by External Article | Nov 30, 2022 | Caring for a Client, For Professional Caregivers |
When I was 19, a nursing home hired me to work as an aide. There wasn’t much to the interview that I remember, other than I agreed to come to work on time and take the certification course the home provided. In this course, I learned how to lift a frail person out of... 
by External Article | Dec 11, 2020 | Care Work Library, Housing |
While many other residents of elder-care homes found themselves confined to their rooms by Covid-19, the ones at Jamie’s Place could continue enjoying many of the small pleasures that bolster well-being and bring meaning to daily life. Jamie’s Place is one of 300... 
by External Article | Nov 23, 2020 | Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
When I was still young enough to pay attention to the things my mother and father said, I would listen each night to their conversations across the dinner table. Don’t you ever put me in one of those places, she said. Don’t put me in one of those places, my father... 
by External Article | Aug 25, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caregiver News, Housing |
Later, the story of the Life Care outbreak would be flattened by the ubiquitous metaphors of pandemic. People would say that COVID-19 hit like a bomb, or an earthquake, or a tidal wave. They would say it spread like wildfire. But inside the facility, it felt more like... 
by External Article | Jun 14, 2020 | Care Work Library, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
Lots of people visited the nursing home, but the sisters stood out because whenever they came to sit outside their mother’s window in the evening, they stayed for hours and hours, and then they came back the next morning. On the other side of the window, Susan Hailey,... 
by External Article | Nov 22, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, Long Term Caregiving |
It’s hard to change roles after living a certain way for decades. Dementia — and aging in general — forces our roles with certain family members to undergo dramatic changes. Producer B.A. Parker started recording her calls with her father because she... 
by External Article | Jun 28, 2019 | Care Work Library, Housing, Planning |
When Imani Woody’s father had a stroke in 2005, he came home from the hospital in a wheelchair. Woody, the eldest daughter, stepped in to help. She visited every weekend, paid bills, went grocery shopping and organized prescriptions for him and her stepmother. After... 
by Guest Author | Jun 18, 2019 | Caring for a Parent, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Working Family Caregivers |
Mom is presently serving 10 to 20 at the local nursing home. A simple procedure to remove a kidney stone, resulted in sepsis and a CDC dictate for two weeks of IV antibiotics, plus twice daily PT (apparently, 4 hospital stays in 5 months has left her “unconditioned”…... 
by External Article | Jan 10, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Finding Meaning, Generation X, Long Term Caregiving |
When fighting on behalf of the father you love, who do you become? When fighting on behalf of someone you love, the fight must end, the love must be the art of being present. I am slow to learn, but I am trying. Pastrami lunches. Riverbank afternoons. Conversations in... 
by External Article | Oct 8, 2018 | 24/7 Caregiving, Care Work Library, Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, Caring for a Relative, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Housing, Long Distance Caregiving, Long Term Caregiving |
When do we owe people the full truth about their lives? What happens when people cannot understand the truth or cannot accept the truth, so insisting on it only causes them repeated pain? The streetscape at the Lantern, the home at Chagrin Valley, is particularly... 
by Kaiser Health News | Sep 8, 2018 | Caregiver News, Housing |
“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.... 
by Catherine Hodder | Sep 4, 2018 | Baby Boom Generation, Finances, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Sandwich Generation |
There may come a time when your aging parents may not be able to live on their own. If living at home or living with you is not an alternative, then your parents may need to move to a retirement community, assisted living facility, or nursing home. The best scenario... 
by External Article | Aug 7, 2018 | Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, For Friends & Family, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Silent generation |
When deteriorating health forced David McClure, who is 81, to enter first one Ottawa nursing home, and then another, he felt as though he was going back into the closet, after decades out of it. “I couldn’t let my gayness show,” he said. “The looks were very... 
by External Article | Jul 5, 2018 | Care Work Library, Housing |
I sat down with Sharron Cooke, a resident at Newmarket Health Centre outside of Toronto, and her friend, Devora Greenspon, 85, a resident at Extendicare Bayview in Toronto. SC: It’s very hard to be bedridden … I was bedridden for the two years in the hospital... 
by STAT news | Jun 20, 2018 | Baby Boom Generation, Caring for a Parent, Death & Dying, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Working Family Caregivers |
The younger Peshkin, 48, studies the biology of aging at Harvard Medical School in Boston. A broad-shouldered man with a twinkle always lurking in his brown eyes, Peshkin has been obsessed with aging since childhood because he worried that his father — then as old as... 
