Anne Tumlinson

 by Anne Tumlinson

The 4 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Medicaid Home Care

I love hearing from readers. Sometimes they write to tell me that a particular blog has helped them and that makes me very happy.

But a lot of the time, they tell me about problems that aren’t easily solved and ask questions that aren’t easily answered. Here’s one I get in many different variations that breaks my heart.

“My mom has some income from social security and less than $10,000 in savings. I’ve got a full time job I need to keep. Mom was doing fine until recently – but now she’s in and out of the hospital and having trouble taking care of herself. My sister and I are worried and wondering what we do next.”

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in Home Care / Medicaid 6 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Things You Can Do to Make Caregiving Less Tedious

I once had a therapist tell me that I had “the most disordered thinking” of anyone he had ever seen. In light of this diagnosis, I probably deserve a gold medal for getting out of bed most mornings.

My secret to staying semi-sane is to keep really, really busy and to surround myself with lots of people. For someone like me, being bored is deadly.

And, I am going to admit something that I think maybe none of us would say out loud. I find that taking care of other people, whether they are 2 or 102, can often be really boring. I mean, reaalllllyyy TEDIOUS.

I am, for example, not particularly tolerant of caregiving situations that require me to demonstrate a lot of physical strength while being screamed at, and then to have to repeat the whole thing over and over again. I am pretty sure that wrestling a tantruming 2 year old into a car seat looks very similar to some of the exercises they do at Army ranger training.

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in Feeling Guilty 5 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

Essential Websites for the Daughterhood Journey

These days you can barely open up your internet browser without stumbling across a website for caregivers. On the one hand, this is great but it can also be a problem — There are so many websites with advice and information for caregivers that it can be hard sometimes to find what you need or to even know where to start.

So I want to share some of my favorite sites, organized by topic — in the hopes that you can get what you need more easily.

But before I do, please promise me that you won’t let all these websites and the information they provide make you feel MORE overwhelmed than you already feel. You don’t have to consume it all in one sitting and you don’t need it all right now.

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in Resources 30 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

5 Lessons in Setting Boundaries that Every Caregiver Must Learn

It seems like I’ve been exhausted for 20 years. In just the last few months I’ve been waking up to the realization that this fatigue is the direct result of much-too-loose personal and professional boundaries. I’ve spent so much time and energy in my life doing things that I can’t or don’t want to do –that I am just plain tired.

There’s an epidemic of “can’t say no” among the women I know.  But, I think it’s especially difficult for daughters – to say no to a parent who wants to move in, to say no to unreasonable requests from siblings or paid caregivers, or to bow out of community obligations that are just too much on top of caregiving demands.

As a caregiver, it’s essential that you become an expert in setting boundaries. Boundaries are the flip side of asking for help. And if you can do both… if you can learn to say, “No” and “I need your help,” you might just survive this experience.

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in Common Challenges / Feeling Guilty / Feeling Overwhelmed / Navigating Change and Letting Go 103 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

7 Must-Have Books for Caregivers

Experts and former caregivers write books and blogs, and create websites to provide information that will help make caregiving easier. But they aren’t solving the real problem, which is that it’s really overwhelming to have to read and sort through all these resources in the first place.

It makes you feel like you have to become an aging expert – and practically learn an entirely new profession — just to make sure your parents are safe.  It’s a whole other job on top of the one you already have and the care you are already providing your mom or dad.

Also, if you are like me, there are just so many things you’d rather do — like walk your dogs or  spend time with your kids — than frantically search online for information. But what often happens is that you aren’t prepared and then you get caught out! – mom’s in the hospital and you do NOT know about observation stays and hospital-induced delirium or how to find a decent rehab situation and then you feel surprised, scared and like a failure!!

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in Resources 5 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

The 5 Most Unexpected Challenges of Caregiving

The 5 Most Unexpected Challenges of Caregiving

Every single one of us – because we are alive and we are human – runs the risk that at some point in our lives something will happen to us, making it impossible for us to take care of ourselves.

This something can be any one in a long list of disabling events. A car accident, or a serious disease like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, or a developmental disability like cerebral palsy. Or it can just be the result of aging cells when we get old.

What is equally, if not more likely, is that someone in our family – a grandparent, a parent, a sibling, child or spouse – will be among the 10 to 12 million people at any point in time who need help. As a result, we’ll likely be drafted into service, joining the 40 million Americans who are currently serving in the role of family caregiver.

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in Common Challenges / Feeling Overwhelmed 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Myths that Increase the Burden of Caregiving

In exactly 10 hours from now, at 5:30 am, I’m going to pull out of my driveway and hit the road for vacation.

And yet, at this point, I am still working. And I’m still packing.

Two days ago, I woke up in a cold sweat about my many pre-vacation obligations, checked my email and found this message from another mom,

“Fighting the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed.”

Two more times that same day I had friends use the word “overwhelmed” to describe how they were feeling – about jobs, kids, caregiving, all of the above.

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in Feeling Overwhelmed 12 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Essential Tips for Finding the Best Home Care for Your Parents

The vast majority of frail older adults live at home — not in independent or assisted living and not in nursing homes. So, If you’re managing your parents’ care, sooner or later you’ll come up against the question of whether you should get them more help at home and how to go about it.

Hiring someone to help your parents can be expensive and awkward.  It’s often hard to get your parents to accept a paid caregiver into their home and even harder to find a person you can trust.  But, at the same time, it feels like doing so is the only way you can keep your parents where they are.

And, keeping them at home very often feels like the least heartbreaking way to proceed.

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in Assisted Living / Home Care 49 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

6 Features of Long-Term Care Insurance You’d Never Guess But Need to Know

It feels a little silly to be writing about long-term care insurance because only about 10% of the older adult population has purchased it.

But, it comes up a lot in conversations I have with friends and family… either they’re thinking of buying it or they or their parents have a policy that’s hard to understand.

Also, many, many women want to know… “What can I do to make sure I can pay for care when I need it?”

Because remember… as women, we especially face the possibility that old age will bring with it the need for a lot of help with basic life activities that we do for ourselves now without even thinking: like bathing, eating or dressing.

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in Paying for Care 2 comments
 by Anne Tumlinson

The Top 3 Myths Most Women Believe About Paying for Long-Term Care

If you haven’t stopped to think about whether you’ll need to be taken care of when you are very old or how you’d pay for it, believe me, you are not alone.

But, if you are a woman, this is a question you cannot afford to avoid.

As Dr. Atul Gawande explains in his book, Being Mortal, “increasingly large numbers of us get to live out a full life span and die of old age.” Because of this, we live for longer periods of time needing help with basic life activities, like bathing, eating, and dressing.

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in Medicaid / Paying for Care 1 comments