late night reads

Optimize Life for Your Aging Parents and You – Dealing with aging parents can be totally different when you factor in the emotional roller coaster, their resistance to change, and an unknown end date. You won’t see the curve balls coming at you until it’s too late. This book helps you think about what is the right answer for your parents and you now. What is the next step? Many of the options can be expensive. Paula Berryann shares her experiences and others’ choices along with the emotional, financial, legal, and medical aspects of aging. The reality is your parents will die. This might not be an easy path as they decline. You will deal with doctors, funerals, death, and grief. It is critical you create a life line and support team to help you through the difficult times before their death and after. As you become the aging parents, implement my suggestions and make life easier for your children and you. This book will guide you through the challenges of managing care for your aging parents.

The Unexpected Caregiver – In the Unexpected Caregiver, Kari Berit tackles head on what is perhaps the most important yet misunderstood dimension of taking on a caregiving role with ones parents – enabling aging parents to retain a sense of control over their own lives. As need for assistance grows with age, finding ways to keep one’s parents in the loop of influence and bi-directional support increasingly calls for resourceful decisions about how to relate to one’s parents and to others who provide care and support for your parents. The Unexpected Caregiver has inventive suggestions for how to make that happen. One of the particular challenges and great gifts of caregiving is the opportunity if offers us to learn to see old age in new ways. Our parents can help us move beyond unconscious ageism to a better understanding of the aging process as it is embodied by the individual elderly person before us. Kari helps us see through our own confusion and pain to the possibility of authentic interactions on this path of discovery.

Inside the Dementia Epidemic: A Daughter’s Memoir – The unflinching and hopeful story of one woman’s journey into family caregiving, and a vivid overview of the challenges of Alzheimer’s care. With the passion of a committed daughter and the fervor of a tireless reporter, Martha Stettinius weaves this compelling story of caregiving for her demented mother with a broad exploration of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, means of treating it, and hopes for preventing it. She shares the lessons she’s learned over seven years of caregiving at home, in assisted living, a rehabilitation center, a “memory care” facility for people living with dementia, and a nursing home–lessons not just about how to navigate the system, but how caregiving helped the author to grow closer to her mother, and to learn to nurture her mother’s spirit through the most advanced stages of dementia. The Library Journal rates “Inside the Dementia Epidemic: A Daughter’s Memoir” as “highly recommended,” calling it “honest, compassionate, and informed” and “compelling reading.”

The Orphaned Adult: Understanding And Coping With Grief And Change After The Death Of Our Parents – Losing our parents when we ourselves are adults is in the natural order of things, a rite of passage into true adulthood. But whether we lose them suddenly or after a prolonged illness, and whether we were close to or estranged from them, this passage proves inevitably more difficult than we thought it would be. A much-needed and knowledgeable discussion of this adult phenomenon, The Orphaned Adult validates the wide array of disorienting emotions that can accompany the death of our parents by sharing both the author’s heart-felt experience of loss and the moving stories of countless adults who have shared their losses with him. The Orphaned Adult guides readers through the storm of change this passage brings and anchors them with its compassionate and reassuring wisdom.

A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents–and Ourselves – To Honor and Respect: A Program and Resource Guide for Congregations on Sacred Aging - Americans are living – and enjoying life – longer than ever, a demographic trend that creates many challenges and opportunities for synagogues. To Honor and Respect is designed to help congregations respond to the longevity of revolution by helping older Jewish adults see their synagogues not just as places for life-cycle events but as sacred communities of meaning.

Transitioning Your Aging Parent: A 5 Step Guide Through Crisis & Change - Dale Carter helps adult children and families navigate the many changes their aging parents will face.  Readers will learn how to use the framework, apply specific strategies, and seek out appropriate resources that are right for their situation. Personal stories are woven throughout to illustrate the concepts.Discover how to approach any crisis or change in your parent’s life with clarity and confidence.

Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders – Mary Pipher, author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Reviving Ophelia, which charts the troubled passage of girls into adolescence, has nimbly covered yet another psychological passage: that into old age, which May Sarton called “a foreign country.”Pipher cared for her dying mother for a “horrid,” guilt-filled year while this book was being written and says that she wanted “to help others in my situation feel less alone.” Any adult struggling with issues with their parents, especially mortality, will find Another Country an indispensable source of suggestions and support.

The Boomer’s Guide to Aging Parents: The Complete Guide - Carolyn L. Rosenblatt is a registered nurse and an attorney with over 40 years of combined experience. She has compiled her 9 volume series into this Complete Guide. It touches on dangerous older drivers, choosing home care workers and nursing homes, understanding assisted living, the specifics of handling money for aging parents, ways to manage sibling conflicts about elders, advice from a lawyer about how to choose a lawyer when your parent needs one, and knowing how a care manager can help you.

The 250 Eldercare Questions Everyone Should Ask – Lita Epstein’s book will answer all the financial and legal questions that can arise when caring for the elderly.  These questions and more will be answered in the comprehensive 250 Questions format.  For example, the book answers such questions as:  How do you plan for the management of the elder’s affairs should he become incompetent in the future?  Is the proper insurance being carried or can it be restructured to reduce expenses?  How much money can I give my elders without impacting government aid?   What are the goals of estate tax planning?   These questions and more will be answered in the comprehensive 250 Questions format. Whether you are caring full- or part-time for an aging parent, friend, or neighbor, you’ll find all the answers you need in this compact guide.

I’m OK, You’re My Parents : How to Overcome Guilt, Let Go of Anger, and Create a Relationship That Works – Atkins, a licensed psychologist, media commentator, and frequent Today Show guest, draws on 25 years of clinical experience to provide helpful advice for adults seeking more satisfying relationships with their parents. In easy-to-read, jargon-free language, she shows how readers can rid themselves of residual childhood anger and resentment, free themselves from destructive financial entanglements with parents, avoid manipulation via health crises, and gently set limits on parental demands for time and attention.

