Wisdom Wednesday: Aging Wisdom's Podcast
Welcome to Wisdom Wednesday, a short, bite-size podcast offering weekly wisdom and insights for aging well, caring well, and living well.
As Amy Cameron O’Rourke reflects in her book The Fragile Years: “Most adult children are poorly prepared for the life-changing events that send their once-independent parents and loves into the fragile zone.” (p. 15) It’s not unusual for families to experience a roller coaster of emotions.
Every business has an origin story. Here’s ours: Lisa Mayfield, Aging Wisdom’s founder and principal, shares how she came to understand the challenges of dementia from an early age.
As Lisa shares, part of the process of helping your parent is assessing the landscape and determining if their living situation is really a crisis and requires you to act. Or is there something you can do to make their home safer; an opportunity to insert a little bit of help by starting small?
An Aging Life Care Professional, also known as a geriatric Care Manager, wears many hats and at all times serves as a guide for anyone planning for and/or navigating changes that often come with aging.
You’ve tried everything to help your parents, and nothing has worked. Sometimes you must wait for a crisis to happen before you can make changes. Geriatrician Leslie Kernisan refers to this as “watchful waiting.” In the meantime, you continue to monitor the situation. You stay engaged with your parents but pull back on suggestions.
If your parent is experiencing memory loss, it’s unlikely they have insight that they need help. It’s probable they won’t accept support and are unwilling to make changes as a result. Lack of insight or awareness is common with cognitive change. This is where you need to shift your perspective and determine if your parent can make that decision anymore, or if this is a decision you’re going to have to make on their behalf.
A Care Manager is an essential tool in a client’s resources toolbox. Care Managers are experienced, knowledge navigators, providing tailored options for living, caring, and aging well. We can connect you to appropriate community resources, services, and supports. A home safety assessment provided by a Care Manager can be an important preventive measure; In addition, having your vision and hearing checked regularly may also reduce risk for falls.
From our experience as Care Managers, we know how important it is to schedule regular check-ups, especially as we age. There can be a ripple effect if we aren’t careful. Vision, hearing, and foot care all play key roles in health maintenance and fall risk prevention. Our eyes, ears, and feet also support our ability to get regular exercise. And regular exercise can contribute to so many positives: strength, balance, overall well-being, appetite, mental acuity and cognition, a good night’s sleep.
Our colleague Sheila McKannay, New Client Services Care Manager, offers insights and encouragement about partnering with your health care provider and pharmacist to address overall health, any concerns we may have, and how to engagement them in assessing and lower our risk of a fall.
There are several health-related issues that might concern you, be it blood pressure, poor balance, medications and their side effects, use of assistive devices, knee, and foot pain. But your primary care physician can help ease concerns and help with a plan forward.
Falls are also the number one cause of visits to the emergency department by older adults. Fortunately, falls are not a normal part of aging and most falls are preventable. In this 4-part series, we’ll explore why falls happen and how we can mitigate risk.