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

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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Building a Survivor Safety Net for the Caregiver
I have written a lot about caregiving, who the caregivers are, how to cope with caregiving and how to...
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October 1, 2013
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Emotionally Healthy Older Adults
I had the good fortune recently to meet Jennifer Muskat, the Director of Client Services for San Diego Home...
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June 10, 2013
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Seniors and Depression and a Fix
One of the most common health issues that seniors deal with is depression. According to the National Institutes of...
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April 18, 2011
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In the Caregiver's Words

Recent Client Praise

Most of you probably know that Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia among younger and older Americans. One in three Americans dies with either Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. Scientists make a distinction between what they call late-onset and early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. Very simply, early-onset is a disease that manifests itself among patients younger than 65 years old, and late-onset is among those who are 65 plus. As a geriatric care management professional, you can imagine that I commonly am involved with families who are addressing this frightening condition in a loved one. If you are a caregiver to an older adult or other loved one who has developed Alzheimer's, you are very familiar with short term memory loss as well as confusion, language difficulty or other cognitive issues. But there have been some recent possible breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research, particularly late-onset Alzheimer's. What makes this potentially more exciting is that the specific Alzheimer's manifestation where this research has relevance. It is for the common non-familial kind of Alzheimer's Disease, the one that has seemed so unpredictable. In research published in the journal Nature, scientists at Columbia University seem to have narrowed down the late onset Alzheimer's to two genetic pathways. They then compared the genetic pathways among study subjects who had not manifested Alzheimer's and they did not have these pathways. They found in other subjects that these two pathways were associated with the development of what is called amyloid plaque. And that those without these particular genes did not have the amyloid tissue. While this research is all very preliminary, the good news is that when scientists find these "pathways" are tied to the onset of a disease, they can then begin to research what they can do to therapeutically modify the pathways – in effect, turning off the gene expression. It is going to take a lot more research and testing, but it offers a much awaited bit of good news for the more than 5 million Americans and their caregivers who are living with this disease. For more information on the disease, we have links to the Alzheimer's Association on our geriatric care management Support Tools Tab. 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 ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com.
At CCM, home and safety are as important to us as to you, so it’s no surprise that it’s a prevailing topic of our discussion. I have asked Gregory Peebles to talk about this topic from the vantage point of his experience. Gregory is both a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) and Certified Dementia Practitioner (CDP) 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 - at home. An Associate Care Manager, Gregory has been a part of my team for over a decade. - Charlotte
Home. There’s no place like it, but it’s also very conveniently located wherever you hang your hat. As nice a thought it is that “home” is a physical place we can go, when we look at that thought more closely, it turns out to be not nearly as nice as we first imagined. Our insistence on home being an actual place isn’t just silly misstatement; it’s a false belief that can easily get in the way of our ability to discover new happiness. We imagine “home” existing as it always has in our memories: strong, immovable, untouched by time. It holds us safe inside, protecting us while we watch the world transform at a dizzying speed into a place we no longer recognize. It’s easy to see why we yearn for such a harbor against change. That place doesn’t really exist, though. Even if there remains a physical house from childhood where parents still live, “home” is not a physical building: it is a mental place, constructed not of wood or stone, but of our memories and feelings. Consequently, when we visit the mental place we call “home”, safety is usually one of the first feelings to come to mind. When folks say, “I want to go home,” what they’re really telling us is that they want to feel safe again. We feel safest when we know. Not surprisingly then, where we once lived for a long time feels the safest. But, like the false idea that “home” is a literal place, is it possible that we could also be wrong about being safe in our own homes? Absolutely. In case you can’t tell yet, this post is gently getting us ready to talk about denial: denial that change is a necessary part of living; denial that our circumstances are ultimately beyond our control; denial that we are at last, mortal. As we age, inconveniences in the home can turn into safety hazards. As we watch our parents age, we begin to feel deeply our own mortality and—if we’re not careful—to slip into a pattern of denial, the manifestation of which is the attempt to keep life as it exists in our memories perhaps longer than is advised. However, while this may feel psychologically safe, it may also be physically the most dangerous choice to make on behalf of our loved ones. Yet we rightly want to keep our lives free of disruption for as long as we can. So how can we strike the balance and keep our loved ones safe and in that special place we call “home”? In our next blog, we’ll talk about what makes a home a safe place for aging adults, including how to continue to ensure protections for the loved ones who depend on you. Be sure to come back and we’ll give you what we know. 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.
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Earlier this month I had a chance to talk about some of the questions I most often get asked as a geriatric care manager. In Chicago, there is a radio talk show on Chicago senior care and other topics that are relevant to elders. It is called – appropriately – AgingInfoRadio, and the program airs every Thursday. You can actually listen to our give and take by going to the archives of this program at AgingInfoRadio

