Staring into the abyss

I know people who say that they know people who claim to actually know people who have no aging challenges.  Those lucky devils who haven't had to deal with any of aging's complications: they've got plenty of money, relatively good health and have kids who who are attentive to them.  Of course, I myself don't actually know anyone like that, but that's what I've been told.  However, for most of us, the challenges of aging are endless...

Though some of us have money, few have enough cash to completely insulate themselves from the staggering costs of aggressive health care when faced with the need to fight for their own survival.

I know people who've wondered whether or not they should fight for life or just give in and let themselves die.  Why?  Because they're petrified of bankrupting themselves and ending up alive but wishing they were dead-Oh my God, we've spent all our money!!   They sometimes feel caught between a rock and a hard place because in a lot of cases, their main motivation was the desire to leave something for their kids, and now they're wracked with guilt over needing their own money for themselves...

People with no money are at the mercy of a merciless system that measures health care in terms of profit and loss.  Personally, I've spent a good deal of what I thought were my savings on the care of my late father, the raising of my now teenage son, and just trying stay abreast of inflation.  For me, being Mr. Mom was a choice made for other than financial reasons, and I wouldn't change a thing- the parenting experience is, in my opinion, the best and most important thing you can do in life. But I'm more than a little nervous about what might await me in my old age...

The antidote?  I’m afraid there is none.

But careful oversight-having your children, relatives, friends, or neighbors agree to advocate for you-is, with or without money, the key.  Watchful eyes force health care providers to adhere a little more closely to the good practices that they're actually supposed to be following anyway.  All too often, in their zeal to cater to "the bottom line", many providers just don't...

It embarrasses me when my French family and friends remind me that all the health care in France is provided for by their system, while we Americans still have a hodge-podge, crazy-quilt, money and profit-first medical and elder care system where, without significant ways and means, people can simply fall through the cracks...

That’s a system?

Check out my website: http://www.jamielegon.com to see an excerpt from my book FEET FIRST-Riding the Elder Care Rollercoaster with My Father, follow my blogs, or to contact me directly...

Long distance care for the parent who's alone...

I was producing a show and couldn't visit very often-and even when I could, every 1200 mile round-trip had to be done in a weekend so I could be back on the set by Monday at 6 AM.  I would be thoroughly trashed after the trip, and my crew would wonder why I was in such a daze...

Everything I was trying to do for my father seemed like it was just a day late and a dollar short.  I drove 1200 miles to buy him groceries and clean up his house, but it was like trying to stop an avalanche with a shovel.  Filling prescriptions, going to doctor's appointments, doing laundry and even taking out the garbage were now major obstacles.  Despite his salesman's ability to occasionally charm people, he was increasingly disconnected from society-at-large by his often irascible nature and a lifelong lack of patience. And without any companionship and few friends, he tended to react angrily to things, as if he didn't have to adhere to any social norms.  He was a fighter from Brooklyn, N.Y. his entire life, and without my mother's sociable personality to provide a buffer zone, everything was falling apart...

There are choices to make when your parent is living, or trying to live, independently. My father choice was clear: he'd rather drop dead on the spot before depending on anyone else, and for him, accepting help meant dependency.  In his case, this was in large part about vanity, and I found myself in a constant battle with him about what was, or wasn't, in his own self-interest.  I could never make him understand that it would be better for everyone if he could adapt to having help.  And sorry to say, my worst fears were realized.  If he had been more willing to utilize a little bit of assistance (from doctors and nurses to friends and neighbors), he would have been able to continue to live independently for far longer than he actually did...

My family and I ran ourselves ragged trying to help my father, who wouldn't accept help from anyone but us.  And the combination of not being able to drive any longer and being unwilling to accept outside help turned me into a long distance caregiver-a job impossible to do and one in which almost nobody ever wins.  Long distance care, particularly for those over 90 years of age, is a ticking time bomb-too much can go wrong.  Without attentive help of some kind, bad things start to happen to the elder parent living alone.  And they did indeed happen to us.  More on this to come...


Check out my website: http://www.jamielegon.com to see an excerpt from my book FEET FIRST-Riding the Elder Care Rollercoaster with My Father, follow my blogs, or to contact me directly...

