NEW YORK TIMES: Why Hire a Geriatric Care Manager?

Categories: Caring For Elderly, Planning, Resources

The New York Times has added a regular feature called The New Old Age. It is an ongoing journalistic effort to help adult children, caregivers and seniors themselves understand the changing world of retirement, longevity and the life of elders. It is described as a blog about health, finances and relationships between parents and the adult children caring for them. The section continues to grow in popularity with readers. It aims to provide a place for readers as well as reporters to explore the challenges and delights of aging. It also updates readers on the ever-changing health care scene and helps them to navigate through it.

A recent article was headlined, “Why Hire a Geriatric Care Manager?” In it, the writer Jane Gross tells her personal story. She explained that she and her brother hired a geriatric care manager to assist with issues with their elderly mother. Ms. Gross confesses that at first, this felt like an extravagance, but that the care manager helped the adult children to resolve a series of complex problems to their satisfaction. She described the geriatric care manager as both a “blessing” and  ”lifesaver.”

The article continues with comprehensive information on everything from what circumstances are most suitable to using a geriatric care manager to explaining how a geriatric care manager can be especially helpful for families that are separated by distance.

A geriatric care manager is not only able to help you with your questions but also creating a plan for the future.  A geriatric care manager can be a great resource and help in the pre-planning stages of life for children who’s parents are nearing that turning point in age.  They are there not only to help the aging but their children as well!

What would you look for in a geriatric care manager.

Stress of the Caregiver

Categories: Caring For Elderly

As I parked my car, my cell phone rang.  Without looking I knew who was calling me.  It was six o’clock.  The calls were more frequent; the behaviors more overt.  I looked at the caller identification; I sighed and answered, “This is Deborah!”  For the third time that day, the nursing home was calling because my aunt was confused, demanding it was dinner time and they weren’t allowing her to eat.  Or refusing to take her medication.  Or wanting to go home.  Or one of many challenging behaviors that were escalating.

But what was I to do?  I was scheduled to attend a seminar and couldn’t advise them to do anything but redirect her as they had done a thousand times in the past.  But still they called hoping I could find some magical words that would convince her to go to bed – that she had just eaten – that she did live in that “horrible place” as she liked to call it.  I listened, I cajoled, I sympathized and explained; I assured and affirmed then I was able to say good night.  With relief I turned off my phone so I could focus on the seminar’s topic – Parkinson’s Disease.

You see, I am a geriatric care manager, and for the past five and one-half years, a caregiver for my aunt and uncle.  My uncle has had Alzheimer’s Disease for all this time and is very happy, placid and without issue except for bumping his wheelchair into walls.  My aunt, slowing traveled the journey into dementia fighting every step of the way.  She never noticed he was ill; she knew every day that her capacity to think clearly and rationally was slipping away.

But I am a geriatric care manager.  I counsel with families about how to handle the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.  This should be a breeze – practice what I teach, for heavens sake!  But when it’s your loved one with the disease, objectivity wanes.  My heart was breaking for the strong, proud woman who cherished above all her appearance.  My nerves were frayed from the growing demands this disease was placing on me.  And, above all, I wasn’t sure of what to do.

There is a distance between us – literally and figuratively.  My aunt and uncle live 250 miles from my home.  And, incidentally, they aren’t related to me by blood but rather by marriage; a marriage that ended nearly 20 years ago.   But neither concerned us when they were well.  Now at times I felt I was an intruder knowing more than I should, making decisions about two people I loved but had no right to choose their fate.  But the job had fallen to me innocently enough, and I was happy to help them out by agreeing to be the executor of their estate many years ago.  I had no idea all that agreement would entail.

What it meant to me at that moment, in the car at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening, was that I needed to do something to ease my aunt’s anguish.  For the past two years, she had been under the care of a psychiatrist whom we visited quarterly.  I had sought out a psychiatrist to help with the overwhelming paranoia my aunt was feeling every waking minute.  She was positive people were taking things out of her apartment in the assisted living residence where she lived.  In the beginning, this thievery was mentioned in conversation during my monthly visit, then there were the phone calls insisting she had placed her earrings in a box and the box was missing, then it was her perfume, hairspray, clothing, shoes – even her underwear went “missing”.  With every visit we would locate the missing items but she was convinced that someone had taken them and then replaced them when they heard I was coming.  But now it was more than missing personal items.  It was paranoia about being able to eat or take her medication.

It’s never easy to be a caregiver but it’s is the path that I chose.  This blog was created to help people during their times of struggle and know that there are others out there going through the same thing.  I want to be able to help, comfort and give advice to those caregivers who want to give the best care they can.  What are some struggles that you are dealing with right now?  Do you have advice for others going through these same stresses, we would love to hear about it!