Boomers & Seniors: Alzheimer’s Awareness, Aging Parents In Crisis, Keeping Healthy in Body & Mind, and More!

Welcome to the Boomers & Seniors Blog Carnival at SandwichINK! This week’s edition has plenty of great info to inform, encourage, and entertain you.  You’ll find interesting articles covering such topics as restoring hope for caregivers, staying younger longer, Cheat Sheets for healthy living, financial advice, and so much more!

Starting off with yours truly, SandwichINK , we present articles covering two primary aspects of the Sandwich Generation.

How to Perk Up Your Aging Parent’s Day by Spiffing Up Their Walker is a review of the WalkerWonder, a stylish, practical product for your aging parent’s walker or rollator, giving it a sense of personality. We even have one to give away! Just head on over to get the full details.

For fellow grandparents, SandwichINK presents See How Easily You Can Make Your Grandkids Smile Even When They’re Sick , with fun tales and details about Paper Airplane designs and games. Your grandkids and you will have a blast! If they are part of a home schooling program, these make great summer projects.

Caregiving / Elderly Care

Alzheimer’s Disease Takes the National Stage , at Seniors For Living , gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing. “During this hearing hundreds of Alzheimer advocates met with their individual members of Congress, seeking their support on three priority policy issues. It was truly a banner week in terms of awareness, media coverage, and attention from legislators and the public, including Maria Shriver, on all things Alzheimer’s…”

Dale Carter of Transition Aging Parents presents My Top 5 List – Things I Wish I Had Known . “The key things I wish I had known about before my mother went into crisis a year ago.  Learn from my experience!  Do not wait until your aging parent goes into crisis."

Traits of a Hope-full Family Caregiver by Denise Brown of Caregiving explores seven traits for caregivers, along with great suggestions on how to build them into their lives, that can help bring hope back into their hearts.

Baby Boomer Generation & Senior Health And Wellness

Ready for some good news? Read about a new study that has found a simple way to stay and feel young at heart — just get involved with helping young people. Seniors Tutor Kids Through the Experience Corps , at Seniors For Living , is a fascinating article detailing how helping others can also help you!

Catherine Eagleson has a fun article appropriately titled, Have Fun and Keep Your Brain Active With Crosswords for Fun Codewords! posted at  Crosswords For Fun , saying, "Codewords are really great for giving your brain a workout, and provide you with a real sense of achievement when you solve the puzzle."

Verna Morris presents 25 Bookmark-worthy Cheat Sheets for Healthy Living posted at Assistant Guides . I am definitely going to be bookmarking many of them! They include resources on the subjects of nutrition, news, medicines, and sports and exercise. My favorite was “Unhealthy Chinese Food Choices.” My favorite foods passed! 

Vital information for all ages, Kirsten Fallon presents, Interview with Dr. Peter McCullough on the PLAC Test, posted at Blisstree. "Great Questions and Answers on detecting hidden risk for heart attack and ischemic stroke."

Colin Timberlake presents Training Log: The 2009 Arnold Classic 5K Pump and Run- Day 21 posted at colintimberlake . "Colin Timberlake uses amazing senior citizen marathoner Ed Whitlock (now 78 years young) as inspiration for a day of heavy training." Wow! Next time I don’t want to exercise, I’m going to think of Mr. Whitlock!

Heartstrong presents  A Fresh Look at Organic Produce , posted at Healthy Hearts with Heartstrong . “Which is better for you-an organic tomato or one that’s grown through conventional methods? The answer might not be as obvious as it seems.”

Financial Info for the Baby Boomer Generation & the Senior Caregiver

"Financial well being is just as important as physical well being,” writes Patricia Grace at Aging with Grace CareConnection . Read her interesting article, Does the Buck Stop Here? “If your parent’s money is disappearing, you need to intervene.”

Jeff Rose presents an informative article at GoodFinancialCents explaining why The Economic Stimulus Tax Cut is Misleading for Retirees . “If your retirement check got bigger in April, don’t start celebrating because you did not qualify for the tax credit….The net result is that although you are taking home more money each month, you will pay it back when you file your 2009 taxes…So what should you do?”

ConsumerBoomer has some fascinating facts in Where are Baby Boomers Cutting Their Spending? , presented by Jeff Rose. Have you been wondering if you are the only one cutting back on movies or eating out? Nope! Not only that, they’ve got nine items Boomers have been cutting back on! You might find new ways to save.

Did you take an early retirement in the last couple of years, or are you considering it? Be sure to check out what Super Saver Writes about Surviving Early Retirement During the Financial Crisis .

"Boomers that have multiple retirement accounts should consider consolidating,” writes Jeff Rose, in IRA Consolidation: The “Super IRA” Strategy presented at GoodFinancialCents.

Tips for the Baby Boomer Generation

Should You Buy or Rent a Home for Retirement ? An excellent question posed by Mr. ToughMoneyLove at Go To Retirement. “Many boomers considering retirement housing assume that owning is better than renting. That is no longer the case…”

“These are unprecedented times…for Sandwiched Boomers, many of whom are financially responsible for their growing children and aging parents, they’re scared as they watch their dreams of a comfortable retirement disappear.” Phyllis Goldberg, Ph.D. and Rosemary Lichtman, Ph.D. of Nourishing Relationships address those fears in  Five Ways Sandwiched Boomers Can Think Positive in Tough Times .

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Boomers & Seniors: News You Can Use by using our carnival submission form . Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page . The next edition is due out on June 9th, with article submissions due by June 4th! We’d love to see YOUR article in the next Boomers & Seniors: News You Can Use!

