Caring for Your Parents in Their Senior Years: A Guide for Grown-up Children Book

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Is This Normal?
   
   - Common physical changes -- hearing loss, failing eyesight, falls, foot problems, constipation, incontinence, shortness of breath, sexuality;
   
   - Health problems after 65 -- Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease, strokes; mental health-loneliness, emotional changes, memory loss, depression and anxiety

2. Coming to Terms with Aging
   
   - The parent-child relationship;
   
   - Understanding our parents;
   
   - Judging our parents

3. Getting Started
   
   - Battered children;
   
   - adult children taking charge;
   
   - elder abuse

4. Staying Healthy in Old Age
   
   - The elixir of life -- keeping active;
   
   - Vaccinations;
   
   - Diet;
   
   - Cigarettes and alcohol
   
   - Safe driving;
   
   - Maintaining a positive mental attitude --helping your parents stay positive and optimistic, meditation and prayer, peak moments;
   
   - Continuing to work,
   
   - Visiting the doctor-choosing a family doctor, knowing your medications

5. Helping Parents Stay at Home
   
   - Elderly denial;
   
   - Preventing accidents -- safety check, moving about, entrances and exits, stairs, lighting, furniture, electrical wiring, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, assistive devices;
   
   - Safeguarding the home for Alzheimer's patients -- wandering, falls, tips, getting help

6. Planning Alternative Living Arrangements
   
   - Long-term care -- placement-coordination services;
   
   - Retirement homes/lodging homes;
   
   - Nursing homes/homes for theaged;
   
   - Chronic care;
   
   - Choosing a home;
   
   - Making the move as easy as possible;
   
   - Follow-up in the home

7. Legal and Financial Planning
   
   - Maintaining assets after retirement;
   
   - Protecting your parents' interests -- power of attorney, advance directives, guardianship, wills, trusts

8. Keeping in Touch with Out-of-Town Parents
   
   - Conspiracy of silence;
   
   - Long-distance relationships;
   
   - You can't put a phone call on the fridge;
   
   - Gifts;
   
   - Parents visiting

9. Grief and Bereavement
   
   - Come quick, your mother's dying;
   
   - The emotional maelstrom of grief;
   
   - The healing process of bereavement, the rituals around death;
   
   - Finding yourself

10. Toward a New Age
    
    - The aging process;
    
    - The free-radical theory of aging;
    
    - New and improved,-- the graying of society;
    
    - "Cures" for aging and dementia -- superoxide dismutase and DHEA-S, vitamins, testosterone, gerovital-H3 and H7, removal of the pituitary gland, cell therapy, chelation therapy, nerve growth factors, deprenyl, cerebral vasodilators, cerebral metabolic enhancers, nootropics, cholinergic drugs, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, smart drugs and smart foods;
    
    - Fear of death;
    
    - A new society;
    
    - The old joker
    

Epilogue

Index