Dr. Martha Gulati noticed that many of her mentors were prescribing vitamin E and folic acid to patients. Preliminary studies in the early 1990s had linked both supplements to a lower risk of heart disease. She urged her father to pop...
Ask Edith Smith, a proud 103-year-old, about her friends, and she’ll give you an earful. There’s Johnetta, 101, whom she’s known for 70 years and who has Alzheimer’s disease. “I call her every day and just say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ She never knows, but she says hi...
Being old and sick in America frequently means a doctor won’t ask you about troublesome concerns you deal with day to day — difficulty walking, dizziness, a leaky bladder, sleep disturbances, memory lapses and more. It means that if you’re hospitalized, you have a...
Surgery can be hard on older adults, resulting in serious complications and death far more often than in younger patients. But many seniors aren’t adequately prepared for the risks they might face. Innovative hospitals such as Duke University Medical Center, the...
On the last morning of their lives, Charlie and Francie Emerick held hands. The Portland, Ore., couple, married for 66 years and both terminally ill, died together in their bed on April 20, 2017, after taking lethal doses of medication obtained under the state’s Death...