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Reframing Negative Emotions When Life Throws You A Curve

Posted on February 10th, 2016 by karen

Help When Life Throws You A Curve

by Alana Pietrantuono, LMSW

When a loved one falls seriously ill, family members are faced with an unexpected turn of events, one that likely alters the plans they had spent their entire lives constructing. Accepting these changes is a challenge for anyone — they can leave you feeling as though your life has come to a screeching halt.

Joyce, a 35-year-old nurse, was on the verge of purchasing her first home. She had worked hard for many years and finally saved enough money to realize the dream of owning her own place. But when the health of her father, Charles, a 74-year-old Parkinson’s sufferer, took a turn for the worse, Joyce was forced to put her plans of home ownership on hold.

You see, Joyce had been her dad’s primary caregiver ever since her stepmother, Janet, passed away two years before, and it became clear to her that some serious sacrifices would have to be made in order to help her dad. She felt she had two choices: she could either quit her job and move in with her father to take care of him full-time, or continue working and spend the money she had saved for her condo to pay for his around-the-clock care at home. Charles would not consider moving to a nursing home, as he insisted he was still grieving the loss of wife and didn’t want to leave the house where he and Janet had lived together.

Joyce, for her part, was utterly destroyed by the loss of her home-owning dream. And while she felt guilty about this overwhelming emotion, she still couldn’t deny feeling angry and cheated. “I never thought that this is what my life would become,” she said at our first meeting. “I can’t even cope! But I can’t imagine leaving my father either. I would be a terrible daughter.”

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To Drive Or Not To Drive, That Is The Question

Posted on December 12th, 2015 by karen

by Joan Blumenfeld, MS, LPC

Driving with my dear old friend, Sarah, was becoming scary!

One evening, Sarah picked me up to go out for dinner. On the way, as we approached a red light, she was chatting with me and not paying attention to the road and we bumped right into the rear of the car in front of us. Thankfully no one was hurt, and neither car was damaged. The scariest part was that Sarah seemed to have no idea of the danger into which she had put herself, me and the occupants of the other car.

Her car was taking on an increasing number of small scrapes and dents. She was getting lost on her way home on familiar roads that she had been driving for years. The police were called four times in six weeks to locate her.

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Meditation For Health

Posted on December 3rd, 2015 by karen

by Karen Keller Capuciati

When friends tell me about their health issues, I often suggest they start meditating. And I usually I get a look that says, That’s nice, Karen, but I need a real solution to my problem.

But research on this topic is actually beginning to flourish. The National Institute for Health (NIH) is exploring the benefits of meditation for conditions as varied as asthma, panic attacks and heart disease, and there have been promising results. A number of studies indicate an actual cardiac benefit from various meditation techniques, while other research has demonstrated that meditation may indeed reduce the symptoms of anxiety, depression and chronic pain.

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Saying Goodbye: A Daughter’s Journal

Posted on November 18th, 2015 by karen

In loving memory of Marianne Whitman, we are re-running this blog written by her daughter Beth for In Care of Dad two years ago today.

by Beth Whitman

I was thinking about last Monday, when I visited Mom. It was dinner time, and I noticed that she was holding her cup of chocolate milk up to her lips, and trying to drink, but she couldn’t figure out how to tip the cup so that the milk would get to her mouth. I put my hand on hers and helped her tip the cup. She drank deeply, almost finished the whole thing in one go. I refilled the cup, and again she couldn’t figure out how to tip it toward her mouth. So I helped her again. And after a couple of times, her hand began to remember the motion and she was able to do it herself. But she put the cup down, and when she picked it up again her hand had forgotten.

The process of saying goodbye happens over and over again in little ways. But today it happened a big way. Today she died.

I did not wake up this morning expecting to have my mom die today.

I feel somehow a little guilty.

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A Beer For Estelle

Posted on November 13th, 2015 by karen

by Lisa Bassi

Before we get to the beer, I should give you a little background.

Along with a friend of mine, I teach a chair-yoga class every week at the local senior center. We have had up to 20 students in our group — all of them are over 80 and four are well over 90. They are as engaged and committed as any group of students I teach. They are all increasing in strength, breathing ability and flexibility. Some of them struggle with certain motions, some aren’t too sure of right and left, and some can’t always hear us describe the poses, but they make do, helping each other out with an occasional “The other left, Madge,” or “Pick up your foot, Nancy.”

One of our students, Estelle, is the mother of my friend and co-teacher, Lee. Estelle is one of the students who is struggling with cognition and getting a bit frail, but her smile lights up the room. She encourages other students and always tells us how great each class was.

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Breaking The Alzheimer’s Code: One Hundred Hankies For Joe

Posted on November 6th, 2015 by karen

We are happy to re-post this very special blog from August of 2014.

by Karen Keller Capuciati

I’m at the Alzheimer’s Association’s Annual Education Conference, held a few months ago in Cromwell, Connecticut. Jolene Brackey, the keynote speaker, is what you might call an Alzheimer’s visionary. After graduating from Iowa State University, Jolene began working as an interior designer but soon came to realize that she was more interested working with the people at the Alzheimer’s special care unit across the street from her design firm. She enjoyed the interaction with older people and began formulating her own unique ideas for helping people with dementia live in the moment.

She walks out into the audience and chooses a gentleman entirely at random. She asks him for his wallet and keys.

As the man dutifully hands over the items, Jolene declares, “I’m just going to place them up there behind my podium for a few hours. Okay? So that you don’t lose them.”

