Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 • family caregiversChicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence - Since 1991 | Page 6

Pre- Instead of Post-?
When was the last time you studied after a test? Or prepared your dinner after you had dined? Or...
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July 21, 2020
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Negative Thinking Causes What?
What could be worse than a COVID pandemic? How about the uptick in depression and anxiety that mental health...
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July 7, 2020
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Abuse Thrives in Pandemic
Guest post author Gregory Peebles is a team member at CCM whose work focuses on helping aging adults and...
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June 16, 2020
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Distance Caregiving Through a Wall
I’ve written numerous times about distance caregiving, and one of the observations I have offered is that distance is...
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May 19, 2020
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Caregiving During COVID: Four Tips for Reengagement
You may recall that I have recommended limiting your news consumption, because it really does add to our stressed...
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May 12, 2020
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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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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) adverse drug reactions or overmedication result in more than 700,000 hospitalizations a year. And many of these could be avoided by following advice offered by the American Geriatrics Society. The AGS’s Foundation for Health in Aging offers advice for all of us who care for older parents or adults in our orbits. Here is a summary of the six major recommendations.
1. Ask before taking OTC drugs: Never assume that just because you can buy a medication in a drug store without a prescription that it will be harmless. Most of these drugs started out as prescription meds. Ask the doctor or pharmacist if an OTC drug is a risk by itself or in combination with a prescription your elder may already be taking.
2. Make/update your List: A lot of medical offices are very good about asking patients on every visit what medications they are taking and keeping it in their records. With every visit the provider needs to add new medications so that everyone is aware of what your elder is taking.
3. Question your provider: When you or your elder receive a new prescription ask questions about when to take the drug, with or without food, what to do if a dose is missed, is it available in generic form and what are the common side effects?
4. Read the labels and follow them: There is a fine print insert of patient instructions that comes with every prescription. Don’t be intimidated by the scientific jargon; look for the indications and usage section as well as the adverse events sections. And then take them as directed – don’t add a dose for better effect or stop just because you feel better.
5. Report any ill effects: There is a saying in geriatric circles that every symptom in an older adult should be considered a side effect of a drug until proven otherwise. Especially if there is sudden difficulty breathing or swallowing, light-headedness or irregular heart beat. If you cannot reach your loved one’s provider call 911.
6. Review your medications with your provider: At least once a year you should talk with your elder’s provider about the medications, the doses and any changes you may have noticed. And do not leave out vitamins, supplements or herbals.
For more information go to the American Geriatrics Society web site as well as refer to a list of drugs that have known side effects or other issues. This is called the Beers List .

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 Charlotte Bishop
When you consider the place a typical senior calls home, it has not changed a lot since it was full of kids and a much younger family. But what may not have been a fall hazard back in the day might become one as parents age in place. This is a list of just some of the senior care precautions one should take to make home as safe as possible for an older adult whose feet just are not as nimble as they once were. Throughout the home:
In the bath:
In the bedroom:
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. Learn more about What We Do and how we can help you support your loved one.
Dementia is one of the topics to which those of us who are geriatric care managers (GCMs) devote a fair bit of attention. In our day to day work and in my blog I have often talked about how caregivers can best communicate with, and care for, older loved ones who may be experiencing the cognitive deficits of Alzheimer's Disease or other forms of dementia. In this posting, however, I am going to share with you a bit of good news for caregivers and other individuals in their middle years who wish to take positive action to avoid dementia themselves. Yes, there are steps that a middle aged individual can take that will quantifiably reduce their risks of dementia, at least according to long term research recently released from the University of Eastern Finland. Very simply, what the Finnish researchers set out to do was study what kind of influence healthy diet could have among individuals from midlife as they aged. The researchers developed an index which helped them to quantify what constituted a "healthy diet" versus what they considered to be an "unhealthy diet." Healthy foods included unsaturated fats from milk products as well as fish, fruits, berries and vegetables. Unhealthy foods, on the other hand, included saturated fats, salty fish, sweetened drinks, other sweets, eggs and sausages. At the end of fourteen years, those who had eaten the healthiest foods had a 90% lower risk of developing dementia than those whose diets were the least healthy. These individuals started the program at about fifty years of age and the final assessment was in their mid-sixties. Those participants who had the highest consumption of saturated fats at the outset of the study were at higher risk of being diagnosed with "mild cognitive impairment" at the 21 year point in the study as well. This link between saturated fat consumption and incidence of cognitive impairment was consistent among the panel of participants. But there was another finding about coffee that may come as something of a surprise. They found that the "sweet spot" was three to five cups of coffee a day. That is to say the researchers found that those who consumed fewer than three as well as those who consumed more than five cups of coffee a day had higher risks for developing dementia over the courses of their lives. Something of a "happy medium." What should people in their middle years make of this study? The researchers had used this measure of a healthy diet based on the sum total of what a person consumes because they argued that there are a lot of interactions across foods and nutrients. That said, it also makes it difficult to point to a single food that is the miracle "dementia stopper." In reality, maybe it is just that...that there is no one food that is going to make us healthier or one that will make us inherently less healthy. If you want to make it to your later years without as great a fear of cognitive decline, should you eat less saturated fats and consumer more fruits, berries and vegetables along with an average dose of coffee. These researchers would probably say that it couldn't hurt. Charlotte Bishop is a 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. Please email your questions to info@cr eativecaremanagement.com.
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If you are a caregiver, you probably have talked with your older loved one in person or on the phone. You also may have swapped letters in the mail, but chances are that you have not been emailing...let alone texting mom or dad. Yet, all of that is changing. Now that we are starting off into 2014, we are seeing a clear majority of adults 65 years of age on the internet...and that bar may have been cleared as early as 2012. That certainly changes how some of we caregivers are communicating with mom or dad at distance. Here is the rest of the story. Nearly two of five 65+ year old internet users also are on Facebook. Half of these access their Facebook page on any given day. And nearly 90% of internet users age 65 and older are sending and receiving e-mail messages half of the time. As recently as 2010, only about 57% of adults 65 years of age and older had a cell phone, but that has increased to almost three in four adults of retirement age with mobile phones. Among those 76 and older the rate of cell phone use is approaching two out of every three of this cohort. The major problem older adults today face is the employment into retirement chasm - a technology divide. Those who are in the labor market tend to take for granted that what they learn at work to a large extent is what they also embrace in some form or another at home. So, now move beyond the retirement launch and one no longer has access to the latest technology that an employer used to provide. It is not age that takes individuals out of the electronic communication loop. The simple transition to retirement exacerbates a digital divide. So, encourage your parents to be both videoconference experts and gamers. Help them to Skype or find the latest in webcam technology so that they and their grandchildren can stay in touch and in view. And as the grandkids grow, encourage the grandparents to purchase gaming technology like Wii. They, of course, can use the latest gaming platform to engage the grandchildren, but they also will find gaming opportunities that will help them to maintain physical agility. This latter option is what a trainer I know calls "muscle confusion." Using different games on a rotating basis - or at the fitness center different machines and moves - will help the muscles maintain important agility and strength. Both of these will help to preserve the "spring in the step" as well as strength and endurance. Getting back to staying in touch with the grandchildren, the more that your older loved one stays in touch with what is current the more they will feel relevant and engaged. All f this helps t maintain physical vigor as well as ward off the most common concomitant of getting older...depression. So, technology for younger individuals may be about being cool and in touch, but for your older loved ones it also is about being connected and healthy. Keep connected...be the bridge. Charlotte Bishop is a 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. Please email your questions to info@creativecaremanagement.com.