TELL ME THIS WON'T HAPPEN TO US !!!!

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang.

Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him, Herman , I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on Interstate 77.

Please be careful!'

'Heck,' said Herman , 'It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!'

It's the Friday Sale!

The Friday Sale at Amazon


Also Don't forget about the Caregiver Seminar:

Caregiver Burnout Seminar; Sponsored by Austin Groups for the Elderly (A.G.E.)

Caring for a senior can often take a heavy physical and emotional toll on the spouse or adult child who is the primary caregiver. It’s important for the continued health and safety of the caregiver to learn how to take care of themselves while also caring for their loved one.

The next, free caregiver educational seminar takes place on Saturday, May 14, from 10am until noon in the Dining Room of the AGE building at 3710 Cedar Street.

Our featured speaker, Amy Temperly, owner of Care Balance Coaching, will discuss ways to prevent caregiver burnout and will suggest ideas and techniques to ease the burden of caregiving.

Please come prepared to laugh, have fun, and enjoy being pampered! This seminar is free but seating is limited so participants must pre-register by contacting Bruce Kravitz at bkravitz@ageofaustin.org or by calling (512) 451-4611.

Free respite care is also available during the seminar by calling Katie Bigge at (512) 458-6305 no later than May 11 .

Another way to support Austin Groups for the Elderly is by purchasing Amazon products via this Blog (see the Amazon Search link on the right sidebar). 100% of the proceeds go to A.G.E. and it cost you nothing extra!

Remaking Alzheimer’s: A Few Questions

From the NY Times: 

The newly revised criteria for Alzheimer’s disease, the first change since 1984 in how this dementia is diagnosed, are likely to be most valuable at first to scientists and researchers. The guidelines spring in part from novel research into biomarkers and imaging techniques that may not reach family medical practices for some time.
Still, the new criteria, unveiled on Tuesday by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, will have consequences for family caregivers. Informed by research showing that changes in the brain may be under way a decade before any symptoms appear, the guidelines are likely to lead to increasingly early diagnoses.
I spoke with Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, about how that will change the way we look at Alzheimer’s disease.

Q.

What are some of the most important effects of the new criteria? What do families need to understand?

A.

First, that memory impairment doesn’t have to be the first sign of the illness. So older adults who have no problem with recall of recent or remote events, who seem quite up to speed in recalling what they did earlier in the day but have more problems than you’d expect with navigating unfamiliar territory or keeping up with plans or getting tasks started and then finished — all part of what’s called executive function — those actually could be the first signals of dementia.
People with executive dysfunction may also start to misread or ignore other people’s reactions, which can cause interpersonal problems. They’re losing some of their social skills, because they’re failing to perceive cues from the environment that would direct them to behave appropriately.

Q.

The new guidelines establish three distinct stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Could you explain?

A.

They’ve been around for a while, but here they’re simplified so they’re not as confusing.
“Preclinical” dementia is essentially a scientific description. There’s some biological or structural brain evidence that the Alzheimer’s process is under way, but the person’s not disabled and the family doesn’t notice any problem.
The second stage is mild cognitive impairment — someone has problems that don’t cause disability, but they’re evident enough that the patient and a family member or another observer agree, “Yes, it’s noticeable.” You need two sources of information. Mild cognitive impairment progresses to dementia for a little over half the people who meet that criteria.
The overall thrust of the new criteria is to alert people that we need to diagnose this disease much earlier.

Q.

I often hear people say they wouldn’t want to know if they were developing dementia. Given that there’s no cure, why does earlier diagnosis matter?

A.

The reality is, we have a lot of different treatments for Alzheimer’s and the other dementias. No, those treatments are not curative. But we have medications that help maybe 40 percent of people with dementia. We have specific approaches caregivers can use to keep the person with dementia as active and engaged as possible and to keep themselves from getting depressed. We have some evidence that if you optimize the treatments for other diseases that make Alzheimer’s worse, like diabetes and heart disease, that increases the likelihood that Alzheimer’s will not accelerate.

Q.

The guidelines mention biomarkers, found in blood and in spinal fluid, that may help reveal whether symptoms and behavioral changes are caused by Alzheimer’s or something else. They’re being used in research, but it sounds like they won’t yet be available for most patients. Why not?

