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

Dementia, Distraction, Delirium and Depression
September is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, so we’re going to be sharing four posts that will help everyone with what...
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September 7, 2022
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Why Mister Rogers Was Right
Mr. Rogers Told You…but were you listening? And it wasn’t just once that he shared the message; it was...
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August 2, 2022
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Why a Flamingo Stands on One Leg
You’ve all probably heard the old joke about why a flamingo stands on one leg…and we have all seen...
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June 28, 2022
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What You Can and Cannot Change About Dementia
Let me start with the short answer to a question we raised in the email announcement of today’s post. ...
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June 21, 2022
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Age and “Long Covid”
There seems to be a cliché for everything, so we’ll start with this go-to for COVID: “We’re not out...
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June 7, 2022
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Dementia from a Pet’s Point of View
Fetch! Come! Sit! Stay! Remember! So, I’ve given away that I’m a dog owner rather than a cat or...
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March 1, 2022
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If It’s Not Happy or Merry?
I explained in an earlier post about why we refer to Holidays in the plural, and how we are...
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December 14, 2021
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Can You Hear Me Now?
From 2002 to 2011, actor Paul Marcarelli was the voice for Verizon pitching their cellular communications with the simple...
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September 28, 2021
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Three Milion More Victims…
We see the numbers on a daily basis. How many have died from COVID, to date, we all probably...
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April 27, 2021
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Three Steps to the Now Normal
Yes, it has been a long year, maybe in part because it has been more than a year of...
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April 6, 2021
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

Eating healthy should be a priority no matter what your age or health condition. Of course, during Thanksgiving, we are all tempted to indulge a little more than we would on a normal basis. Imagine if we were to reverse that thinking and made a more conscious effort to eat better during the holidays? If you’re preparing this year’s big feast, think about serving a mix of foods that align with a more healthy diet. For instance, if you’re caring for an elder adult, or an Alzheimer’s patient, you might want to consider a Mediterranean diet.

Studies have shown, as reported by ABC news, that a Mediterranean diet is great for preventing stroke and dementia. In general, the diet has exceptional nutritional value, with benefits that keep the body healthy and improve mental cognition at the same time. The American Academy of Neurology studied brain scans of those who exhibited various degrees of commitment to the Mediterranean diet. Those who stayed with the diet were 36% less likely to have infarcts – strokes in the brain that usually don’t produce any symptoms.

Another study by the American Academy of Neurology shows that the Mediterranean diet can improve the long-term health of Alzheimer’s patients. A focus on high fruit and vegetable consumption as well as low meat consumption seems to create benefits for mental and overall health.

So how do you infuse a bit of Mediterranean in your thanksgiving meal? First, if you’re a caregiver for a loved one, give them a few options and ask them what they prefer. It could be as simple as adding a salad to the meal, or trying a new and healthier way to prepare the stuffing. A quick search online will offer new ideas for side dishes and entrees. You may find that your efforts will encourage healthier eating habits for everyone at the Thanksgiving table, including yourself!

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. Visit our For The Caregiver page for more information and resources.
It is the season where we hear about “making a list…and checking it twice.” My kids think I get a little too carried away making lists, but having the right list at the right time can save the day when the unexpected occurs. Life has a habit of throwing the unexpected at us, but even then we can be prepared.

As a geriatric care manager, I regularly coach families of an older loved one or someone with special needs in list-making, especially if that loved one lives alone. You may recall in an earlier blog, I started with a list of activities of daily living to use as a way to inventory the functional capacity of a loved one. Once we see the deficits it becomes easier to develop an action plan.

But think ahead to the phone call you may one day receive that your loved one has fallen or had a stroke or some other debilitating incident. The first responders or a neighbor may know enough to call you, but now you have to be the voice for the incapacitated loved one. Do you know their meds and daily doses? Do you know where they keep their medications? Do you know who their primary care physician is or if they have a cardiologist, neurologist, or other health care provider who should be called?

Your responsibility as a caregiver is to plan ahead…hopefully for an event that will never happen. A vital step to this is creating a list of key telephone numbers and other information for your loved one. Write down a list for yourself to keep in your home and at work that includes emergency contacts as well as neighbors, relatives, clergy and others who will need to know. It can also be helpful to notify close friends so that if a hospitalization follows the incident that your loved one will have the benefit of visitors.

