Caring for your parents in their senior years : a guide for grown-up children
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Caring for your parents in their senior years : a guide for grown-up children
个人著者:
出版信息:
Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, c1998.
格式:
图书
物理描述:
264 p. : forms ; 22 cm.
ISBN:
9781552092057
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摘要
摘要
A Sensitive and Compassionate Book to Ensure Happiness
"Guidebooks tend to be either readable or useful, but Caring for Your Parents in Their Senior Years is both....[It contains] a wealth of information about the afflictions of old age and how children can help their parents."Burton V. Reifler, MD, MPH,
The Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, NC "This book is highly recommended."
Barry Reisberg, MD,
NYU School of Medicine
For many of us, our first experience of aging comes with our parents. Squeezed between the competing demands of work, children, spouses and parents, it seems we simply cannot cope.
Caring for Your Parents in Their Senior Years is the first book on aging written expressly to help children help their elderly parents. With sections on housing and personal care, legal and financial planning, and grief and bereavement, this comprehensive guide teaches you how to handle aging in a healthy and caring fashion.
摘录
摘录
Introduction Whoever deeply searches out the truth And will not be deceived by paths untrue Shall turn unto himself his inward gaze Shall bring his wandering thoughts in circle home And teach his heart that what it seeks abroad It holds in its own treasure chests within Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy My sister Mary called from Ireland at four on a Sunday morning: "Mum had a stroke last night and she's in a coma. They think she's dying. She's asking for you. The only words she spoke were: 'Where's Willie?' I'm sorry, but I don't want you to hear this after she's dead. I feel you should know. Can you come home?" I felt physically sick, as well as a great emptiness. I had dreaded this call for fourteen years, ever since I had left Ireland. As a geriatrician, I care for patients with dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease. Sons and daughters come to my clinic worried, exhausted, angry, and burned out because they can't deal with their aging parents. But until I had to deal with my own mother's stroke, aging had never threatened me in such a personal way. That phone call and the series of events that followed changed me profoundly. I was forced to face some difficult questions head on. What can I do? How can I help? Is it possible to come to terms with this suffering and find meaning from this experience? How do I prepare for, and deal with, my own old age? Like other people caring for aging parents, I felt squeezed between competing demands from my work, my children, my spouse, my friends, and my parents. How could I cope with them all? I began to understand why some children of aging parents just sat and wept in my office. They felt overwhelmed, shell-shocked, and trapped. They didn't know where to start, and they didn't have a plan. Society, in adolescent denial, had not prepared them for this challenge. When the call came telling me of my mother's stroke, I was exhausted. I'd just returned from a lecture tour in Australia. It was my son's seventh birthday the next day. There was a stack of mail in my office, and my patients' appointments were backed up for a month. After talking to Mary, I spent hours on the phone trying to work out the logistics of a flight to Ireland. The cheapest fare I could get was an "executive seat" the next day. I didn't have the money. "Oh God, Mum, don't die now," I prayed. I phoned home again. My father answered. Although he was upset, he was fairly philosophical: "If she's going to get better, she will, and if she's going to die, she will. It's in God's hands now. Only he knows what will happen. She's in a coma. There's nothing you can do. She wouldn't even recognize you now if you came. I'll tell you when to come home. Take care of yourself and your family first." Later, I talked to other family members and prayed that Mum would hold on until after her grandson's birthday, until after a planned trip to Boston, until I got the money, until I was ready -- then it would be okay for her to die. I felt ashamed that I could think about my mother's death in such a selfish, cold fashion. In a few days, she woke up. Her right side was paralyzed and she couldn't speak, but she could eat. I had a reprieve. I didn't have to go home immediately. Like all critical stages of development, aging and death provide some interesting challenges. They tend to create victims and survivors. Victims are like children frozen by fear of the boogiemen under their beds. Survivors look under the bed. The expected loss of my mother forced me to confront my own mortality. I started to experience my own aging in a new way, one that fundamentally changed my perception of myself and my life. I questioned my decisions. Had my life been meaningful? Had my relationships been truthful and worthwhile? Had I lived life according to my principles? Would I "one day" do those things I dreamed about, or would my dreams just