Everyone we’ve met who has cared for a loved one has had questions along the way and have needed to research various topics. We’ve started a list of such books you may want in your library. Just click on the title and it will take you to a link with more information, plus you can conveniently order from there too.
Come back often as we will add to this list on a regular basis. Should you have any recommendations that our other readers may benefit from, please contact us so it can be added. Thank you in advance!
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~ As our population shifts and ages, the care needs for our elders continue to change and evolve. Today’s generation of family and professional caregivers faces new decisions and challenges, as well as previously unavailable options. This thoroughly revised and updated 2009 edition of The Complete Eldercare Planner equips you with reliable, up-to-the-minute information to help you plan and manage caring for your loved ones.
Comprehensive and detailed, sensitive and realistic, practical and accessible, the 2009 edition provides even more tips on prioritizing and organizing caregiving tasks, balancing work and family responsibilities, and navigating the complex maze of eldercare services. In addition to an expanded index of Internet resources and access to downloadable forms of key documents, you’ll find indispensable checklists, worksheets, step-by-step action plans, lists of questions to ask, low-cost and free alternative resources, and The Document Locator™. This new edition covers:
• Getting started on creating a long-term care plan
• Finding help, especially if you live far away
• Managing the financial aspects
• Talking to elders about sensitive subjects
• Senior housing–move or stay put?
• Managing medications
• And many other topics of vital interest to anyone caring for an elder
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~ The Caregiver’s Survival Handbook: How to Care for Your Aging Parent Without Losing Yourself
One in four families in the U.S. is caring for parents or other senior relatives-and 72% of the primary caregivers in these families are women. This book is written for those 16 million women who are part of the “sandwich generation”-caught between the needs of their elderly relatives and their young families. These women often feel invisible, their own needs unobserved and unappreciated by those around them.
The Caregiver’s Survival Handbook not only offers practical caregiving advice for these women, but also helps them deal with the emotional concerns they face:
• Dealing with changing parent/child roles
• Fostering aging parents’ independence
• Asking for, and getting, help from siblings and other family members
• Balancing work, family, and caregiving duties
• Finding time for themselves in the middle of it all
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~ The Elder Care Survival Guide
ELDER CARE JUST GOT EASIER … Get better care for your aging elder, reduce your stress and live a more balanced life. Here is your complete “essential insider’s reference” that guides you through the often unfriendly and challenging waters known as eldercare. You’ll refer to it again and again. You will discover simple steps that:
• Get the help you need when you need it
• Quickly locate money to pay for care
• Melt your elder’s resistance to getting help
• Build a personal support network ready and willing to help
• Handle the inevitable conflicts with family members
• Create and maintain a balanced life as a caregiver
• Access valuable government benefits to reduce caregiving’s financial burden
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~ But I Don’t Want Elder Care! Helping Your Parents Stay as Strong as They Can as Long as They Can
But I Don’t Want Elder Care! is an important consumer empowerment resource. It is easy to understand, and it is inspiring. We have only to look at the current state of long-term care and the approaching wave of baby boomers to understand how important it is to change how we care for our parents and ourselves in the future. People who are able to stay in their own homes are healthier and happier.
We have a major obligation to educate people about their rights, and we also believe that this information should be accessible and understandable. Neither the law nor human services systems are necessarily consumer friendly. We must provide information to help people understand the law and make their way through the human services and health care mazes they encounter.
Diverting older people from nursing homes after a hospitalization is truly an option, and this book gives life to that possibility. Nursing home care is the most expensive option for individuals or their families, and the publicly funded system often provides inferior care. By helping people remain as independent as possible and supporting them in home or home-like environments, we are able to see better outcomes and better quality of life. You have more control over the future than you realize.
Terry Lynch has been where you are. Even an hour with this book can improve your parents lives and yours. This is the guide the author wishes he would have had before his medical crises of his mother changed each of their lives. Are you worried about how much longer mom (or dad) can live at home? Is your parent struggling with health or memory problems and you see no solution other than a nursing home? Are you moving from one medical emergency to another? Are you no longer in charge of your own life?
Terry Lynch draws on extraordinary personal experience in this eye-opening guide to the future, from his work with the White House Conference on individuals with disabilities to a decade as his mother s caregiver. While he assisted other families, Terry helped his mother remain at home in spite of significant medical problems and a life-changing memory disorder.
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~ The Best Way to Say Goodbye: A Legal Peaceful Choice At the End of Life
What are our two greatest end-of-life fears? To endure unnecessary prolonged pain and suffering, and merely to exist in a state of total indignity and dependency such as in Alzheimer’s dementia. Uninformed, some people add layers of tragedy to their destiny. Some choose to die prematurely; others, violently; a few risk imprisonment by mercy killing. Often their lament is, If only Physician-Assisted Suicide were legal. Yet there is an alternative that is already legal: Voluntary Refusal of Food & Fluid. While sometimes intentionally maligned as barbaric starvation, ceasing all Food & Fluid is a truly peaceful way to hasten dying by dehydration. While taking an average of 14 days, it allows for the exchange of healing goodbyes with loved ones who can forever be sure it was these patients’ intent since they could have changed their mind.
What makes the process peaceful? Knowing how to control thirst. (The author went on two fasts himself to learn what works.) In addition, good discussions with family members before beginning. Consistent with the principles of some religions, this method is available even for patients who are physically too sick to put a lethal dose of medication in their mouths and swallow.
By creating strategically effective documents for a trusted agent or proxy to withhold Food & Fluid on the patient’s behalf, this way to Permit Natural Dyingcan actually extend the quality of life of those with early dementia. They can enjoy living until they reach a point they have previously described in behavioral terms (perhaps with help from using one of the book’s forms).
Beyond serving as an authoritative source of information to strive for an ironclad strategy for dementia, the book endorses life’s most ironic fact: When people know they can control when they die–they can, and often do–choose to live longer.
Poignant memoirs illustrate its practical guidelines and useful forms; for example, why Proxy Directives are more effective than Living Wills, and how to make Living Wills work better if they are the only available choice.
The book-within-a-book format of this book is as unique as its content is comprehensive. Over 300 citations, an index, a glossary, and further resources… yet its core reading is user-friendly for all. The subject matter is lightened by 22 cartoons and humorous stories; deepened by provocative discussions of the secular meaning of Sanctity of Life ; and broadened by considering the emotional, practical, clinical, legal, moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, and political aspects of a subject that will affect absolutely everyone.
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