by External Article | Jun 16, 2018 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Grief, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Occasional Caregiving |
You are forgetful sometimes, but living in purgatory, unremembering what happened five minutes ago, is probably a blessing. How else to cope with the horror of your life? Buried alive as you are within the confines of a bed and a wall is a daily reminder of death.... 
by External Article | Jun 8, 2018 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Occasional Caregiving |
After coming out as a lesbian, Alison Smith was given a choice: she could be part of her family, or she could be gay. She didn’t have any contact with her parents again until her mother was dying. Her mom refused to accept her on her death bed. Then her father... 
by Kaiser Health News | Mar 2, 2018 | Caregiver News |
Jordan Rau, Kaiser Health News Basic steps to prevent infections — such as washing hands, isolating contagious patients and keeping ill nurses and aides from coming to work — are routinely ignored in the nation’s nursing homes, endangering residents and spreading... by External Article | Oct 24, 2017 | 24/7 Caregiving, Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, Caring for a Client, Caring for a Parent, Finding Caregiver Support, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, The Paid Perspective |
My 100-year-old mom was heading for the bathroom, and that meant I was headed there too. Until just a few years before, my mom had led a fiercely independent life. And then she got pneumonia. She needed live-in help, and it took me about 10 seconds to decide that that... by External Article | Jul 7, 2017 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Finances, Finding Meaning, Housing, Sandwich Generation, Working Family Caregivers |
Like many of my friends, I’m at that point in life where things keep happening. Parents are sick. Kids are struggling to become adults. Jobs are lost and sought. Hormones shift and we vacillate between moods. Our outrage against social injustice rises and falls with... 
by Guest Author | Nov 14, 2016 | Caregiving 101, Housing |
It’s no secret unpaid family caregivers are suffering. In fact, research shows the burden of care negatively impacts the social and physical well-being of caregivers. As people age, most of them will likely pass the weighty mantle of caregiving to a family member.... by External Article | Apr 7, 2016 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Client, Caring for a Neighbor, Death & Dying, Finding Meaning, Grief |
Janet Adkins, a fifty-four-year-old English teacher, decided to make herself gone before the disease got the chance. Diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, she was Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s first client. A minister friend asked me recently about my grandfather. I... 
by External Article | Feb 4, 2016 | Care Work Library, Caregiver Burnout, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Generation X, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Wellness |
A couple of years ago Williams started the r/caregivers subreddit. It’s a place where he and fellow caregivers can talk about the stresses, questions, and sadnesses that come with supporting an incapacitated loved one. The community is small but dedicated, and... 
by Cori Carl | Oct 1, 2015 | Caregiving 101, Housing |
How many of you have promised that you’d never abandon your parents to die in a home? You can imagine the sadness…and the smell, right? But that’s not what I experienced when I visited my grandmother. I’d say hello to the folks at the front... 
by External Article | Sep 14, 2015 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Caring for a Relative, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Millennial Generation |
In the space of one year, I became caregiver for my dad, aunt and husband. It didn’t happen all at once. First, there was the phone call from Dad’s neighbor, letting me know Dad had fallen and been taken to the hospital by ambulance, Aunt going with him. I knew then... 
by Rick Lauber | Nov 11, 2014 | Caregiving 101, Housing |
by Rick Lauber, author of Caregiver’s Guide for Canadians It can be an agonizing decision to make; however, it’s one that many of us have to ultimately face at some time in our lives. Placing your mother or father into long-term care often signals increased mental or... 
by Fay Wein | Oct 24, 2014 | Baby Boom Generation, Caregiving 101, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
When a life-long companions health requires for them to be placed in a nursing home, professionally known as a skilled nursing care center, there may be much stress and fear of the unknown associated with the decision for both of you. Sometimes there be anger and... by External Article | Mar 13, 2014 | 24/7 Caregiving, Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, Caregiver Burnout, Caring for a Parent, Caring for a Romantic Partner, Housing, Interviews, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation, Occasional Caregiving |
My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about three years ago. After an extended stay at the hospital and stints in two different rest homes, my mom brought him home to care for him herself. She did this despite warnings that it would be too much for her to handle—even... 
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