fade away, submerged by the reality I had created? Was any of it important at all? Although I lost a certain youthful innocence in this process, I gained a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence. I turned to sport, literature, and hobbies with a new appreciation. I found a richer sense of pleasure and happiness in my marriage, children, friends, and job. Life felt more fragile, more transient, and more precious because, in a very real sense, my parents' aging was a dress-rehearsal for my own. My mother and father both died while I was writing this book. I never had the opportunity to talk with them about death and loss, to have the conversation I wished we could have had. I never got to thank them enough or to tell them some of the things I wish I had had a chance to say. I experienced their deaths in very different ways. When my mother died, I felt tremendous sadness. When my father died, I felt relief. There are no satisfactory good-byes. Death always leaves us with a sense of loss, futility, and sadness. But a parent's aging and death also offer opportunities for us to learn and grow. The book is for family members who want to help their aging parents. It provides practical information and tools to keep parents safe, healthy, vital, and linked to the world. It will enable sons and daughters to plan for and cope with aging in a healthy and loving fashion. It is my earnest hope that Caring for Your Parents in Their Senior Years will be used by children to understand and discuss the important issues they face with their parents in old age. It's a conversation we all desperately need to have, but most children don't know how or where to begin. I hope this book helps you to share love, peace, and wisdom with your parents. Excerpted from Caring for Your Parents in Their Senior Years: A Guide for Grown-Up Children by William Molloy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.目录
Acknowledgments | p. 10 |
Introduction | p. 11 |
1 Is This Normal? | p. 15 |
Common physical changes--hearing loss, failing eyesight, falls, foot problems, constipation, incontinence, shortness of breath, sexuality | |
Health problems, after 65--Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease, strokes | |
Mental health--loneliness, emotional changes, memory loss, depression and anxiety | |
2 Coming to Terms with Aging | p. 71 |
The parent-child relationship | |
Understanding our parents | |
Judging our parents | |
3 Getting Started | p. 89 |
Battered children | |
Adult children taking charge | |
Elder abuse | |
4 Staying Healthy in Old Age | p. 123 |
The elixir of life--keeping active | |
Vaccinations | |
Diet | |
Cigarettes and alcohol | |
Safe driving | |
Maintaining a positive mental attitude--helping your parents stay positive and optimistic meditation and prayer, peak moments | |
Continuing to work | |
Visiting the doctor--choosing a family doctor, knowing your medications | |
5 Helping Parents Stay at Home | p. 145 |
Elderly denial | |
Preventing accidents--safety check, moving about, entrances and exits, stairs, lighting, furniture, electrical wiring, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, assistive devices | |
Safeguarding the home for Alzheimer's patients--wandering, falls, tips, getting help | |
6 Planning Alternative Living Arrangements | p. 161 |
Long-term care--placement-coordination services | |
Retirement homes/lodging homes | |
Nursing homes/homes for the aged | |
Chronic care | |
Choosing a home | |
Making the move as easy as possible | |
Follow-up in the home | |
7 Legal and Financial Planning | p. 175 |
Maintaining assets after retirement | |
Protecting your parents' interests--power of attorney, advance directives, guardianship, wills, trusts | |
8 Keeping in Touch with Out-of-Town Parents | p. 197 |
Conspiracy of silence | |
Long-distance relationships | |
You can't put a phone call on the fridge | |
Gifts | |
Parents visiting | |
9 Grief and Bereavement | p. 207 |
Come quick, your mother's dying | |
The emotional maelstrom of grief | |
The healing process of bereavement | |
The rituals around death | |
Finding yourself | |
10 Toward a New Age | p. 227 |
The aging process | |
The free-radical theory of aging | |
New and improved | |
The graying of society | |
"Cures" for aging and dementia--superoxide dismutase and DHEA-S, vitamins, testosterone, gerovital-H3 and H7, removal of the pituitary gland, cell therapy, chelation therapy, nerve growth factors, deprenyl, cerebral vasodilators, cerebral metabolic enhancers, nootropics, cholinergic drugs, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, smart drugs and smart foods | |
Fear of death | |
A new society | |
The old joker | |
Epilogue | p. 257 |
Index | p. 259 |
Firefly Books,
图书
Molloy, William, 1953-
Molloy, William, 1953-
1998
9781552092057
Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, c1998.
SD_ILS:604871
362.82 MOLLOY 1998
Caring for your parents in their senior years : a guide for grown-up children
Caring for your parents in their senior years : a guide for grown-up children
Caring for your parents in their senior years : a guide for grown-up children
Caring for your parents in their senior years :
Molloy, William, 1953-
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