I was quite interested in the news headline “ER Visits for Senior Citizens Rise at Thanksgiving.” Their premise is that this occurs because the aging relative’s family members haven’t seen them in quite a while and/or they underestimate the effects of normal aging.

Their overall thought process does make sense. If you only see an aging relative once a year, it can be quite a shock to see how their health may have deteriorated considerably since the last visit. And, while Thanksgiving has passed, the same points would be true for the whole holiday season through Christmas or even the New Year, as many of us don’t get all of our visits finished until then.

Then again, several members of my family have dealt with various legitimate trips to the ER in the last 20 years. We actually had one trip to ER the day before Thanksgiving but it was NOT a false alarm. My senior dad developed pneumonia and, shortly after that hospital trip, he was put on hospice. Other relatives have been admitted to the hospital during the holiday season, ending plans for holiday travel. In some cases, the planning process itself could have been a small part of the problem. In other cases, the fact that it was cold and flu season was a definite factor due to complications from bronchitis, pneumonia, etc. Often, our immune systems are weakened due to stress, travel, not sleeping well, not eating healthily, and other reasons.  I know many families who have dealt with similar circumstances.

While I don’t necessarily agree that unfamiliarity is the only reason for the increase in emergency, the article does make some excellent points and contains good advice of what TO do throughout the year as well as what NOT to do in these circumstances. I totally agree with them that, while it could be a false alarm, if you have any concerns about the health of your beloved senior, it is vital to take them to the doctor’s office, urgent care or, if serious, the Emergency room to have them checked out. With the holiday season now in full swing, I would encourage you to pop on over and read the article. And have a healthy and peaceful holiday season.

Senior Home Care Giving is hard whether you live near by or at a distance. WebMD has some GOOD NEWS for those of us in the Sandwich Generation who are dealing with this on a regular basis!

Their article describes a wide variety of new technologies available now or soon to come to help caregivers and aging parents. Some of these ways include:

• A virtual check-up with the doctor
• Using motion sensors to track whether seniors are eating regularly, alert you to falls, and even help you discover such things as urinary tract infections!

Using these fascinating technologies and others described in the article can be wonderful ways to save money and time – something we in the Sandwich Generation really appreciate. Hopefully some, if not all, of these will be covered by insurance. And they are all useful for both near by and far away care giving! Be sure to read the whole article to get the full scoop! I’m going to add this to my list of questions for our next doctor’s visit.

Many of us in the Sandwich Generation are providing dementia care for aging parents. One big concern as the disease progresses is the safety of our senior parents. Every few days you read about a patient with dementia who has wandered off and is lost. Currently, there is no national system in place to help find them, such as the Amber Alerts which help find children. As I wrote in my original post on silver alerts and in my Twitter updates about Silver Alerts,  it’s vital for us to contact our elected representatives and ask that they support H.R. 632 which would provide an inexpensive and easy way to send Silver Alerts out across the nation. Since it is not uncommon for a dementia patient to be found many miles and several states away from home, this is a definite need.

Since I recently moved, I just contacted my new senators via email. It took me about ten minutes to find their email addresses and type short notes. Thanks to RefDesk, you can do it even faster for this and other issues of importance to you. They just sent me a great link that did NOT turn up when I was doing my Google search. It would have made it much easier and faster for me! As busy Senior Home Care Givers and grandparents, we all need as much help in that area as we can get.

The website is a government site, USA.gov. You’ll find email and snail mail addresses, phone numbers, website addresses, and even info about being able to “tweet” your representative. While you’re there, be sure to send an email to each of your senators to support H.R. 632 to provide help finding missing dementia patients, and any other cause you support.

As I wrote yesterday at SandwichINK Real Estate Info, I also highly recommend RefDesk. You can visit there daily to see their latest “Site of the Day” or sign up to have it mailed to you daily. I do find the most interesting sites from them. It’s one of my favorite resources! 

Once you’ve contacted your senator, you can check here often to see if there has been any movement on this bill. I have a button on the far right side that shows what is (or is not) happening. And do sign up for the SandwichINK free email so you don’t miss out on any of the resources provided here for great Sandwich Generation Senior Home Care Givers and Grandparents like you!

SENIOR HOME CARE GIVING

“I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer’s.” A new book by the wife of an Alzheimer’s patient was written by Judith Fox and featured in Richmond Magazine.