Too much to do, too little time! Ask most families who are right in the middle of the Sandwich Generation why they don’t exercise and that would probably be the number one answer. But studies have proven that regular exercise makes you feel better, stress less, and renew your energy. It can even slow down some of the symptoms caused by diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. I definitely saw that with one of my loved ones. When he got Parkinson’s Disease he didn’t stop walking. In fact, he walked more. And he stayed active and alert for 15 years after that diagnosis. Contrast that to a friend’s dad who, once he got his diagnosis, stopped exercising, stopped going out, and was practically bedridden for years.

The need for exercise is not just for us grown-ups. Studies also show that our grandchildren aren’t getting enough exercise either. Everyone can benefit from more exercise. But how do you squish it in with all the other items you are busy juggling? Try mall walking!

Many malls open their main doors earlier than the stores actually open to allow people of all ages to walk around the inside, safe from too much heat, frigid cold, snow, or rain. There are restrooms and drinking fountains easily available. Security personnel are on duty so you have a safe and pleasant environment. We used to be regulars on the mall circuit – granddad, granddaughter, and me in the middle. Granted, our speed wouldn’t have sent any records. The mommy walkers with their jogging strollers often passed us three times in a day! But we all got exercise and we got out to see new scenery. We even made new friends and ran into old friends.

Our mall occasionally offered special events for the walkers such as health screenings. They even came up with a cute T-shirt for the walkers. Different malls have their own policies and rules. You can call your mall, or ask at the mall’s information center the next time you are there.

One added advantage for the early morning mall walkers – you are there right when the doors open! So you can get your exercise and then hit those sales running! Talk about great ways to save money – free exercise and early bird sales! Now doesn’t that get your energy up?

Because of health, expenses, etc., it can be hard to visit all your children and grandchildren as often as you like. Fortunately there are lots of fun and creative ways to keep close to them in spite of the distance. One of my ongoing plans for this blog is for us all to share different ways we have discovered that make the distance seem not so far away.

My grandkids who don’t live close love coloring pages. They’d keep their parents printing them out and buying them at stores all day long if they could. Naturally, that’s not an option. But it does create a great opportunity for a grandparent to help in that area.

Periodically I have fun preparing an email of coloring pages and projects for them to enjoy. I use public domain coloring pages I’ve found on the net along with coloring pages I’ve purchased. I’m primarily a computer-oriented grandma, but once in a while, I’ll even prepare a GRANDMA CARES package for the snail mail route. In that, I will usually tuck in stickers, coloring books, activity sheets, and other fun goodies. The Dollar Store is a wonderful help with that, although I am very careful about what I buy for the younger ones because of all the warnings lately about unsafe toys that go into little mouths.

The nice thing about these emails and boxes is that they are as much a gift for my adult kids as my grandkids. They enjoy watching the little ones open the boxes. They also enjoy the peace and quiet that ensues as little ones grab their crayons, scissors, and new coloring pages and get creative. Granted said quiet only lasts a short time, but it’s still sweet.

Some great resources for clipart include: Dover Publications – This company is famous for high-quality artwork that is public domain – free to use and reuse within certain boundaries. I have purchased two of their coloring books with computer disks. The pictures are great and the cds are easy to work with. You can find the books listed in my Amazon Book list for Grandparents on my Favorite Books and Music page (see Resource-full Links on the right) -  You can then print them out or email them to your grandkids to enjoy.

They also offer a wonderful sampler email that comes out every week. This links to their site where you can find great sales and more than a dozen sample pages from different books. Most samples give you two printable, copy-able pages that kids will enjoy coloring as well as some simple mazes, dot-to-dots, etc. Some are black and white, some are color, all are high quality. I especially love the turn-of-the-century colored pictures. They are so cute. Those are great for kids to cut out and glue onto pictures with glue sticks. Old fashioned stickers for free!

A great Christian site is ChristianAnswers.Net’s Kid Explorers . They not only have printable coloring pages, they have online interactive coloring pages, plus a whole bunch of other cool stuff for kids and grandparents to do while learning more about God and His awesome world. For those grandkids who are far away, you can both get on the computer at the same time, look at the same pictures and have a great time comparing colors as you work together, yet separately. You’ll notice I have added them to the sidebar along with the word search option. Now you can check your news, then print out some fun activities to do with your little ones – be they your children or grandchildren.

It probably comes as no surprise to you that the world’s best crayola maker (in my personal opinion ), also has a very snazzy website complete with great coloring pages – both for printing out or for coloring online, along with some other fun activities. You can find all that that at www.crayola.com . Their copyright specifically allows personal use so it should be ok for you to copy and paste these coloring pictures into an email to send your grandkids – and do let them know it’s thanks to Crayola’s great site.

Have a colorfully fun time and leave a comment or send an email to let us know your favorite sites for coloring pages.

Knowing that I am a caregiver, a friend just sent me a video about a type of breast cancer most women have never heard of. I did some research to make sure it wasn’t one of those phony emails that so often go around and found that it was totally on the level. As caregivers, this can prove to be vital information!

A brave mom, who has this disease , wrote about it on her blog:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years.

Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her.

Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago. You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.”

(Thank you, Whymommy, for permission to post this at other sites. You are in my prayers!)

For more information, go to:

• Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Foundation
• Mayo Clinic

Breast cancer can strike at any age but knowledge is power. Please learn about this disease for your own sake, and for the sake of those you are caring for. And please pass this on to as many people as you know. As with all cancers, early treatment is so very important!