009 Answers to Your Questions on Helping Older Parents

In This Episode:

Dr. K answers nine audience questions related to helping older parents:

• How to find a facility for an older father with dementia who is a “two-person assist”? How to make sense of the jargon on care levels and how are facilities classified?
• How to help an older  mother with bipolar, especially if she seems to be going into a manic phase?
• How to maintain sanity and better respond to an older father with Alzheimer’s disease, who gets agitated and angry in the afternoons and evenings?
• Whether to worry about withdrawal symptoms, after an older mother is hospitalized and treated with haloperidol for delirium
• How to keep assisting without losing hope, in the context of a mother with Alzheimer’s and an older father with Parkinson’s and sleep problems
• What to do when it’s hard to get an older mother to take her medications, and how to get her to understand the importance of recommended procedures such as cataract surgery
• What to do if both you and your elderly mother have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, and how to handle caregiving issues
• Whether anxiety can cause abdominal pain and shortness of breath in someone with dementia, and how to improve bad breath that has been attributed to acid reflux
• What can be done if an older father with mild cognitive impairment has been refusing to leave the house for several months

Expert contributors to some answers:

• Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, Elderlaw Attorney, AgingParents.com
• Mary Hulme, LCSW, Licensed Geriatric Social Worker, MoonstoneGeriatric.com

Related Episode:

008 Helping Families with Memory Loss: The Care to Plan Online Tool

Related Resources:

• Eldercare Locator (Use to find your local Area Agency on Aging)
• Assisted Living Levels of Care

• Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance: Helping Others Throughout Their Lives
• Symptoms, Signs & Effects of Bipolar Disorder in Seniors
• Durable Financial Power of Attorney: How It Works

• Family Caregiver Alliance: Caregiver's Guide to Understanding Dementia Behaviors
• Alzheimer's Association Care Training Resources

• 10 Things to Know About Delirium
• Hospital Delirium: What to know & do

• Taking Care of YOU: Self-Care for Family Caregivers
• Powerful Tools for Caregivers
• How to Age Better by Optimizing Chronic Conditions: The Healthy Aging Checklist Part 4

• 4 Things to Do When Your Parents Are Resisting Help

• How to Promote Brain Health
• Alzheimer’s Association: Mild Cognitive Impairment
• Mayo Clinic: Mild Cognitive Impairment

• Planning for Long-Term Care for Dummies

• The 2015 American Geriatrics Society Updated Beers Criteria: Medications that Older Adults Should Avoid or Use with Caution
• Mayo Clinic: Symptoms & Causes of Bad Breath