Deep brain stimulation, developed for those with Parkinson’s symptoms, eases tics in Tourette’s syndrome.  Per @ParkinsonsInfo

Alzheimer’s Association Comfort Zone is a new Web-based GPS location management service that can help families
stay active. Thanks to @Caregiving for the info!

A great article by Wisconsin Senator Mary Lazich supporting the Silver Alert bill to help find missing Alzheimer’s Disease patients! Please call your legislators to support this bill!  Thank you @silveralertbill

When Should You Use Adult Day Care Services for Caregiving Help?

Is it really Alzheimer’s or something else?

Encouragement – Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.

GRANDPARENTING

A Jar of Fun idea for grandparents and grandkids – discovered by @heartofwisdom.

@PrepSmart lets us know that CPSC Urges Parents, Grandparents & Caregivers to Stop Using “My Baby Soother Pacifiers Due to Choking Hazard.”

National Sensory Awareness Week is Oct 25-31. Joan Graves has written an interesting article about Sensory Integration Disorder also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction (SI) and Sensory Processing Disorder.  Per @lisajcopen

A powerful article to share with your teen and young adult kids / grandkids – Nothing Casual About Sex -   Thanks to @JulieArduini for the link!

SANDWICH GENERATION:

Obama Declares H1N1 Flu / Swine Flu ‘National Emergency’ per Fox News.

Amazon Prime is GREAT for senior home care givers  and grandparents who help family and friends who live far away. And just in time for the holidays and sick days, they are returning to 2-day delivery for Thursday orders by delivering on Saturdays! Not only that, they are also offering a free one-month trial to check out the service!

Good analysis of the health care situation from a baby boomer generation viewpoint!

Encouragement – In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, O Lord, dost make me to dwell in safety. Ps. 4:8

As Sandwich Generation senior home care givers and grandparents, we can have several challenges in melding the needs of our senior parents and our very young grandkids. One prime example is that we want to allow grandkids to play freely while at the same time keeping safe areas and fall protection for our elderly parents and/or our wobbly toddlers who are just learning to walk.

If you are one of those who are blessed with the gift of keeping things totally immaculate without even trying, you probably won’t have an issue in this area. For those, like me, who are not so blessed, it’s a constant challenge to make sure we keep things picked up so my senior mom OR another grandkid don’t suffer any falls

Some of the things we’ve learned to watch for include:

• Keeping doorways clear for senior parents and shaky toddlers. For some reason, children seem to LOVE to play in doorways. I don’t think twice walking around or over them, but aging parents and tiny toddlers aren’t able to do this safely. Now I routinely remind them not to play there at all.
• Gates are vital for young ones – not to mention puppies – but aging parents might not notice them since they are at knee level. For that matter, they might see the gate, lift their legs over it but not be able to get them up high enough, then trip and suffer falls. Since I, who am usually very spry, just did that tonight, I can testify to how easy that is! 
• Aging eyes don’t see toys as easy as young eyes, and even small toys can cause a shaky senior OR toddler to trip. Marbles are fun for the tween ages, but can cause falls for the older and younger AND pose a choking danger to the wee ones. The same goes for LEGO and other tiny toys. Keeping them picked up is time consuming but easy fall protection.
  
• Dimmed light can be useful to try to get the young’uns to sleep but make it easy for great-grandma to slip and fall.
  
• Rugs – even rubber-backed ones – can cause the very young and the elderly to slip and fall, particularly if they get turned up or rumpled. The rubber-backed ones are vital, but even they need to be regularly monitored to be sure they are flat and safe.
  

These are just a few ways to provide family safety through fall protection. I try to stop and think things through every couple of days, and look around the house for areas that might be a problem.  If you have suggestions of things to watch for, we’d love to hear about them in the comments section below. And, be sure to sign up for the SandwichINK free email for more info and ideas for the Sandwich Generation.

Sandwich Generation news

This week’s Sandwich Generation news is for grandparents. There is a recall of some varieties of Children’s and Infants’ Tylenol. If you have some at home in case any of your adorable grandkids get sick while visiting, be sure to check the packages.

Tylenol has a complete list of medications involved in this recall and explains the reasons behind the recall. It’s also good to note that they have not included “Children’s TYLENOL® Meltaways and Junior Strength TYLENOL® Meltaways. The voluntary recall applies only to select lots of Children’s and Infants’ TYLENOL® liquid products.”

It’s always best to be safe rather than sorry when it comes to our grandkids’ health, so I’ll be checking my stock tomorrow as well.

I recently learned a new tip to help all of us senior home care givers who have to be away from their aging parents for a time, or who help seniors who live far away.

