Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 | Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence

Listen to an Astronaut about COVID-19
A small percentage of us may be coping with symptoms of COVID-19 or we know someone who is, but...
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March 24, 2020
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Trusted Voices on COVID-19
The news cycle calls the COVID-19 crisis a rapidly developing story. It unfortunately also has been one with a...
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March 17, 2020
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One is Number One Threat to Seniors
We’ve all had times when we desperately need our own space…time to ourselves, just ourselves. And it’s good to...
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March 10, 2020
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Helping Your Older Loved One – AND You – Avoid COVID19
All of us here know how to prepare for a blizzard, people in the South know how to prepare...
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March 3, 2020
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Part 2: Five Important Tips for Caregiving and Self-Care
In my last post, I gave you some tips on distance caregiving that arguably could be called the 30,000...
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February 18, 2020
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Tips for Distance Caregiving: Up Close and Personal at a Distance
If you think being a caregiver to an older loved one is hard–with all the trips to help them...
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February 4, 2020
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Five Things You Need to Know about Coronavirus
Okay, there may be more than five things you want to know about the coronavirus, but these five basics...
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January 28, 2020
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Alzheimer’s: A Cure at Hand?
I have posted before that the currently approved therapies for treating patients with Alzheimer’s disease are not really very...
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January 21, 2020
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Alzheimer’s Disease State of the Nation
It is sadly ironic that it was former president Ronald Reagan who designated November as National Alzheimer’s Awareness Month...
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November 20, 2019
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There is an ‘I’ in Caregiver: 5 Tips to Avoid Burnout
We all have heard of coaches exhorting their players to work together by saying “there is no ‘I’ in...
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September 25, 2018
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

Gregory Peebles is a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA), Certified Dementia Practitioner (CDP) and trained Medicare Counselor, whose work focuses on helping aging adults and folks with limited independence by providing resources and support to help them discover and lead their best life. Gregory has been a key member of the CCM team for over a decade. – Charlotte This is the second installment in a three-part series to help clear up some common misconceptions about Medicare. Medicare isn’t intentionally confusing, but with all the cross-talk surrounding Medicare, even if understanding it isn’t as intuitive as “1,2,3”, it’s at least as easy as “A, B, D.” In the last post, I discussed the structure of Medicare, and its division into two main parts (A & B) and a supplemental part (D). In review, the major portions of the program look like this:
- Part A – “Original Medicare”, covers in-patient stays (including hospital stays, or stays in rehab facilities, etc.)
- Part B – “Original Medicare”, covers physician visits (including Primary Care Provider visits, or referrals)
- Part D – added under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, covers select prescription drugs.
Let me start with some of Medicare’s surprising omissions of coverage. Again, the way the public thinks that the service works and how the service functions in practice are not the same. For example, Part A is designed for stays in medical facilities, but not all stays, and not all facilities are covered. The same can be said for Part B, which does not cover all physician office visits. How does this work? While most traditional, scheduled physician visits are covered, you shouldn’t expect to be covered by Medicare Part B for:
- Most dental care
- Eye exams related to prescribing glasses
- Dentures
- Cosmetic surgery
- Acupuncture
- Hearing aids and exams for fitting them
- Routine foot care
Which facility stays are not covered under Medicare Part A?:
- Long-term care
- “Custodial” care
It may come as a shock to many, but Medicare does not pay any part of the cost for permanent residence in a Skilled Nursing Facility (commonly called a Nursing Home). Without long-term care insurance, many aging adults find themselves unsure how to manage to pay for extended, custodial care. Next week, we’ll talk about options to close the “gaps” in coverage and how folks covered by Medicare are planning for themselves with the help of Medicare Counselors. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
In my last post, I gave you some tips on distance caregiving that arguably could be called the 30,000 foot perspective on distance caregiving. But even from afar caregiving is deeply personal and the caregiver needs to be as much a focus as the care receiver. You might call this my “do unto yourself as you do unto the other” post. I’ll start with the “other:”
1. Caregiving is a team sport – to be successful you have to be part of your care receiver’s team. Most health care providers, especially the residential ones, have what they call a “Care Team.” That could include a nurse, a physical therapist, a social worker, and a physician, and this last could include any number of specialists. You are part of the team, and you do not have to have power of attorney to be a team member…but you do need your care receiver’s written permission for the rest of the team to talk with you.
2. Successful teams bond with one another – you need to have a relationship with key members of the Care Team. And everyone needs to own their position on the team. Regular check-ins happen…well…regularly. Everyone keeps notes and lists of “to do” items. You also need to get into that habit.
Now, about you.
1. Take care of you - If you know anyone who is a therapist or social worker seeing clients in an office, they do not work all their hours in one-on-one therapy. They take time to process, and they take time to recover. In short, they take care of themselves. The lesson here is that self-care is very important to successful “other-care.” I recall an individual who confided in me that he had gone from six hours of uninterrupted sleep a night caring for his mother to six hours of interrupted sleep a night caring for mom. That is not good self-care.
2. Avoid burnout - When you have a call with your care receiver or members of the care team, set a time limit as you begin. Make notes following the calls, and these include assessing how you feel about what you have heard. Have the local care team take care of what happens locally…you cannot.
3. Set loving limits – I followed this advice when I was raising my children as well. You have to recharge your batteries. Some people workout, others write in a journal, some people go to the art museum, and some listen to their favorite music. Do what feeds your spirit so that your spirit will be there for both you and your care receiver.
In the end, everyone on the team wins. If you are a caregiver, it’s important to be part of a winning team. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
Do you know how kinesiologists refer to walking…at least some of them with whom I have spoken? (These are the folks who specialize in the mechanics of body movement.) They call it “controlled falling,” and we can really appreciate this if we look at toddlers just beginning their first adventures with “walking” upright…it is mostly a series of failed attempts at walking that initially end mostly in falls. Fortunately for toddlers they are built pretty close to the ground, so the falls rarely inflict any real damage. Not so with older adults. June is National Safety Month, which makes it a perfect time to highlight one of the bigger health risks among those 65 years of age and older: falls. And this is a good time to underscore the scope of the risk. Like, one in four older adults has a fall each year, but only about one in two of these are ever reported to their physicians. Yet, over three million of these episodes each year are seriously enough for the individual to end up in the emergency room owing to a resulting head or hip injury. By the way, more than one in four of these ER visits result in a hospital stay owing to a fracture or contusion or worse. If you have an older loved one, don’t wait for the phone call; here are some simple steps you can take to assess your care receiver’s risk as well as help bolster their safety:
- Assess your loved one’s risk for falling using the CDC’s questionnaire;
- Make certain your loved one gets an annual eye exam, and keep their glasses (if needed) are current with their vision;
- If you accompany them to their doctor visit, ask about their feet, posture, leg strength and agility;
- Help assess and address any clutter or other safety issues in your loved one’s “space,” and remember that a lot of this revolves around lighting and ease of access.
This last one has a lot to it. If you would like, we have a home safety checklist that you can use to identify potential trouble spots in your loved one’s house. Just email me at info@creativecaremanagement.com, and I will send you a copy. You may have noticed that I have nearly 600 postings in this blog. Please just type in “home safety” or “fitness” in the search box on the Blog…or any other keywords that are top of mind for you about your loved one’s safety. So, let’s all end this month with a spring into summer, not a fall. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
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So last week, the turkey turned out really great, the pumpkin pie was awesome, the home football team prevailed, and most of the family showed up for the annual feast. Everybody ate, laughed and played together nicely, but you feel like crying. It just was not the same without mom or dad or some other loved one in the picture. You're not alone if you have this feeling of being let down or even depressed as you try to put on a happy face and enjoy the holidays that used to be so wonderful.