Driving (me crazy)

Other than the death of my mother, taking my father's car keys away changed my life more than any other single event. Though my father had been successfully driving for seventy-five years (at this point he was about ninety-one), during one of my visits his neighbors told me that his driving had deteriorated significantly, and that he was now a danger to himself as well as to other drivers .  I had no reason to doubt them-his vision had been getting worse, and when he went to the eye doctor to investigate, the doctor diagnosed him with macular degeneration...

I asked him to please give me his keys and not drive anymore.  "Like hell I will!!!" I responded that I was concerned about his safety-but what I couldn't tell him was that his neighbors had already alerted me to his diminished driving skills. If he knew that they had exposed him, it could easily escalate into an all-out war between him and them.  "Leave me alone!  There's nothing wrong with my driving!" he screamed...

My father finally did turn the keys over to me, but not without endless discussion and some fairly bitter arguments.  In fact, he only gave in because I wouldn't give up-but there was no win in this situation.  He was annoyed by the elder bus service I contracted for him ("They're never on time!"), and the temperature in the desert climate of Palm Springs often rose above 100º, forcing him to be outside in extreme temperatures that sapped what physical strength he had left. But he didn't care-he was a fighter, and he was  determined to fight until the end...

When are you turning into a bad driver?  If you have trouble timing the approach of other cars when you're in an intersection, or sometimes fail to see them altogether, then it's time for, at minimum, an online refresher course.   If you're taking medication, be aware that any prescription medication can impair your driving, some more than others.  There's a great website, http://roadwiserx.com/ that will tell how your meds can effect your driving.   Glasses aren't always enough to make the difference in your driving-a 60 year-old needs ten times as much light as a 19 year-old.  As you age, doing a majority of your driving during the day makes a lot of sense.  If you find yourself forgetting your destination, mixing up the gas and brake pedals, or having difficulty seeing traffic signs, you might have some kind of cognitive impairment.  There's an online course at https://www.drivesharp.com/aaaf/index that could help cut your crash risk. But first you've got to ADMIT it...and get the help the you need, both for you, and your family's, sake...

Check out my website: http://www.jamielegon.com to see an excerpt from my book, follow my blogs, or to contact me directly...

The No Responsibility Zone

In the Saturday, April 6, 2013 e-edition of the Toronto Star, there’s an article about China that details a new law, effective July 1, allowing aged parents to sue their adult children for not visiting them or attending to their welfare. With China’s elderly population expected to grow to almost 500 million within the next 40 years, there is pressure to curtail the looming health care costs of a soon-to-be bulging population of elderly Chinese. The government’s concern is that many of the economic gains now enjoyed by the Chinese people would be erased under the burden of what would be, by then, the enormous medical costs attached to such a sizable population.  They’re not wrong…

 

What if Americans were legally required to oversee the care of elderly parents?  Insurance companies, now paying out more and more every year for our rapidly expanding elderly population, would likely be paying out less.  Even insurance companies, usually immune to consumer sentiment, would recognize the good public relations inherent in passing a little of their savings back to the customer.  I imagine businesses would spring up overnight to represent the sons and daughters of the elderly.  They’d be like Hollywood agents, telling the parents: “Well, if you want to have direct negotiations with your kids, you’ll have to bequeath them an extra ten percent…in advance!”…

But what if you couldn’t have someone else deal with your parental care situation.  For many cultures around the world, taking care of the elderly was taken for granted-it was something that you just did.  When I was caring for my father, my friends told me what a good son I was, but it just didn’t compute.  Half the time I was either angry, frustrated or anxiety-ridden.  I didn’t have enough money to put my father somewhere good enough to ease my conscience, so all I could really do was to try and pay attention to him.  It turned out that paying attention was at least half the battle…

Isn’t it more than a little embarrassing to have to be ordered to watch over our parents? But the truth is that solving the elderly care problem is like solving drunk driving.  If you really put people proven to be driving while intoxicated in jail for an absolute minimum of 5-10 years and hit them with a million dollar fine, drunk driving would disappear overnight.  Hundreds of businesses would spring up to drive people who were drinking, and the death rates on the highways would be cut in half.  But cleaning up drunk driving using Draconian penalties is almost impossible-too many folks (many in positions of power and prestige) want to be able to drink and drive.  Are legal remedies the only way to insure that people oversee the care of their aging parents?  China thinks so, and in a few months there will be a law obligating adult children to look in on their aged parents.  I once read that Confucius said that only the supremely wise, or the supremely ignorant, never changes.  I can’t even imagine what it would be like if we enacted a similar law in the United States.  In my mind,  I see a parking sign in front of a nursing home that says “THIS IS A NO RESPONSIBILITY ZONE”…

See the article in the Toronto Star at:(http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/04/06/chinese_parents_can_sue_adult_kids_for_not_visiting_enough.html)

Take a look at my book about elder care, Feet First-Riding the Elder Care Rollercoaster with My Father (available at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com) and my blog at http://www.jamielegon.com/

Stop Staring At Your Screens...

