Senior Home Care Giving:

Redefining Dementia as a Terminal Illness.  Dale Carter / Transition Aging Parents.

Excellent article and resource link discussing falls among the elderly due to certain medications at Alzheimer’s Reading Room.

Comforting Alzheimer’s and dementia care givers.  @ForCaregivers

COPD: Awareness Is Rising, But Understanding Is Still Low.  @PattyGrace

RLS or leg cramps at night for you or your aging parent? This seems weird but I have a friend who has tried it and says it works great! Anyone else tried it? 

An apple a day keeps Colon Cancer at bay!

Great resource for Boomers & Seniors at Seniors For Living with the latest Boomers and Seniors: News You Can USE!

Adding a Stair Lift to Aid a Senior Loved One.

Grandparents:

I really enjoyed reading all the interesting posts at the Homeschooling Blog Carnival at Janice-Campbell’s site. There’s some great ideas for our grandkids in homeschooling programs.

A good ebook resource for grandkids just starting in homeschooling programs.

LEGO toys and games are great for the grandkids and now LEGO brings historical figures to life including Mark Twain, Elvis and more. My grandson was quite intrigued by these and had me print him out a copy.   @prblog

Kids coloring pages to print including fun Thanksgiving coloring pages. Great for the grandkids

If you have an mp3 player, did you know you can buy simple stereo speakers for only $10 at Walmart and NO batteries are required? I just did that and now I can let my grandkids listen to stories and music with my iPod! Great for in a bedroom or you can even use them as frugal car mp3 players.

CurrClick is offering a free Thanksgiving workbook – fun for grandkids & grandparents.

Sandwich Generation:

I have always loved this quote – since I heard it years ago:  “To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am” ~ F. Bacon. Thanks to @RetiredTeacherD @Terrillific RT @gen_kenig for the reminder.

Loved this article on exercise at Moomette’s Magnificents. The comments weren’t bad either.

Words of Encouragement  for the Sandwich Generation!  Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

iPods, Mozaics, Sansa Fuzes, Oh My! Whatever mp3 player you use, did you know you can use it as a “virtual library” of audio books and podcasts to help you with your caregiving duties? Thanks to iTunes, it’s relatively easy to subscribe to a variety of podcasts to learn about such topics as dementia, caregiver stress, Parkinson’s Disease, help for the caregiver, and more.

I love to listen to my Nano iPod as I drive to and from my various Sandwich Generation caregiving requirements, stand in long lines, take walks to deal with caregiver stress and even, occasionally, fly cross country. I was thrilled to discover, recently, that my car has a connector jack that gives me one of those great “car mp3 players.” This allows me to share songs and stories from my iPod through the sound system.

I can only hand-carry a couple of books at a time with me, but with my iPod, I can bring the equivalent of 50+ books as well as a smaller hand-picked selection of all my favorite praise and worship songs. And I only have a 4gb iPod! Think what you could do with 80 or more gb like some mp3 players have.

Even before I had an mp3 player, I enjoyed audio books and podcasts by using iTunes on my computer. I downloaded what I wanted onto my computer. Then I either listened to the computer or “burned” a CD of the materials I was interested in and took them with me using a CD player. The mp3 player is a lot easier, though, and over time helps pay its way by not requiring me to keep buying CDs. Not only that, since most of the podcasts I listen to are free, I’ve found it to be a great money saver there as well!

I tend to go whole hog on what I read. In other words, I will go through a period of reading all Christian fiction, all real estate, all science fiction, or all computer geek books. I do the same with the podcasts I listen to. Right now, I am primarily listening to blogging podcasts and enjoying them tremendously. But I also have a list of five interesting podcasts about caregiving that I thought you might enjoy:

• Caregiving – Denise Brown
• Coping With Caregiving – Jacqueline Marcell
• Parkinson’s Disease – PD Talk Live

The following are more of a technical discourse as opposed to the above podcasts which use more of a casual chatting format:

• The Lancet - This covers neurology issues such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, stroke, etc.
• MUSC Health Podcast Library – a wide variety of elderly ailments,  including Alzheimer’s Disease, Geriatrics, and more are dealt with.