Silver Planet™ Help Your Parents Age in Place.

Kinect-ion mania: This was an interesting week, aside from the mid-term elections, which were as riveting a score-keeping experience as I've watched since the days before the 2004 World Series. But immediately after the election came the arrival and quick store departure of Microsoft's Kinect sensor units: the Target near my home sold out in a single day.

MetLife today reminds us why aging in place, like long-term care rates, will trend upward: With MetLife's new study just out that updated nursing home, assisted living, and home care rates, it is no wonder that seniors will, whether or not it is appropriate for them, increasingly age outside the nu

Falling among older adults—it's a problem. You would think that with all of the available information and technology, there would simply be fewer falls among older adults each year. But you would be an optimist. According to the CDC, each year 40% of seniors fall (up from 30% ten years ago). I was thinking about this during a few visits to assisted living communities this past week when the tour guide mentioned the personal, carefully designed "chair exercise" program.

PACE provides “one-stop shopping” for seniors’ health care and much of their social well-being as well. Every PACE client has an interdisciplinary team of professionals at the PACE Day Center that oversees the client’s well-being. This team includes a physician, registered nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, recreational therapist, home health nurse, personal care assistant, social worker, and dietitian as well as mental health personnel and transportation staff.

Last week, I attended a seminar for elder law attorneys on an innovative program for senior care. The model has been around for almost 30 years, and Medicare and Medicaid funding has been available for the program since 1992. Yet few of us have our clients in the program. Indeed, only about 15,000 seniors across the country have enrolled.

The dog days of February—effort beyond task: I was in an assisted living/nursing home last week and saw the same golden retriever dog (whose master is the ever-cheerful maintenance guy) and down another hall, a snoozing cat. Here's something I've not seen surveyed: What percentage of senior housing organizations permit and even encourage pets on the premises and in the presence of seniors? If you know the answer to this question, please contact me!

Mom is doing just fine. As a matter of fact, her diabetes is so stable that the glucose checks are down to once a week for another few weeks; thereafter, they’ll be done every two weeks. The woman is going to live forever, or so it seems.

I’ve decided to stop writing A Good Enough Daughter. The team at Silver Planet has been great to work with. Reason for stopping: it’s time.

“Getting old is hell,” my friend Jo recently wrote. I think her words and sentiment reflected her feelings of loss. Loss of her dear parents, who are slowly fading away, and a sense of loss as the signs of her own aging are becoming clearer with the passage of each birthday. Perhaps it’s not really getting old that seems so hellish as is the realization that what was once, will never be again.

Last week I spent three days straight with some of the nicest people in the world, people who work in adult day care and adult day health care centers. The First International Adult Day Services Association Conference was held in Seattle, Washington, and men and women from across the United States and Canada attended the three-day event. 

Denial of need, current and future, has been a recurring theme lately. We have a push to get people out of nursing homes and into independent living, and we have boomers who want (mostly) to age in their own homes, generally in the suburbs.