Make copies of insurance cards, keys, electronic openers, combinations, and more. To avoid confusion, make sure to label keys, so that if access is needed immediately, you’ll be prepared. You also should have access to any legal documents like the advance directives I mentioned in an earlier blog. And if your loved one has been living alone, you may need to know the telephone contact information for stopping delivery of newspapers or the mail as well as when the rent/mortgage and other bills are scheduled to be paid. Having gone though just this short list may now give you a headache as well as a sense of why I think it is important to keep lists. Write it down…

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 throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.,geriatric care manager Chicago,geriatric care Chicago.
In past postings I have talked a good deal about the importance of exercise for seniors who need care and their caregivers. And it is a proven medical fact that exercise is good for us in so many ways - physical and mental. As a geriatric care manager, however, I find that a lot of the older adults with whom we work do not exercise their voices enough - at least not with their doctors. A lot of folks think that they don't know what to ask about their medical conditions or they don't want to appear to be questioning the doctor who has all those degrees and certifications. Well, caregivers and older adults need to exercise their voices as their own advocates:
1. For every appointment with a provider, bring a list of questions about the medications, anything that may be different or just about what to know to be as healthy as possible.
2. Ask even it may feel embarrassing. Doctors and other providers are used to talking about urinary incontinence, sexual dysfunction, prostate problems and everything else.
3. Write down the answers to your questions. There may be a lot of information shared, and you want to make sure you can really process that information later when everyone is back at home.
4. If your loved one is not sure about how to "follow doctor's orders," ask. That way, your older loved one will be able to make changes that improve their health once they are back home.
What kinds of questions can be addressed with your older loved one's provider? Well, just about everything is part of the whole health picture, like:
- Psychological well-being - has your loved one talked about being really sad or blue lately - ask what can be done.
- Stress - have the worries of the day begun to intrude on a good night's sleep, gotten in the way of their usual appetite? - talk about it.
- Falls and balance - has your loved one seemed unsteady or have you noticed bruises? - ask them to bring it up to their provider.
- Medication side effects - or maybe your loved one just does not feel quite right with nausea, light-headedness, dizziness, and such - ask about it.
- Exercise - Your loved one does not have to be in training for a marathon, but exercise for seniors feels better and allows one to do better – so ask the doctor.
- Sleep in general - it may not be stress that is taking away a good night's sleep, but the doctor may have suggestions - ask about it.
And at the end of the day, everything begins to feel better once it is out in the open, so just the mere act of talking about a worrisome health issue may make it a lot easier to deal with everything.

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.
What do hearing aids, exercise, support groups and travel have in common? They all are ways that individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, specifically, or dementia, generally, can fight these diseases’ progression. Even more important, they help to fight the personal isolation that accompanies these frightening conditions.

We often associate dementias with older adults and the stereotypic confusion that can characterize the individuals with the diagnoses. But it is not just a condition of older adults as the recent public disclosure of The University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach, Pat Summit, highlights. Ms. Summit is just 59 as she goes public with her diagnosis, and it helps others to understand that it can happen as early as 30 and 40 years of age. Younger onset Alzheimer’s Disease technically speaking is the manifestation affecting those under age 65, and there are 250,000 new cases in America every year. Yet, there are ways to fight the downward spiral of dementia.
1. Hearing aids may seem an unlikely fix for dementia. Yet, it is simplybecause hearing aids enhance the clarity of communication and therefore the connection between dementia patients and others that they help alleviate the isolation and bolster memory. When dementia patients can hear more clearly, that connection also helps calm the anxiety that they may otherwise feel when living in a world that is confusing. Hearing aids cannot “cure” dementia, but they can help a patient navigate more confidently.
2. Exercise can be a helpful boost as well as it improves the blood flow and releases calming endorphin into the bloodstream. For a variety of medical conditions, health care providers often talk about the role that “performance status” plays in a patient’s ability to cope. Being more fit helps dementia patients cope just as being fit also helps cancer patients while they fight a tumor or surgical patients as they recover from a procedure.
3. I had mentioned the importance of being connected for a person with dementia of whatever sort. Support groups become the new circle of friends who can truly understand what it is like. This is common across a whole host of medical predicaments from grieving widows and family to returning wounded warriors or recovering cardiac or orthopaedic surgery patients. Somebody else who has been there understands what co-workers, friends or even family cannot quite fathom.
4. Travel is a bit of all these. It is a way to have fresh new experiences that challenge a patient cognitively. When a person experiences what should be familiar settings like home as frighteningly unfamiliar, it can be reassuring to share travel experiences to strange and different places that – well – everyone will find strange and different as well.
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 throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.
In my experience as a geriatric care manager, I field a lot of questions from people who are suddenly faced with caring for an older parent or spouse. For people who become caregivers overnight after a parent has a fall or experiences a significant medical setback of some sort, it can be an overwhelming responsibility. Where does one go to learn how to be a caregiver for an older adult or someone else with special needs? It is easy to tell a person how to become certified as a geriatric care manager (not as easy getting certified) or even a paramedic (again, not as easy getting certified), but how do you become a caregiver right away?

