My daddy’s been sick for quite a while now. It’s been about six months since he’s really been himself. My parents live on two acres and keep the place looking like a park, but it’s been hard since daddy’s been sick. Mama is wearing down and I’ve come down with a bad bug, but just […]

For the past four or five months my daddy has been going downhill. He’s still wrestling with a urinary tract infection (UTI) that has been going on for months. Mama is stressed and tired. Daddy refuses dialysis. He lost his bladder to cancer 16 years ago and his kidneys have been compromised ever since. He’s […]

Former President Harry S. Truman was reportedly the first person to be enrolled in Medicare and to receive the first Medicare card. It was issued to him in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had signed the hard-fought legislation authorizing Medicare into law in July of 1965. Applying for Medicare has since become somewhat of […]

While life at any age is full of changes, sudden changes in your older loved one could be a sign you shouldn’t ignore. There are many signs we can watch for while caring for our aging parents and loved ones. One sign that something is wrong can be a change in their normal habits. If […]

Updated June 2025 People diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease are urged to stay active. They’re told that engaging in physical and mental exercise may be their current best hope to slow the effects of the plaque, tangles, and cell degeneration the disease causes in their brains. Yet perversely, there are few activities designed to meet their […]

Why do seniors at some point seem to just give up on life? I’m not sure about all the reasons but for my daddy, it’s when he feels incapable of doing something with purpose. Where the mind goes, the body follows. Let’s face it. Our physical ailments get much worse when we are feeling down-in-the-dumps. […]

Friends, family, favorite past times, learning and growing . . . these are just some of the things that make life meaningful. We all have to have something to look forward to, something that “floats our boat” or eventually we’ll just dread getting up in the morning. Many older people have a harder time engaging […]

Last Monday, my family celebrated my daddy’s 85th birthday. It was a milestone in more ways than one. Less than a month ago he was on death’s door convinced he’d never make it out of the hospital. It put the whole family on edge but Monday we were together and celebrating life. It was another […]

People who suffer traumatic illnesses or injuries often exhibit some new and uncharacteristic behaviors afterward. Part of that may be due to the shock and strain of confronting a potentially life-threatening event, as well as the frustration of embarking on an often slow and painful process of rehabilitation. But there are also often physical and […]

I must admit it. I am not good with all the acronyms. The world of senior care is full of them and I still have to look at my “cheat sheet” to recall what they are. I can just imagine what someone without some history with these senior care acronyms must think when they are […]