Make a list of each fuse box’s location, which fuse controls which parts of the house, and write up directions for how to reset a breaker. I am planning on sending it to my email in my computer AND my cell phone so I have it at all times, along with the location of each of the sockets that have RESET capability on them.

It’s very rare that a fuse is blown or a breaker is tripped. When it does, however, it can be a real problem for your senior parent, who may not know or remember how to reset them. Couple their being upset or frustrated with your not knowing, or remembering, the step-by-step instructions you need to give them, and you could have a mini-crisis on your hands.

We discovered this idea when a senior friend who lives out-of-state was so upset because the microwave had broken. I explained to him that it was probably the breaker and had him check various things, such as the refrigerator and the garbage disposal. They all worked, though, so he was planning on buying a new microwave and really upset with himself for what had happened. Fortunately, before he got a chance to go shopping, he decided to use his blender. When he plugged that into a different socket, it didn’t work either. “Ah ha,” he thought.

He called his apartment manager and they tried to talk him through it by telling him to push the reset on the socket above the garbage disposal. There was no socket above the garbage disposal, though. Then the front office employees sent the maintenance staff over and they helped my friend get everything back in running order, by resetting the socket that turned out to be behind the microwave.

If he had lived in a house instead of an apartment, he might never have been able to figure out how to fix this until friends or relatives came to visit months down the road. Spending half an hour to compile a list of all the sockets and fuse boxes turns a bad problem into a simple and easily dealt with problem, no matter how many miles separate us from our aging parents and relatives.

Are you in the throes of dealing with Swine Flu? Are you wondering if it is still around? Do you think you or one of your aging parents or grandkids has it? First and foremost for the first and last questions is to make sure you call your doctor and get their recommendations.WebMD has a fascinating article on where the latest Swine Flu outbreaks are After you talk to them, if you want more info (or while you are sitting on hold ), and the fact that college campuses are showing up as a signal for the hot spots.

A friend who has been dealing with it commented that he just wanted to know what Swine Flu complications to be concerned about. Turns out WebMD has an article with excellent tips to cover that as well, along with who is most at risk.

For the latest news on what medications are or are not being recommended, you can head over to the Wall Street Journal to read Swine Flu Update: Most People Don’t Need Antiviral Meds. There you’ll find an easy to read and understand summary of the CDC’s newest guidelines about the use of antiviral medication like Tamiflu.  The article also lists warning signs to watch for in children, so if you have a grandchild with the Swine Flu and you want more information after already talking to your doctor, this would be a good resource!

If you don’t have the Swine Flu and the grandkids are coming to visit, Flu.gov has created four short videos with tips for kids on how to prevent Swine Flu and other germs – starring everyone’s favorite Muppet – Elmo!  I bet your grandkids would have fun watching these a few times, and as they do so, some important lessons will wrap themselves around their adorable little brains.   Here’s one:

Be sure to check out the other three at the Flu.gov site.

While there, I discovered they also had a fun contest for the best videos to help educate young and old alike and we get to pick the winner. Educational videos were submitted, the best were weeded out, and now we get to pick our choices for best (or worst). My favorite video was Flu Sounds with Chainsaw as a close runner up. I was looking for ones that will hold a person’s attention while teaching them. These two kept my interest and made me laugh. I’ll stop my TIVO for commercials that make me laugh! That’s why I LOVE The Mac vs. IBM commercials!

Flu Sounds did all that AND got their point across very well. Chainsaw also accomplished all that, but most of the educational meat was at the beginning so I gave Flu Sounds the #1 spot in my voting. My least favorites, being a grandma, included Bagman – Kids might not understand it’s not serious and put plastic bags over their own heads, putting themselves at much worse risk from suffocation than from the flu! I also did not care for Hazmat – as I would rate it (on my conservative grandma scale) PG-13 for a bathroom scene and drinking scene.

You can vote for the Swine Flu prevention videos every day between now and September 16^th.  I just voted for ones listed above. Per their directions, “the order of the videos is randomly generated each time you visit the page. Voting is a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down for each video (at the bottom left of the currently playing video), and you are allowed one vote (up or down) per video per calendar day.” This would be a fun activity to do with our grandkids one or more times during the next few days. They’ll have fun voting AND be learning important health facts while they are at it. As I said above, I would personally avoid Bagman and Hazmat.

Let us know what you voted on and why. We’d love to hear your completely G-rated opinions as well.