Some of the questions we discussed in that 25-minute conversation included:
- What should I look for in a geriatric care manager?
- Is there a central directory to help find a geriatric care manager?
- How would you sum up what a geriatric care manager does that people cannot already do for themselves?
- When is home no longer the best place for an aging family member/loved one?
- What elder resources are available to help an older adult in their home?
- What can be done to make home “secure” for an older adult?
- What services can be brought home to maximize independence?
- How do I guard against an accident at my parent’s home?
- What are the best alternatives to home?
- What is the difference between independent living and a nursing home?
- What is a Continuum of Care Facility?
- What questions should a family member ask to get the right facility for a loved one?
If you would like to hear the answers I shared on the air, please check out the conversation I had with the host Sue Zawacki at Radio Talk with Charlotte Bishop

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.

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1 New contact form submission received from CreativeCareManagement.com - A Caregiver’s Guide for the Holidays [fullname] <[emailc]> info@creativecasemanagement.com, lynda@llvirtual.com From: [fullname] <[emailc]> Phone: [phones] Message Body: [question] -- This email was sent via the contact form on the Creative Case Management website, http://www.CreativeCaseManagement.com. Your message was sent successfully. Thanks. Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method. Validation errors occurred. Please confirm the fields and submit it again. Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method. Please accept the terms to proceed. Please fill the required field. The field is too long. The field is too short. Date format seems invalid. This date is too early. This date is too late. Failed to upload file. This file type is not allowed. This file is too large. Failed to upload file. Error occurred. Number format seems invalid. This number is too small. This number is too large. Your answer is not correct. Your entered code is incorrect. Email address seems invalid. URL seems invalid. Telephone number seems invalid.
Within the past two weeks the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a number of warnings that concern me as a geriatric care manager, and they should concern caregivers and the elders in their charge as well. The FDA has announced new warnings for three different classes of medications, those for pain and inflammation, those that lower cholesterol and those that help treat anemia in some patients. In my next three postings, I am going to tackle each, so that you will have a clearer picture of how to safeguard your own health as well as the health of an elder for whom you may be a caregiver.

I am going to start with a group of drugs commonly called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs. You would recognize the brand names, Aleeve, Motrin, Advil, or Nuprin as well as their generic names, naproxen or ibuprofen, and a lot of people use them to good effect. Many people use these medications for their arthritis or other acute and chronic pain, and they are available over the counter (OTC) as well as by prescription. You may remember from an earlier posting (Please see: Bad Medicine) that older Americans consume about twice as many prescription medications as younger people and they buy about 40-50% of all the OTC drugs sold.

In an international study titled INVEST, 22,576 people were followed for nearly three years, and the American portion of this large group was followed nearly 8 years. The overall study group included chronic and nonchronic NSAID users as well as people who were on no such medications. Those using NSAIDs were more likely to suffer a non-fatal stroke, a myocardial infarction or heart attack or death from any cause than those not using NSAIDs. In the long term follow-up, researchers found that people who already had a history of either blocked arteries to the heart or high blood pressure were even more at risk for an adverse event that the others.

The researchers suggested that people with high blood pressure or heart disease should look for some other alternative for their aches and pains. Fortunately there are some alternatives for pain. I recommend a sit-down session with the patient’s primary care physician to do a medication audit. As a geriatric care managere, we can do these audits, but only your physician can prescribe medications. If the doctor is not aware of the OTC pain meds a patient is on, then it is hard to make a good decision. The other obvious right steps would be diet and exercise. For high blood pressure and for arterial blockage, minimizing bad cholesterol in the diet and reducing weight are real winners. As always, consult with a physician before embarking on any exercise or diet program.

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.

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Posts tagged with ‘depression’

One is Number One Threat to Seniors

Building a Survivor Safety Net for the Caregiver

Emotionally Healthy Older Adults

Seniors and Depression and a Fix

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