Among the featured topics included in this series is “Caring For Aging Parents Who Cared For You”. This conversation focuses on the challenge of caring for a loved one as they age, a role many will unexpectedly be forced to play. The guests on this topic are author Jane Gross who wrote “A Bittersweet Season- Caring for our Aging Parents and Ourselves” (a novel about caring for her ailing mother), Beatriz Terrazas (author of “My Mother’s Brain”- a blog on a Latino Family’s story about Alzheimer’s), and John Farley who edits and co-writes the Speakeasy column in The Wall Street Journal.

Another great topic covered by the series is on the realities of retirement, titled “Advice For the Golden Years: ‘Don’t Ever Retire Mentally’. A memorable quote that stood out to us was from 83 year old, Krishna Roy, who said “Don’t ever retire mentally. Keep your mind alive.” This is sound advice since a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Yale School of Public health shows that 39% of retirees say their health is worse after retirement compared with 13% of non-retirees expectations for life after work. It is clear that this series is not only going to talk about death but also an active and engaged retirement among several related topics.

Here is an interesting website also put together through NPR; End of Life explores death in America and provides several useful links. The site provides transcripts on various topics surrounding death, resources for people with life-threatening diseases and their families and caregivers, as well as links to selected mediums on death and dying, hospice, death and caregiving, retirement, and much more. Enjoy!

“I plan to continue to be your coach,” Pat Summitt said in a two-minute video statement released by the University of Tennessee’s athletic department.

Summitt is just 59 years old. An icon in women’s basketball, she has led UT to eight national championships and 1,071 career victories, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, regardless of gender. This will be her 38th season coaching at the university.

Summitt explained that she will maintain her role by collaborating even more with the team’s other coaches because “I realize I may have some limitations with this condition since there will be some good days and some bad days,” she said in letter posted on the university’s website.

Yet she didn’t consider retirement. She told The Knoxville News Sentinel that she was encouraged after speaking with Dr. Ronald Petersen, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “He’s the one who told me you can coach as long as you want to coach and no one else had said anything like that to me,” Summitt told the newspaper.

With this in mind, a retired nurse and RV regular founded Escapees Care Center in 1997 in Livingston, Texas. It is the country’s only assisted living facility for full-time RVers.

Handing Over the Keys from Our Future Selves, produced by the Columbia School of Journalism News 21 staff, via Vimeo.

For a monthly fee ranging from $800 for singles and $1200 for a couple, residents at Escapees Care have access to the Care Center, where registered nurses are on call 40 hours a week. They take regular blood pressure readings, clean and dress wounds, help residents with their medication and schedule doctors’ appointments. The monthly payment also covers laundry, transportation and three meals a day in the Care Center’s dining room.

There is adult day care for those with dementia and a weekly support group for those with low vision. More important to most of the 50 or so residents, the community provides a social network, with daily activities, bluegrass concerts and Wii bowling.

The centrality of socializing at Escapees promotes exactly the kind of active and engaging relationships Engage As You Age seeks to bring to its Bay Area seniors. Bravo Escapees.

Read More: DIY Ways to Age In Place

Over half of all Alzheimer’s disease cases could potentially be prevented through lifestyle changes and treatment or prevention of chronic medical conditions, said the study. The researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) revealed that Alzheimer’s may be attributable to seven preventable behaviors or conditions: physical inactivity, smoking, depression, low education, hypertension, obesity and diabetes.

The authors found that these behaviors and conditions, all of which can be modified, may be responsible for about half of the roughly 5.3 million Alzheimer’s cases in the United States and 34 million cases worldwide.

So, if people addressed these risks (by exercising, quitting smoking, increasing their social interaction or losing weight, for example) a significant number of Alzheimer’s cases could be prevented. The researchers estimated that reducing the prevalence of these factors by just 10 percent could prevent 1.1 million cases worldwide. Reduce the prevalence of these factors by 25 percent? More than 3 million fewer cases. That’s millions and millions of fewer family caregivers who need to devote their lives to caring for their parents or spouse.

The study confirmed what Engage As You Age already believes and practices: providing social stimulation and human interaction as an avenue to reducing cognitive impairment for seniors with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The number of people with Alzheimer’s and dementia is expected to triple in the next 40 years, making it critical to identify potential causes of these diseases.