Psychologists call these responses to holidays or other special times of the year "anniversary reactions." The holiday itself may bring back memories of a time when there was a lot to enjoy - which makes holidays without a loved one all the more empty now that they are gone. Or the holiday may be the time when your loved one passed, and it is hard to find the good times in what now is a memory of profound loss.

It is not just about dates on a calendar. There are other potential triggers that bring on a sense of grief and loss almost as fresh as the moment of the initial loss itself. Certain places when we come "home for the holidays" can be triggers for melancholy. Certain smells like those of a favorite dish or of the frost in the air or the candle smoke as the Chanukah candles burn down or the Christmas tree that may soon stand in the corner. And there may be the sounds that open the flood gates as we all shift to the holiday music that will be with us until the day after Christmas. But you don't have to simply resign yourself to the blues; here are some ways to reconstruct a more positive version of your holidays.

1.    Crying gets the sadness out. It's okay to be honest about how you feel by simply letting the emotions out. Crying can be a great emotional release and a relief that will let you then get back on with more positive holiday emotions.

2.    Reflect back on the positive activities that you had enjoyed with your deceased loved one. Find someone - children or grandchildren - with whom you can share the activities, and you may find they begin to give you a new satisfaction.

3.    Memory of loss can stand in the way of other positive experiences that preceded the loss. Talk with close friends or relatives, some of whom may have shared those positive events. By reconstructing the positive, you re-experience moments you had cherished with your loved one.

4.    Collect some of the photos of the good times you have enjoyed with your loved one. Or maybe it is a letter written or other memorabilia that you can place in a special box or album so that you can have stimuli that help to re-experience the moments that have been special.

      These suggestions are not intended to take the place of professional counseling if your depression weighs heavily on you, but they are steps that may help restore the "happy" in your holiday.

      Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com.