Washington Post Health Section – Aging Well
Today’s Washington Post Health and Science section has a theme, The Aging Well Issue. Article topics include Alzhemers/memory, aging-in-place villages, and geriatrics experts discussing ”good things about aging.”
The Post also has a feature on Medicare with lots of information to help children of aging parents who are helping their parents with health issues.
NPR Story on Vaccines and Aging
This morning (February 8,2010) on National Public Radio, a Morning Edition story, “Adapting Vaccines to our Aging Immune Systems.” explained how vaccines given to seniors are not as effective compared to those administered to children and younger adults. The story describes how the body’s immune system works in general, and how a senior immune system (defined in the story as people somewhere over age 50) differs. Because an older body’s immune system is continuously losing pep and vigor in its reaction to standard vaccines, new and stronger types are developing expressly for seniors. A link on the story’s page goes to a YouTube video on how the immune system works.
The NPR report quotes Dr. Stefan Gravenstein, a professor of medicine at Brown University (Brown University School of Medicine), who together with Ann Falsey, from the University of Rochester, explains how new and more effective vaccines are developing. A really interesting story to listen to or read (NPR’s web site usually offers both options).
Flu shots (yearly) and pneumococcal vaccine have made our parents lives healthier and more secure. Many aging parents know this and need no encouragement to get the shots, which are covered by Medicare. Others may need extra encouragement from their aging children.
More on Dr. Gravenstein
Listen to Dr. Gravenstein discuss heart, dementia, and the future of senior nursing care in this interview. Also check out the Tockwotton Home, an innovative assisted living and nursing home where Dr. Gravenstein, a gerontologist, is the medical director. In the interview I was especially interested in the connection he draws between heart issues and dementia.
When Mother died last month, her dementia was advanced, but to us her heart issues were more significant, causing her strokes as well as other disabilities, and ultimately causing her death. The above interview with Dr. Gravenstein connected some of the diseases for us. Because we were with her every day as her dementia advanced, we observed the other dramatic heart-related symptoms, and it was so clear to us that the heart was the main culprit.
As Time Goes By — a Great Blog
I expect to have aging parents for some years to come, so I am always on the lookout for other blogs that cover senior issues, especially those that feature great writing.
The other day I mentioned Life with Father because it is wonderfully written and fun to read. Check out the most recent post, Love is a Many-Doctored Thing, that addresses with insight and humor, the multi-doctored world that envelops our aging parents.
For several months I have also been reading, As Time Goes By, a blog that features good writing on a broad array of issues. Its postings are authored by a range of writers including Saul Friedman, whose column is Gray Matters. I have been a fan of Friedman’s for some time, when he wrote for Newsday and even before that.
Here on my blog I document the experiences, issues, stories, and concerns generated by my family (two only-child boomers and their aging parents). I examine and think about the issues, trying not to dwell too much on feelings (though feelings are important to include). The writing on As Our Parents Age is from my perspective, with considerable input from my husband, and I am committed to linking readers to sites that provide additional information about the topics. I also write about technology and seniors, an interest of mine, given my years of training technology users of all ages. My blog readers, in theory, are people my age who have aging parents and who want confirmation, more information, or extra reassurance, or an occasional laugh about aging parent topics.
What I especially like about reading As Time Goes By is how the writing and the features are intergenerational — attractive and interesting to people in my parents’ age range as well as to people in my age group (boomer). Over the past several months I have read a number of thoughtful, informational, and timely posts, in addition to Friedman’s columns, and I have sent a number of these links to my parents, who also find them interesting. Intergenerational writing — that is an achievement.
Snow Worries and Aging Parents
As a teacher it used to be that I thought about time off from school when snow was predicted. Now I have parent “SnowWorries,” and I rarely get around to anticipating snow days. During a big snow storm, and we’ve had a bunch this winter, my anxiety level is higher than usual. Not crazy high, just worried.
In December, when my husband’s mother was still alive, we had a huge snowstorm with more than 20 inches of snow in our yard. Transportation was difficult. Fortunately we had people who helped to care for Mother around the clock, and one caregiver practically moved into her apartment for two-and-a-half days during the actual storm. We were lucky, but we worried just the same, because it was several days before we could get over to see her (a long period — not common for us), even though we were only a couple of miles away from her apartment.