A.

It’s not like diabetes, where a fasting elevated blood sugar in the morning or hemoglobin A1c above 6 are clear signposts. What we desperately need for Alzheimer’s disease are more accurate biomarkers like that. But the ones we have are not yet standardized outside of laboratories, though if I read the language correctly, there may be individual cases where you might want to use them.
The public could misread these biomarkers of amyloid levels in the spinal fluid or in the blood as real diagnostic criteria, like those we have for diabetes. But we really don’t have a firm connection that’s predictive. We know that high cholesterol, for example, is part of the cause of coronary artery disease, not the result of the disease. We don’t know if amyloid is the cause of Alzheimer’s disease or a byproduct. So these biomarkers are not quite ready for general use in a doctor’s office or hospital.

Q.

It seems, then, that most people accompanying a parent to a doctor’s appointment may not yet see any dramatic developments because of the new criteria. The changes sound more incremental.

A.

That’s true. But because Alzheimer’s has its onset so late in life, if we can push the disability back towards the end of the life span, then the social and personal burdens are very much lessened. We don’t have to cure this disease in order to beat it, in the sense of preventing it from being socially and emotionally crippling.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

Caregiver Burnout Seminar; Sponsored by Austin Groups for the Elderly (A.G.E.)

Caring for a senior can often take a heavy physical and emotional toll on the spouse or adult child who is the primary caregiver. It’s important for the continued health and safety of the caregiver to learn how to take care of themselves while also caring for their loved one.

The next, free caregiver educational seminar takes place on Saturday, May 14, from 10am until noon in the Dining Room of the AGE building at 3710 Cedar Street.

Our featured speaker, Amy Temperly, owner of Care Balance Coaching, will discuss ways to prevent caregiver burnout and will suggest ideas and techniques to ease the burden of caregiving.

Please come prepared to laugh, have fun, and enjoy being pampered! This seminar is free but seating is limited so participants must pre-register by contacting Bruce Kravitz at bkravitz@ageofaustin.org or by calling (512) 451-4611.

Free respite care is also available during the seminar by calling Katie Bigge at (512) 458-6305 no later than May 11 .

Another way to support Austin Groups for the Elderly is by purchasing Amazon products via this Blog (see the Amazon Search link on the right sidebar). 100% of the proceeds go to A.G.E. and it cost you nothing extra!

Today's Amazon deal:

Mother's Day Gift Ideas

Binocular Deals at Amazon

Up to 60% off Binoculars

5 Things to Look For in Long-term Care

5 Things to Look For in Long-term Care
by Molly Edmonds
When we're looking for our dream home, we usually have a list of must-have features in mind. Some people can't live without walk-in closets, natural light and built-in bookcases, while others require two-car garages and big backyards. When it comes to long-term care options for ourselves or a loved one, however, we often don't know exactly what we're looking for. And because the decision that an aging adult needs long-term care can already be difficult in and of itself, we may let emotions get in the way of an objective search.
As it turns out, we can consider long-term care facilities with the same critical eye we bring to crown molding or skylights. First, there are some basic decisions to be made regarding the level of care and supervision needed, the financial resources available to pay for the care -- and location, location, location. Once you have a list of places that fit those criteria, how do you pick? Take a look at the five things on this list for some must-have features in long-term care.
5: Your First Impression
Feel free to trust your first impression when you walk into the doors of a long-term care facility. Use all your senses -- does the place smell pleasant, or is there an industrial or unpleasant odor in the air? Is it well-lit and pleasingly decorated? Is there a television blaring, serving as a babysitter for residents, or are there spaces for quiet and for conversation?
As you walk through the facility, you should get a sense that this is a home, not an institution. It's important to see the rooms to determine if the layout, lighting and sense of security are adequate. Privacy is important to many people, so find out if there are single rooms or if sharing will be required. Do residents live in long, anonymous rows of rooms, or are they grouped into small households or living units? Will there be opportunities for residents to make their spaces their own, such as bringing in their own furniture and decoration? What rules regarding noise and visiting are in place?
While people tend to focus on their own rooms, take time to visit common areas as well. You might inquire if there are outside areas where residents congregate, or in which activity rooms residents tend to spend a lot of time. Evaluate these areas for homeyness and cleanliness.
You'll also want to get a sense of the eating facilities -- more information on that can be found on the next page.
4: The Food
When you're touring a nursing home or assisted living facility, you'll likely be provided with a long list of social activities available to residents -- everything from bingo to swim classes. And while a long list of activities is a good way to pick a summer camp, there's no guarantee that the aging adult in question will want to spend a Tuesday afternoon making lanyards. That's why it's more important to focus on the one social engagement on everyone's calendar: meals.
Even if assisted living residents insist on spending all of their free time parked in front of the television, they're usually required to show up for meals. Since meals are often the primary activity of the day, take time to visit the dining areas and have a meal there. Consider whether the food is tasty enough to eat every day, and request a week's worth of menus to see if there's a variety of options.
Two other things to check are how dietary restrictions and preferences, such as keeping kosher, are handled, and whether a resident can get extra food or a snack throughout the day. These last two considerations will give you a clue as to whether the facility sees its residents as numbered mouths to feed or as distinct individuals with their own needs and desires. If the residents are given special attention when it comes to meals, then that standard of care usually carries over into other spheres as well.
3: Staff-to-patient Ratio
Most long-term care facilities strive to maintain residents' independence and autonomy as much as possible. However, that doesn't mean that residents should be deprived of care and help when they need it. For that reason, it's important to consider the staff-to-patient ratio of any care facility. In particular, you'll want to investigate the number of personal care aides, as they provide the bulk of resident care; a good ratio would be one aide to every five or six residents during the day and 1-to-15 at night [source: Matthews].
Good patient care is more than just numbers, though. Residents aren't likely to feel comfortable if they never see the same person twice, and if caregiving is merely a revolving door of who's available. A resident's transition into a long-term care facility will likely be made smoother by receiving individualized care from a trusted caregiver. Ideally, as you tour a long-term care facility, you'd observe positive interactions between caregivers and residents, such as staff greeting residents by name and staff quickly and cheerfully responding to residents' needs and requests.
We're not done judging other people yet -- on the next page we'll do some more spying.
2: The Other People
While scoping out the environment of the long-term care facility is important, so too ­is observing how people fit into that environment. That means taking a look at the current residents to see if they seem happy and engaged. They should look clean and well-groomed, because this will indicate that someone has taken care of them recently. Are there people moving around, taking part in activities, or are most people staying in their rooms by themselves?
To truly get the vibe of other people, you should visit more than once. Your formal visit, with the facility's tour guide, will obviously be the residence's attempt to show you the best of the best. Stop by at least twice more, unannounced, to see how people behave when tours aren't going on. By checking into common rooms and dining areas at different points in the day, you'll get a sense of what a full 24-hour period might be like in the home.
1: Report Card
While visiting a residence can give you a sense of all that goes well there, you may have to do some digging to find out what goes poorly there. If a facility receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, it is inspected every 15 months by a state surveyor. The surveyor's most recent findings are required to be kept onhand and shown to anyone who asks to see them. On this report, you'll learn what violations have been reported, such as physical abuse or health violations. Some of the violations may be minor, and no facility has a perfect record, but by asking staff members about these shortcomings, you might get a sense of whether they take complaints seriously or whether complaints are routinely blown off.
Another good resource is your state's long-term care ombudsman (some communities also have local ombudsmen). The ombudsman acts as an advocate for long-term care residents and their families and visits facilities regularly. He or she will have a good idea of the issues and problems at certain facilities, as well as a sense of what residences might particularly suit a certain type of person. The ombudsman's services are provided for free.

Online Auction to Support Austin Groups for the Elderly - Great Deals!

100% of proceeds go to support Austin Groups For The Elderly (A.G.E.).

There are some really great deals right now. Hurry because the auction ends this Friday afternoon.

  

Click below to see, great deals to be had, Alamo Draft house tickets, theater tickets, massages, hotels and more!

http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/item/Browse.action?auctionId=132377236

You can also support A.G.E. buy purchasing from Amazon via our link on the right side of this Blog! 100% of the referral fees goes to A.G.E and it costs you nothing extra to help out! For example check out this deal:

70% Off Diamond Stud Earrings!