How to Find the Best Eldercare – Written by two award-winning experts on long-term care, Marilyn Rantz and Mary Zwgart-Stauffacher, this book tells you how to find the best assisted living, nursing homes and senior housing in your community. The book features Q&A sections that help you determine the level of care your loved one needs; practical information on how to pay for eldercare; things to look for (and questions to ask) when visiting eldercare facilities or homecare services; and a helpful, state-by-state listing of ombudsman, aging agencies, and eldercare websites.

My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing “Slow Medicine,” the Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones – Thanks to advances in science and medicine, our parents are living longer than ever before. But our health-care system doesn’t perform as well when decline eventually sets in.  Family doctor and geriatrician Dennis McCullough recommends a new approach: Slow Medicine. Shaped by common sense and kindness, it advocates for careful anticipatory “attending” to an elder’s changing needs rather than waiting for crises that force acute medical interventions—thereby improving the quality of elders’ extended late lives without bankrupting their families financially or emotionally.

When Your Parent Moves In: Every Adult Child’s Guide to Living with an Aging Parent – As the population ages, elderly parents everywhere are moving in with their children–and changing everything. Making room–physically, emotionally, and financially–for an elderly parent can push families to their limits. This book helps family members deal with the far-reaching implications such a move can have on every aspect of a family’s life. Written by an acclaimed expert and medical educator who’s been there, this straightforward guide walks families through the planning and execution necessary to make it work. With personal stories, case studies, and expert quotes, this book offers families the skills and strategies they need for an easy and harmonious transition.

The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents: Reassuring advice to help you support your loved ones (Everything Series) – There are a lot of issues to consider as our loved ones get older. From in-home care to assisted living facilities, there are myriad options available – and each person’s needs are unique. Family members need a resource that will answer all of their questions and ease them through this often-complicated transition. This helpful handbook guides concerned children as they: decide which level of care is best for their parent; maintain communication and discuss difficult topics; handle home safety issues; manage transportation; find and work with a primary-care physician; navigate insurance paperwork; handle legal issues and questions; and other sensitive issues. From setting up a support network to avoiding scams, this informative guide will help a family decide on – and implement – the best care options for their loved ones.

Elder Rage, or Take My Father… Please!: How to Survive Caring for Aging Parents – A riveting, often humorous, non-fiction novel that chronicles Jacqueline Marcell’s trials and tribulations, and eventual success at managing the care of her aging parents. Elder Rage is also an extensive self-help book with solutions for effective management, medically and behaviorally, of challenging elders who resist care. It includes answers to difficult “how to” questions like: getting obstinate elders to give up driving, accept a caregiver, see a different doctor, go to adult day care, move to a new residence–and includes a wealth of valuable resources, websites and recommended reading. The addendum by renowned dementia specialist, Rodman Shankle, MS MD: A Physician’s Guide to Treating Dementia, makes it valuable for everyone from the family to the physician.

The Complete Eldercare Planner, Revised and Updated Edition: Where to Start, Which Questions to Ask, and How to Find Help – 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 by Joy Loverde 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™.

The A-to-Z Guide to Elder Care (Facts on File Library of Health and Living) – From housing options to estate planning – an informative guide to elder care. From choosing between assisted living or nursing homes and paying for costly prescriptions and health care to resolving sibling squabbles over caring for an elderly parent and facing difficult end-of-life decisions, “The A-to-Z Guide to Elder Care” serves as a comprehensive and objective guide for general readers and professionals alike. In more than 250 entries, this new book relies on statistical information to paint a picture of aging and its key issues in the United States and around the globe. Appendixes provide statistical data, directories of resources, and helpful information on planning and caring for the elderly.Entries include: Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia; Crime against the elderly; Elder abuse and neglect; End-of-life planning; Estate planning; Family conflicts and caregiver issues; Health issues; Housing options; Insurance; Medications and medical care; and, Safety issues.

1,000 Mitzvahs: How Small Acts of Kindness Can Heal, Inspire, and Change Your Life – When her father passed away in 2006, Linda Cohen’s busy life as a mother, wife, and entrepreneur came to a screeching halt. She took a spiritual sabbatical to work through her grief, and she came out of it resolved to embark upon a project: perform one thousand acts of kindness—mitzvahs—to honor her father’s memory.  1,000 Mitzvahs shares Cohen’s two-and-a-half-year journey from sorrow to inspiration through simple daily acts of kindness. She presents each mitzvah as a short vignette, and the myriad forms they take—from helping the elderly to donating to good causes to baking and collecting food for others—highlight the many ways in which one person can touch the lives of others. As she pursues her quest, Cohen finds that her life is improved by these small acts—that every time she goes out of her way to do something good for someone else, she enhances her own well-being.  More than a touching story of a daughter’s love for her father, 1,000 Mitzvahs is a testament to the transformational power of kindness, and a call to arms for those who would like to follow in Cohen’s footsteps with their own mitzvahs—no matter how large or how small.

A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents–and Ourselves- Nothing can fully prepare you for the overwhelming experience of caring for your elderly parents, but Jane Gross’ new book, “A Bittersweet Season,” comes awfully close.  From the first page, Gross, a reporter for The New York Times, provides insights that are painfully familiar to those of us in the throes of caregiving, but she also dispenses helpful advice as someone who has been there and learned important lessons.  Part memoir, part dispatch from the trenches, “Bittersweet” offers a multilayered overview of America’s caregiving system, using the author’s recent experience of caring for her aging mother as a vivid example and cautionary tale.