Though the researchers stressed that the study is not yet scientific proof that these risk factors prevent Alzheimer’s or the symptoms of dementia (but we hope that follow-up studies will find scientific proof), we think it’s an important first step pushing forward the dialogue about aging. Just as Engage As You Age is trying to do.

Participants of this 6-week class will all receive a free copy the book Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions. A relaxation cd will also be given to participants to keep and it is called Time for Healing.

The class will take place each Monday beginning on July 11th and will be from 1:30 till 4 pm for each of the 6 sessions. The workshops will be at:

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Stanford Healthy Library, South Palo Alto Branch

Oshman Family Jewish Community Center

3921 Fabian Way, Room G106, Palo Alto, CA 94303

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You can sign up for the class by calling 650-498-7826. It will be facilitated by Peggy Simon who works for Stanford University Hospital, Avenidas and also provides coaching services for family caregivers who are taking care of an aging parent as a primary caregiver or who are using caregiving services.

Navigating the maze of senior care can be overwhelming and confusing. But there are solutions – and a May 19 community discussion will offer up dozens.

Engage As You Age, a company that provides social visits for isolated seniors, has organized Senior Care 101: A panel discussion with a range of experts at the Burlingame Recreation Social Hall.

Seniors and their loved ones (spouses, children and caregivers) are invited and encouraged to attend the free event. Participants include a geriatric psychologist, a fiduciary and financial planner, a social worker, ombudsman, therapist and concierge.

Engage As You Age’s founder, Ben Lewis, has led more than a dozen of these panels in Marin and San Francisco. The interactive sessions can be tremendous learning opportunities, he said.

“Whether people chime in during the town-hall style meeting or come up afterward and ask panelists in private for help—everyone gets their questions answered one way or the other,” Lewis said.

The panel will offer those in the audience advice and connect them with community resources, including those that are free. The goal is to provide community people with actionable information to help them address their immediate eldercare, life-planning issues and also learn how to proactively tackle common challenges that people face as they age. Homecare, caregiving and many other topics will be addressed.

DETAILS—

What: Senior Care 101

When: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Thursday, May 19

Where: Burlingame Recreation Social Hall, 850 Burlingame Avenue, Burlingame.

Beyond the lack of socializing what also caught our attention was that the homecare workers and caregivers on the show also mentioned that there was a lack of communication so that they sometimes had to ask the seniors and elders what was expected of them!

At Engage As You Age we ALWAYS prepare our team members on how best to engage seniors in conversation and activities and ensure that we offer our employees a wide-range of materials and topics to present to someone.

This was the first time we had seen a homecare company featured on a major network television program. Are you aware of any other programs that capture homecare and caregiving on tv? Please get in touch with us if you do know of any other examples.

The conference will focus on current research on dementia and Alzheimer’s and examine different dementia care options and explore homecare, caregiving and other community resources for seniors that are being used to try and slow the progression of the diseases. This conference sounds like a great opportunity for family caregivers, eldercare specialists, homecare and caregiving owners and anyone else interested in learning more about dementia.

During both the game and the subsequent celebrations I was in Larkspur (which I will admit to wishing I could have watched the game instead!)  leading a panel of people that were discussing how to screen and vet resources in the senior-care industry. The universal theme of everyone was that people shouldn’t wait and be forced into making highly-reactive decisions. Clearly, having long-term care insurance is a good thing to have IF you need homecare or caregiving services down the line. While panelists suggested different lines of questioning and different Marin County resources for seniors, everyone was in agreement when it came to the benefits of proactively planning for eldercare decisions.

Our panel featured adult day care center experts, long-term care insurance specialists, San Francisco homecare experts, financial planners for retirement and a leading-local fiduciary. The crowd wasn’t large (and I’m positive it was because of the baseball game) but the audience did have lots of questions about homecare, caregiving and in particular long-term care insurance.

One of the members of the crowd was taking care of their mother and all of the panelists advised her to take care of herself and be sure to find time for herself. Caring for an aging parent is a difficult thing and if you don’t plan in advance it usually ends up being a lot more expensive and stressful for everyone. Two of the audience members had questions about dementia care and one person specifically asked about Alzheimer’s care in Larkspur.

Thank you to the Larkspur Public Library for hosting the event. We’re looking forward to continuing the dialogue in a few weeks at the San Rafael Public Library and the Mill Valley Recreation Center. Please contact Engage As You Age if you’d like to learn more about these events.