The man seems a bit confused but willing to play along.

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Meal Train: The Best Thing Since Chicken Soup

Posted on October 15th, 2015 by karen

by Karen Keller Capuciati

When you have a sick friend and you want to help out, sometimes you don’t know what to do. Offers to help — Don’t hesitate to call me! — seem perfunctory. You don’t want to be intrusive or force your sick friend to assign you a job, but you’d really like to show your love and concern . . .

Helping can get complicated.

Well, it just got less complicated. Meal Train is an interactive online service that allows family, friends and neighbors to sign up for delivering meals to friends and loved ones going through difficult times and/or significant life events, whether it’s surgery, cancer treatments, grieving a recent loss, arrival of a new baby, or just to ease the strain of everyday caregiving.

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Books And Movies For Inspiration And Support

Posted on September 24th, 2015 by karen

by Karen Keller Capuciati

Getting engrossed in a book or a movie can offer a pleasant escape from our daily routine. But for those of us caring for another person, enjoying a book or movie seems like a luxury we just don’t have time for. It’s critically important, though, to find time for ourselves as well — and many times we can gain more than just a break from caregiving by listening to a story someone else wants to tell.

Sometimes a well-told story can bring us a smile, or a new perspective, or inspire us in a way we couldn’t have anticipated. And, honestly, even a good sitcom has the power to turn my mood around.

Over the past four years, In Care of Dad has published many helpful accounts and advisements from the health professionals at Family Centers in Fairfield County, CT, on combating caregiver and grief-related isolation. So we asked them to share some of the titles they might pass on as recommendations to their clients.

From that list:

“The Conversation” by Angelo Volandes — This is an accessible guide to the stressful end-of-life communications with loved ones. It offers tremendously valuable advice to those of us taking care of aging parents and, ultimately, to us all. Death is never an easy topic to discuss on a personal level. In fact, many people avoid talking about it altogether, particularly when a loved one’s death is imminent. However, given that we cannot opt out of the event itself, being empowered to discuss death helps families when the unavoidable time comes. Volandes’s book is a truly valuable asset for having this important discussion.
— Amanda Geffner, MSW

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A Fear Of Sickness Or A Sickness Of Fear?

Posted on September 17th, 2015 by karen

by Kim Keller

Dr. Leana Wen’s interest in bringing transparency to the medical profession began back in 2003, when she was still a medical student.

Leana’s mom, Sandy, had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, which had already spread to her lungs, her bones and her brain. During her third round of chemo, Sandy happened to misplace her address book, so she went online to look up her oncologist’s phone number, and that’s when she discovered that her oncologist was also a highly paid speaker for the drug company that manufactured her prescribed chemo regimen.

Sandy called her daughter in a panic. It made her question her treatment plan. Is the chemo regimen right for me, she wondered? Or is it being prescribed because of my doctor’s financial relationship with this particular drug company?

Leana and her mother weren’t sure what to believe, but the answer was almost secondary. “When it comes to medicine,” Dr. Wen explained, “having that trust is a must, and when that trust is gone, then all that’s left is fear.”

Wen has enjoyed a long and varied career, serving in many capacities, both as a physician and public health official, including, most recently, as the Commissioner of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. And in all her various positions, Wen has discovered that many doctors share that same fear she described above. The absence of trust is by no means restricted to the patient population.

Indeed, there was an incident that left a great impression on Wen during her medical school years. She was caring for a 19-year old boy in a coma, whose body had undergone enormous trauma when he was hit by an SUV. The young man’s parents had immediately flown in from Seattle, traveling some 2,000 miles to be with their son in the hospital. The parents obviously wanted to receive as much information from the medical team as possible. In fact, they asked to be present when the medical team was doing rounds in order to help the parents understand exactly what was happening with their comatose son.

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Goodbye House, Goodbye Dad

Posted on September 9th, 2015 by karen

Cynthia’s dad, Norman, surrounded by his family in the family home.

by Cynthia Greb

A part of me doesn’t want to write this. I don’t want to revisit my grief. And, I also want to write this while the memories are still somewhat fresh.

Six weeks ago I temporarily moved into the room I had lived in as a teenager. It was the family home, although my family no longer lived there. The kids were all grown and my parents had both recently moved into a nursing home — my father because of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and my mother because there was no longer money for the caregivers we’d hired to assist her.

My home was in Colorado, but I was back in Pennsylvania to spend time with both of my parents and to sell, sort through, and dispose of all the remaining family possessions so that the bank could take possession of the family home. No, it wasn’t a case of foreclosure; it was because we’d had to get a reverse mortgage to pay for my parents’ care. And with them no longer at home, the house had to go to the bank. To say it was a time of great change for the Greb family would be an understatement.

So, I walked in the front door loaded down with my luggage. And I gazed around in shock. My siblings had told me about the pipe that had burst about two weeks before. Apparently the thermostat had been set at about 50 degrees, but one particular bedroom hung over an open porch and I guess the radiator pipes couldn’t hold up to the record cold temperatures.

Large sections of hard wood floor had been pulled up. Insulation had been ripped out. Drywall had been torn down. Rusty looking stains ran down the hall walls. Wainscoting had been removed. One closet had been completely ruined. Furniture and other items had been moved from the damaged areas and stuffed into adjacent rooms. There was a layer of dust everywhere from the work my brother and the clean-up crew had begun. Several fans were going and the living room still smelled of mold and mildew. It was a large house and it looked like a good third of it had been ruined. And the rest of it was looking none too good either.

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