by Judy Kirkwood
January 13th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
By the time we got my mother a laptop computer, she was too cognitively impaired to work the keyboard as she had when she was an ace executive secretary. It might have made a world of difference had we gotten her connected with the Internet earlier.
In a collaborative effort to enrich the lives of shut-ins, Microsoft, Selfhelp Community Services, New York’s Department of Aging, and Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications combined forces to promote Internet use by seniors in an innovative but simple project: The Virtual Senior Center. Although this was a funded project that benefited a limited number of people, it is conceivable that results could be replicated across the country.
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Posted in Other | 1 Comment »
Tags: Other
by Carol Bradley Bursack, Editor-in-Chief
December 8th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Decades ago, my grandmother received monthly vitamin B12 shots from the home health nurse. It was common knowledge, even then, that as people age they don’t absorb vitamin B12 well. Low B12 levels can cause pernicious anemia, which was my grandmother’s problem. However, low B12 levels can cause many other illnesses, as well.
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Posted in Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Other | No Comments »
Tags: aging | Alzheimer’s
by Dorian Martin
December 5th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Like many young adults, my brother Steve and I moved away from home to follow our dreams. With the exception of a four-year period in the late 1990s, we never lived closer than a three-hour drive to our parents’ house. That wasn’t a problem early on, but as our parents reached their late 70s, Steve and I increasing found it difficult to gauge how they were doing physically and mentally. Like many adult children, we found that the best time to get a handle on our parents’ status was during holiday visits.
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Posted in Caregiving, Other | 2 Comments »
Tags: Caregiving | Holidays
by Judy Kirkwood
December 2nd, 2011 at 1:15 pm
My daughter-in-law’s 86-year-old father, Jim, traveled from the Midwest to South Florida with my son’s family for a visit with me last month. She rented a wheelchair from the local hospital as her diabetic father had some trouble walking. My son was flying separately with Jim and everything went smoothly until their layover in Atlanta.
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Posted in Other | 6 Comments »
Tags: Elder Mobility | traveling
by Judy Kirkwood
November 28th, 2011 at 10:05 am
My neighbor, a single mother with an active 5-year-old and a stressful job, is trying to help her 70-something mother with her financial problems. But there is no financial solution. Her mother is obviously unable to handle her financial affairs.
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Posted in Caregiving, Other | 1 Comment »
Tags: Caregiving | money
Carol Bradley Bursack
