The Gift of Caring

Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare

Marcy Cottrell Houle, Elizabeth Eckstrom

• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781630760984
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

The desire to help our elders navigate health issues is clear and universal—how to assure proper care and a good ending is not. Combining adroit storytelling skills with expert advice, The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare brings the reader into all-too-familiar scenarios facing our aging parents and offers answers to questions we may not know to ask until it’s too late.

Author and biologist Marcy Houle shares her personal journey of caring for her father, a surgeon, who developed Alzheimer’s, and later her mother, who succumbed to other medical conditions. Like many children of aging parents, Marcy often felt powerless traveling this sad trajectory—watching them fall through the cracks of a fragmented and confusing healthcare system, where professionals often wrote off their symptoms as “just old age.” Not having the understanding of the changes that come with aging, she was led to believe there was nothing she could do to help.

The tragic secret? According to coauthor and geriatrics physician Elizabeth Eckstrom, these symptoms frequently are not “just old age.” Rather, the problem is that the current healthcare delivery model for older people is ill-equipped to provide the comprehensive, person-centered care seniors need. Today, thousands of aging people face unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations, nursing home stays, and even death due to complications that could have been prevented or treated. Even more troubling, many healthcare professionals have had little or no training in the care of older adults.

The Gift of Caring reveals these pitfalls and provides families with tools they can use to avoid them. Interspersed with every few chapters of Marcy’s riveting story, Dr. Eckstrom shares professional medical insights, compiled from the latest research, into what Marcy could have done to safeguard her parents. She shows us how to navigate the system, how we can become our loved one’s best advocate, and what we need to know to achieve healthy aging and meaningful, compassionate final years.

Honest, at times humorous, and ultimately uplifting, The Gift of Caring sheds new light on aging from twin perspectives: a story of a daughter desperately seeking help for the parents she loves, and a geriatrician who gives us the knowledge we need to insist upon a better way.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Part I: The Airplane Diaries
• Chapter 1: Colliding Worlds
• Chapter 2: First Decline
• What I Wish I’d Known: Early Warning Signs of Dementia
• Chapter 3: Panic Attack
• Chapter 4: Countdown to Advocacy
• What I Wish I’d Known: What Is Dementia, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease . . . and How Do You Tell the Difference?
• Chapter 5: A New Way of Seeing
• Chapter 6: Passages
• What I Wish I’d Known: How to Find a Good Memory Facility
• Chapter 7: Montavilla Beginnings
• What I Wish I’d Known: Moving Day—How to Ease the Transition
• Chapter 8: Dallas II
• Chapter 9: Visiting Hours
• Chapter 10: The Phone Call
• What I Wish I’d Known: Falls—A Leading Cause of Death in Older Adults and What You Can Do to Prevent Them
• Chapter 11: Surgery for an Alzheimer’s Patient
• Chapter 12: It’s a Matter of Life or Death
• What I Wish I’d Known: A Deadly Fate with Few Symptoms—Dehydration—How to Recognize It and How to Prevent It
• Chapter 13: Forsaken
• Chapter 14: No Man Is an Island
• Chapter 15: Do No Harm
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Problem of Pain in Dementia and Why Millions of Seniors Are Suffering
• Chapter 16: Return of the Man
• Part II: A Good Ending
• Chapter 17: A Radical Prescription
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Best “Anti-aging” Pill of Them All
• Chapter 18: No Senior Left Inside
• What I Wish I’d Known: The ABC’S of Exercise
• Chapter 19: I’m Not Cedaring; I’m Scissoring
• What I Wish I’d Known: How to Ensure Parents’ Wishes for Care Are Met—Before a Crisis Hits
• Chapter 20: Who’s Shelby?
• What I Wish I’d Known: What Is a TIA? And What Do I Do If I Think My Parent Is Having One?
• Chapter 21: Stories from the Fall
• Chapter 22: The Very Best Christmas Ever
• Chapter 23: Three Things
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Art to Aging . . . Healthfully . . . for Your Body and Your Mind
• Chapter 24: I See Little Green Men
• What I Wish I’d Known: Come to Your Senses! The Value of Aids
• Chapter 25: Delirious
• Chapter 26: Paging Doctor HIP!
• What I Wish I’d Known: What Delirium Is and Why It’s Essential You Know How to Spot It
• Chapter 27: “Sometimes It’s Better If They Never Wake Up”
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Most Important Medical Word That Can Save Your Parent’s Life—“Baseline”
• Chapter 28: Where Old People Are Sent to Die
• Chapter 29: The Lazarus Syndrome
• Chapter 30: A Hope and a Future
• Chapter 31: So What’s a Geriatrician and Why Should I Care?
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Tsunami Is Coming . . . and Why You Should Be Worried
• Chapter 32: Pharmacopeia
• What I Wish I’d Known: Too Many Pills—The Fourth-Leading Cause of Death in Seniors
• Chapter 33: The Search Begins
• Chapter 34: Honey and Dummy
• Chapter 35: Mountains and Valleys
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Care and Maintenance of Caregivers
• Chapter 36: Who’s Taking the Trazodone?
• What I Wish I’d Known: How to Get a Good Night’s Rest—Naturally
• Chapter 37: The Art of Caregiving
• Chapter 38: Living to One Hundred
• Chapter 39: And They Shall Inherit the Earth
• Chapter 70: Go GICU! Stop Step-Down!
• What I Wish I’d Known: The Serious Problems of Today’s Hospitals for Older Adults—Why We Need to Demand a Change Now
• Chapter 41: How to Pack for the Next Trip
• Chapter 42: Faithful Companion
• Chapter 43: Crossing the Line
• What I Wish I’d Known: What Is Palliative Care, and How Can It Help My Parents and Me?
• Chapter 44: A Good Ending
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3