And now, I’ll leave you with my two favorite videos from the contest:

Wouldn’t “Tim the Toolman” love that one!

Shopping at a store this week, I happened to grab two different senior resource and elder care services free magazines in the brochure section at the front of the grocery store. It’s the same place you find the freebie real estate booklets, used car newsletters, and parenting magazines. Both were ad-based magazines with very helpful information for caregivers.

Thanks to these two magazines I found information about:

• Free ride program for seniors along with interesting volunteer opportunities to help with the free ride program
• Senior centers for the various cities in the region
• Directories of housing options sorted by independent living, assisted living, critical care, and dementia care, along with adult day care and respite options
• Senior adult learning options that could provide great opportunities for many of us in the Baby Boomer Generation
• Contact information for governmental agencies on aging, hospice agencies, and medical equipment providers

I even found an ad in one for a pharmacy that offers free RX delivery. Wouldn’t that be handy if I had to be out of town and my senior mom got sick!

All of these could be useful for me down the road. Even more important, think how valuable this information would be for a long distance caregiver. I had never thought that much about it, but after reviewing each of these little magazines, I am now going to have a couple of older relatives I correspond with send me a copy of their local one, plus I’m going to start getting one each time I visit and older relative. They’re slim and easy to store and I can simply file them away under EMERGENCY for a future need.

I would encourage each of you who have long distance (or even up close and personal) relatives to get a copy of the senior magazine(s) available near your loved one. You never know when they might come in handy! Also, check back at least once a year. One of these magazines, with some valuable information I wish I had known about earlier, didn’t start publishing until I’d lived in this area for a few months. By then, I’d already picked up such items and never looked again. You never know when a new and useful magazine will be coming to your local area.

Providing senior home care to our aging parents definitely keeps us busier than the normal member of the Baby Boomer Generation. Helping with grandkids makes the Sandwich Generation one of the busiest times in our lives. I say that in spite of, once upon a time, having had three kids in three schools at one time, not to mention swim lessons and girl scouts as well!

Because it is such a busy time, it is easy to overlook small changes creeping their way in. I was reading an interesting, new-to-me blog by Maddy, a fellow Sandwich Generation grandma.  She wrote about just recently noticing changes in her mother-in-law that she realized had been showing up for the past few weeks. They were so small, and she was so busy, she had not caught on to them at first. Very understandable! And something we all deal with.

One of those small changes can often be an aging parent becoming a bit less steady on their feet. Then again, sometimes there is no warning. One day they are walking fine, the next day they take an unexpected tumble. Either way, the end result is that they are now walking a bit shakier and falling much easier. It’s probably time for them to get a walking cane.

The best place to start is their doctor’s office. Unfortunately, convincing them to get a cane can often be very difficult. The word itself evokes a major negative exclamation point in their mind. Or perhaps the tumble happened at a time when the doctor’s office is closed. They don’t need to go to the emergency room, but they do need something to help them. Then again, you may have had a similar incident as one of my senior friends. After going to the doctor to check out a couple of bruises for a fall, and admitting to a couple of other falls over the past couple of months, his doctor told him he should get a cane, but my friend brushed it off, saying he would later. One way or another, later has arrived, a doctor’s visit is not required, accepted, or needed. So where can we shop?

Walmart, Target, Walgreen’s, and Rite Aid are all good places to begin. Shopping at one of those is probably one of your best ways to save money on the cane and they will have a couple of choices. Not a lot, but it’s often enough. But, what do you do if you can’t find what you want?

Did you know Amazon carries canes? They have a large selection and the prices can be competitive. I priced quad canes recently, and found they were only a couple of dollars more than what I eventually paid at Walmart.

Another option, though finding one is getting harder and harder these days, is a local medical supply store. We used to have a wonderful one close by but they closed about a year ago. When I broke my leg, they were terrific. They carried just about everything I needed to help me, from crutch pads to shower protectors. I didn’t need a walking cane at that time, but I noticed they had a large selection of them available.

Parentgiving.com is an interesting site I’ve visited a few times. They also offer a great selection of walking canes. I’ve not used them yet, but do have them bookmarked for the future.

One last place I found online is Walking-Canes.net. Not only do they carry canes, but they have a large selection of articles about how to select a cane, how to size a cane, the different types of canes, and so much more. Would you believe, they even give tips on how to carve your very own, very unique walking cane!

Well, hopefully this will give us a good starting point on our quest for just the right walking cane to help our beloved aging parents. And with all this interesting info, perhaps they will be more receptive to the idea as well.