As much as some folks may have a predisposition for being “good with people,” being a caregiver poses some unique challenges and an aspiring caregiver can benefit from some special training. One of the resources I featured last month, Julie Northcutt – President of CaregiverList.com, talked about using summer visits as a time to take stock of the needs of aging family members of other with special needs. She has a new training module that has come to my attention, and I am sharing it with you here, because it may give a lot of you a jump start to caring for older family members or others in your orbits.

In her 10-hour on-line program, CaregiverList.com offers training that meets the requirements of state licensing boards for caregivers, and it also may offer peace of mind. I was impressed with its topical coverage:
- Communicating with Others
- Observation, Reporting and Recording
- Providing Personal Carburetting and Maintaining Good Mobility
- Elimination and Toileting
- Infection Control
- Environmental Hazards and Safety
- Basic First Aid
- Understanding Elder Abuse
At $49 it seems to be a reasonable investment in care for an elder and peace of mind and confidence for the caregiver.

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 throughout metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to Charlotte Bishop.
Remember Thanksgiving just a year ago? It was that family gathering when you prepared the turkey and someone brought a vegetable and someone else brought dessert and someone else brought cranberry sauce. But mostly it was the people coming together for family time, and the majority would be perhaps college students heading home for the break, but this year’s college-age kids are the majority of the 100,000+ new coronavirus cases each day. They may be filled with expectation and family happiness, but they also may be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic So, if your family includes an older generation of particularly vulnerable adults, please know that in a recent analysis of COVID surveillance strategies at 1400 U.S. colleges two-thirds either were not testing or only testing symptomatic students for COVID. On top of it all, we are technically entering the traditional flu season. Infectious disease specialists recommend a four step to protect the vulnerable within your extended family this holiday:
1. Students self-quarantine eight days before schedule departure for home. Revert to all on-line learning, wear a mask, socially distance, and wash hands frequently.
2. Test before travel. Experts recommend a molecular test for viral RNA test; have your student ask for student as for an approved nuclear acid amplification test (NAAT). IF results are positive, cancel the trip this year.
3. If safe to travel, have your student mask-up at all times, and be sure they carry an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Add some sanitizer wipes to disinfect all surfaces with which they will come in contact.
4. You’re not out of the woods yet. While at home, all who have not been living in a “pod” (self-quarantining) at home need to be vigilant about social distancing. And all guests who plan to join you should follow the above three steps also…okay, they may not need to do the on-line learning part. And no buffet style services, no hugs and kisses (sadly), and have lots of hand washing while preparing and consuming meals.
5. I add a fifth step to encourage some optimism. Keep a focus on safety now and also keep a clear focus on next year with the hope that we will all get through this. Just this week, Pfizer announced 90% success with its two injection vaccine.
Maybe it’s morbid to remind ourselves that the early pilgrims also had their viral scourges: yellow fever, small pox, the plague and more. They had no hand sanitizer and no vaccines. We have a lot more going for us this Thanksgiving if we just follow the steps. Have a great holiday, and start with making it a safe holiday. 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.