Daughterhood Blog

December 11, 2018December 23, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

Caregiver’s Holiday Survival Guide

Let’s face it. Caregivers don’t get to participate much in the holidays. While everyone else is planning trips and parties, shopping for gifts or decorating the house, caregivers are still muscling through their daily grind.

If you’re taking care of a parent or loved one, you know what I mean. It’s hard to avoid feeling especially deprived this time of year. Whether you’re sitting in the ER again, dealing with frustrating dementia behaviors, or worrying about your mom’s depression, the misery of it is all just magnified this time of year. One of the hallmarks of caregiving is that it leaves you feeling like you’re missing out. Missing out on fun everyone else is having, missing out on your old life – before you were a caregiver. Of course, Holidays make this feeling even worse.

The simple fact is, whatever makes us sad, makes us sadder in December. Everything hard is harder. We feel the passage of time more acutely and our losses more profoundly. If your family member has dementia, it’s extra painful. This time of year is, after all, loaded with memories.

November 6, 2018December 12, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

It’s All About Connection: Caregivers Survival Guide

Other than death of a loved one, few things are more disorienting than making the shift from being cared for by your parents to caring for them.

This transition is made even more challenging because it usually comes as such a surprise. And it’s not just the biologically wired blind spot we have against our parents’ vulnerability. It’s the utter shock that, when it happens, there’s no place to turn for help. It’s like trying to climb a rock face without any toeholds or crevices where you can grab on, and then scaling it without a net.

The problem with our aging care system is that even though there’s a lot of information out there to help, the situations most caregivers confront are so incredibly complex, unique, and specific (such as, why won’t rehab providers accept my Dad?) that they can’t find exactly what they need. Or they want the exact right answer to a very complex question that doesn’t have right answers.

in Common Challenges / Feeling Overwhelmed / Uncategorized 3 comments

October 2, 2018December 12, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

Making Medicare Choices for Your Parents

“My dad doesn’t have Medicare!” A friend said to me recently.

“What?” I responded. This seemed unlikely. Pretty much everyone over age 65 has some form of Medicare and my friend’s dad is at least 90 years old.

Then he explained, “Dad has something called ‘Blue Cross advantage.’”

I explained that his dad does have Medicare but it’s a particular form of Medicare that private health plans (like BlueCross BlueShield) offer. It’s called “Medicare Advantage.”

in Common Challenges / Medicare / Paying for Care / Resources / Uncategorized 2 comments

July 12, 2018July 12, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Sanity-Preserving Truths Your Good Friends Want You to Know

Do you realize that 70 percent of the human food supply depends on a bunch of women dancing?

This is my interpretation of what my beekeeper friend, Nicole, taught me about how honey bees do their job. It inspired the most important advice I’ll ever give about Daughterhood — and explains a big initiative we’re launching to help you.

Let me explain how these dots connect.

First, we all know that if bees don’t help boy and girl flowers share pollen with each other, they can’t make the vegetables, nuts, fruits, berries, and wheat that we eat, or the plant food that cows and chickens eat before they become burgers and nuggets.

in Uncategorized 13 comments

June 21, 2018June 21, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

6 Must-Know Tips for Making Hard Decisions

This summer at a caregiving event, a man wanted to know if it would be better for his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, to live at home with family or to live in a facility.

He asked me, “What’s the right thing to do?”

More recently, a woman worn out from caring for her husband with Parkinson’s and considering whether they should move to a facility said, “You know what I want. I just want to know the right thing to do.”

This is the conversation I have with caregivers all the time. There are so many decisions to make, from small things like what kinds of food your parent should eat, to the big stuff like whether to take away the car keys, where your parent should live, what kind of medical treatment is best or whether some recommended surgical procedure is a good idea.

in Assisted Living / Common Challenges / End-of-Life / Feeling Overwhelmed / Uncategorized 8 comments

June 14, 2018June 14, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

3 Resources to Ease Caregiver Money Worries

In a recent survey, AARP found that about three-quarters of all caregivers spend, on average, 20 percent of their household income on caregiving.

This is on top of the estimated $470 billion in unpaid care that they provide; and doesn’t include the potential lost income due to work-related strain that over half of caregivers report.

It’s clear that caring for a family member creates a financial hardship for many, and even a catastrophe for some; especially when caring for someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease.

If you’ve experienced it, you know that there’s nothing worse than feeling financially strapped! Especially if you’re also feeling overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities. So, if you are facing economic strain because of a caregiving situation, here are a few organizations that may be able to help.

June 7, 2018June 7, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

5 Dos and Don’ts for Staying Independent in Old Age

My inbox is filled with emails from caregivers trying to figure out how to pay for their parents’ care. They’re facing complicated and hard choices.

The big choices? Whether they should quit their job, move a parent into their home to avoid expensive care, or pay for care and risk running out of money. Or some combination of any or all of these.

That’s a really crappy set of choices.

We all agree that, regardless of your financial situation, it’s hard to be a caregiver… But, the truth is that it’s really scary to be a caregiver when you or your parents don’t have much money to pay for care….

in Home Care / Medicare / Paying for Care 4 comments

May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

4 Tips To Make You Smarter About Your Parents’ Medicare

“My dad doesn’t have Medicare!” A friend said to me on the phone a few months ago.

“What?” I responded. Thinking: This seems unlikely. Pretty much everyone over age 65 has some form of Medicare and my friend’s dad is at least 90 years old.

Then he explained, “Dad has something called ‘Blue Cross advantage.’”

“Ohhhhh…. Okay.” I got it now.

I explained that his dad does have Medicare but it’s a particular form of Medicare that private health plans (like HMOs) offer. It’s called “Medicare Advantage” and people eligible for Medicare can sign up for it instead of the original or traditional Medicare.

in Medicare 25 comments

May 23, 2018May 23, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

Caring for Aging Parents – A Sibling’s Survival Guide

There are many heartbreaking moments to navigate when our parents start to depend on us for care. But few are as painful as fighting with our siblings.

This doesn’t always happen. Sibling relationships can be a source of strength and comfort as parents grow older. But, more often than not, friends tell me about severe conflicts they have with their brothers and sisters, and the suffering it causes.

Like so much to do with caregiving, these clashes often come as a surprise. No one imagines that by caring for their aging parents, they’ll be thrust into such emotionally charged interactions with their siblings. It’s such a shock to go from seeing family once a year over the holidays to navigating our parents needs together daily.

Taking care of parents puts incredible stress on interactions between adult children. The fragile scaffolding of sibling relationships, so carefully constructed over a lifetime, often comes crashing down.

in Common Challenges / Feeling Guilty / Feeling Overwhelmed / Navigating Change and Letting Go / Resources 19 comments

May 17, 2018May 16, 2018 by Anne Tumlinson

3 Mantras Every Caregiver Needs

If you are caring for aging parents, there are many websites and books you can use to get smart about how to manage and provide care for them.

But, it’s a good idea to remember that no matter how much planning you do, there’s no substitute for experience. Research is important but it’s overrated as a predictor of success. So, don’t feel bad if you can’t get a handle on all the stuff you feel like you need to know. So much of this work happens by just living it.

Because the cost of forgetting this truth is so high, I need mantras to help me feel less overwhelmed in the face of so much to do and learn.

in Common Challenges / Navigating Change and Letting Go 3 comments