However, I also worry about my parents who are 120 miles away. Their retirement community takes care of all shoveling and plowing, so the only thing they need to do is sit tight until they can safely get out again (sitting tight is not a concept that I typically associate with my parents). Both of my parents are able to drive and get from place-to-place so they are still self-sufficient and independent. Still in this weather I worry about falls and the occasional inclination to pick up a snow shovel.
Now another snow storm! Even more than 20 inches is expected here. Their area is to be even harder hit than mine. The snow is, once again, falling over a weekend when I had planned to visit them. This is definitely reverse parenting, though I know they prefer not be be parented.
Daily phone calls help. I must get my mother signed on to a texting plan and teach her how to use it. This would make instant communication possible, and I would find that reassuring. Plus my mom would be tickled to learn how to text, even at a cost of five dollars a month added to her mobile phone bill.
I wish I could coordinate my life a bit more so that I could make the drive more often. Really I just wish we had a weekend when there was not a snow storm.
Seniors, Exercise, and Preventing Falls
Once again a fall. This time it is a friend’s mother who fell, and today I heard that her mother’s health is continuing to decline. Senior falls are frustrating and sad, occurring frequently and causing physical problems, discomfort, outright pain, and unhappiness.
Over the last four months I keep returning to the topic of seniors and falling — because falls keep happening to the parents of people around me. This Centers for Disease Control fact sheet gives more information.
While all falls cannot be prevented, many of them can be. Successful prevention requires the juxtaposition of factors – rearranging furniture and rugs into safer configurations, getting a senior parent to buy into these changes so they become permanent, keeping a parent active with exercise sessions and regular walking, and encouraging a parent to get balance assessments. It also requires the senior parent to be flexible about environmental changes. The Fall Prevention Center of Excellence has lots of useful information about these assessments including a number of demonstration videos.
Public health experts and researchers tell us that not only is exercise good, but also that it functions –almost — as a medicine, one that makes a person feel better and stronger with few side effects. Moreover, exercise helps to improve balance.
Exercise is critical for seniors. According to the Medline Plus site at the National Library of Medicine seniors, just like everyone else, need four types of exercise, but it is even more critical for seniors because of the potential for falls. They need:
- Endurance exercise to help keep the heart strong.
- Strengthening activities to build muscle or keep muscle strong
- Stretching for flexibility
- Balancing activities to help prevent falls
When my husband’s mother, a stroke survivor, moved from South Carolina to live near us, she was used to walking more than a mile each day. Read more »
My Mother (Mom)
I spoke on the phone with my mother tonight. What an amazing woman!
Besides being one of the Obama super-volunteers in the Shenandoah Valley last year, she is active in politics, a book club, and church, and she is always ready to get in touch with a Congressperson or Senator about an important issue (right now that is health care reform). Currently she is helping to make hygiene kits for Church World Service to send to Haiti. My mom loves her computer, uses it judiciously, and was on Facebook long before I was because she wanted to keep in touch with the young people who worked with her on the Obama campaign.
My mom and me in late 1952.
Though she is 82 years old, last summer Mom took a stress test when her blood pressure was high, and the result is that she has the body/heart of a 64-year-old. Did I mention that she swims and exercises four or five times a week?
Sometimes when I think about my mother I just lean back marvel at her drive and intellectual capacity. Her commitment to helping others, a characteristic of both my parents share, never wavers, even in the face of more conservative “why should we do that” type of people.
When people wear their religion on their sleeves, my mom likes to describe herself as a “Sermon on the Mount“ Christian, applying the concepts from that passage to the real world on a daily basis rather than just mouthing the Biblical words.
Other Links for Blood Pressure Info
Being A Grown-up Child…
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children — and the next day we became “real grown-ups” helping first one, then two, and increasingly all three of our parents. It’s time to give back. We do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, 
and it is not free from anxiety and tension.
This blog is my effort to record our experiences, highlight issues that I believe need attention, share memories, and pay tribute to three amazing people who are experiencing the later years of their lives. And perhaps, more than that, this is my attempt to process the experiences that we are going through and maybe dispel some of my fears about growing older.
martiw