In the January 2013 issue of The Informative Report (http://theinformativereport.com/2013/01/personal-robots-to-assist-the-elderly-people-in-an-australian-university), Professor Rajiv Khosla talks about a study he’s doing in Australia that uses personal robots to assist the elderly.  Some of the robots even sing Hey Jude.

This study concentrates primarily on the issues of emotional well-being, not technology.  But the whole idea of technology replacing humans is a little disturbing. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with a robot that surfs the Internet, checks your e-mail or orders your groceries. It just raises the question of whether or not we’re trying to replace ourselves with technology.  When my father had to go into an assisted care facility, the quality of his care was wholly dependent on his being watched over and continually reevaluated and reassessed.  No robot can do for your mom or dad what a good elderly care provider can do-analyze an elderly person’s mental acuity and physical stability.  When I read this report, I kept seeing a giant dollar bill resting on a computer chip that was being passed from one person to another in an endless line…

How do you care for actual human beings without any humanity?  Have we conned ourselves into believing that human interaction doesn’t count, so now we’re developing robots to do what we ourselves are supposed do?  Is the messy business of elder care just too much trouble for our selfish little lives, where we stare into screens instead of life?  Do you need to stare into your smartphone to look at the event you’re actually attending?

Has technology finally outstripped sanity? Many years ago Einstein said that he was afraid that, with all the new technology coming to the forefront, we were in danger of raising generations of button-pushing idiots.

 There’s a general social depersonalization going on that has grabbed hold of the next generations with a death grip. The profusion of young people on a date sitting in a restaurant but not talking to each other is startling.  Their heads are down while they stare intently at their mobile devices. Is that  considered a date in today’s society?  The answer is obviously, and frighteningly, yes…

It’s pretty well documented that social interplay helps to prevent and/or delay diseases like Alzheimer’s, dementia, aphasia and all the rest.  My father would have told the robot to drop dead because, even though he was the biggest pain in the ass in the world, he craved interacting with other human beings, not machines.  Don’t most people?  I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with technology-I’ve got multiple computers, smartphones, music recording equipment, cameras, cable TV boxes, etc. etc. in my house.   But come on kids and caregivers, stop staring at your screens…

The Loss of Independence

My father had retired to the den after lunch, and as his snoring began to rattle the walls of my parent’s apartment, I rose from the table and asked my mother if I could help her clear the dishes.  “Just sit there, for Chrissakes!” my mother snapped…

I had asked the wrong question.  Though I had the right intentions, I didn’t recognize the depth of my mother’s sensitivity about her increasing frailty. In my zeal to be helpful, I ignored the fact that she needed to prove that she could still handle her normal duties.  She was used to being Big Mommy, Queen of the Kitchen, and she wasn’t able to tolerate anything less from herself…

It’s well known that exercise is a tonic for many physical ills, but it was a foreign language to my parents: “It’s not for me-not my cup of tea” my father always said. They only time they got their heart rate up was when they argued with a waitress about a restaurant bill.  Walking was California-style: to and from the car, or in and out of the grocery store.  And with housework as their only exercise, they slowly became more enfeebled and unsteady.  Every time my mother had to drag their laundry down the open-air hallway to the laundry room in 110° Palm Springs heat, it took a little more out of her than she had to give… 

For my mother and father, facing the cruel reality that they’re just not the same people that they once were, was crushing.  Overly prideful, they couldn’t admit that they needed help, and never adjusted to the fact that needing help was actually okay.  My simple question of assistance with the dishes spoke more to my mother about growing old than about helping in the kitchen.  And there were many more difficulties soon to come due to their gradual, but inexorable, loss of independence… 

Check out my website: http://www.jamielegon.com to see an excerpt from my book, follow my blogs, or to contact me directly...