Welcome To Holland

Welcome To Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of caring for an elderly spouse or parent with a disabling disease such as dementia– to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imaging how it would feel. It’s like this…

“When you’re planning for your retirement, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

“After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

‘Holland?!?’ you say. What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.

“But there had been a change in the flight plan.” They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

“The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.” It’s just a different place.

“So you must go out and buy new guidebooks.” And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met.

“It’s just a different place.” It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

“But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.” And, for the rest of your life, you will say, ‘Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.’

“And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.”

“But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely, things about Holland.

My Job

I have worked for Senior Concerns since 1997 and I have the best job in the whole world. I love to be outside greeting people in the mornings. A smile on a senior’s face makes me burst into song. My goal is to see a caregiver less anxious knowing that the person they are caring for whether it’s a family member or friend, will be well cared for and treated with dignity. Some times it is very difficult for caregivers to let go, with some, it make take a while. However, with gentle nurturing and support they eventually let go. Caregivers learn how to breathe by themselves, meet friends for lunch or just simply sit and regroup. Some of our caregivers have lost feeling of a goodnights sleep. The trust that families have in us is incredible. My personal motto is “the pleasure is in the journey” my job and that of all staff at the Center is to make that journey a meaningful one to both caregivers and our participants. The Center is not a sad place or quiet, to the contrary it is up beat, motivating, energizing and above all happy. It is our job at Senior Concerns to make a difference; we enrich lives by providing therapeutic and meaningful programs.

-Maureen Symonds
Center Director

Podcasts For You! (Created by LivHome Inc.)

Our friends at LivHome Incorporated have created a new series of Podcasts concerning every day senior living and caregiving. There are a variety of topics covered in these podcasts including: "Long Distance Caregiving", "Caring For Seniors With Dimentia" and "Paying For Care". A new Podcast is released every week. They can be listened to or downloaded by clicking below. Besure to visit http://www.seniorconcerns.org/ for any additional information not covered in the Podcasts.

Podcasts: http://feeds.feedburner.com/seniorcarepodcast (Created by: LivHome Incorporated)

Husband's devotion still vibrant despite wife's Alzheimer's
Cy Johnson escorted his wife of 62 years to a Valentine’s dance on Friday at Senior Concerns with no intention of inviting her onto the floor.
Yet staffers at the Thousand Oaks adult day program, where the couple are regulars, consider Cy a sweetheart of a guy.
“He always kisses her and tells her he loves her,” said Maureen Symonds, director of programs at Senior Concerns, which held the dance for a few dozen frail elderly clients.
Since 83-year-old Edna Johnson was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease five years ago, Cy finds himself in the always complex and sometimes exhausting dance of spouse-turned-caregiver.
An 85-year-old retired Air Force officer, he has joined the ranks of the almost 10 million Americans caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s.
Edna speaks little these days, but Cy hangs on her every word. Just last week, she said of her husband: “I do not know his name.”
“That is six whole words,” said Cy, elated. “That’s the most she’s said in months.
“I say ‘I love you’ 100 times a day,” he declared in his Georgia accent.
In a small voice, with her lips frozen, Edna replies “I love you, too.”
“Passion lasts for the first four years,” said Lisa Hayden, a specialist in the psychology of caregivers.
“What keeps people together is shared experiences and dependability,” added Hayden, who is the study director at the Veterans Administration’s West Los Angeles Healthcare Center.
For the first four years after Edna’s diagnosis, the Johnsons kept up a busy social and travel schedule. But in January of last year, she broke her hip while in the hospital. Since then she has been in a wheelchair and her dementia has worsened, Cy said.
In the cockpit of World War II-era bombers, Cy learned how to navigate by the moon and Jupiter. Now he is navigating the highs and lows of being a caregiver. While taking on more tasks, such as dressing, bathing and changing her, he is losing her companionship.
After she insisted he was not her husband, Cy tacked up their marriage license on a bulletin board above the hospital-style bed where she sleeps.
As he gazes at a ’50s-era portrait of Edna, a “wow” comes out the back of his throat.
Their meeting, the way Cy tells it, is like a dialogue from a 1940s romantic comedy. Edna Pearl Hill walked into the Officers Club at Rattlesnake Bomber Base in Pyote, Texas, west of Midland-Odessa. The base librarian, she was on the arm of a strapping young captain.
Cy, then a lieutenant, told his buddy that someday she would come in here without that captain, and he would ask her out.
When that happened, Cy wasted no time approaching her.
“I asked her if she had a book on how to ask a librarian out on a date.”
“No. But I’ll put one on order,” Edna replied in her Texas drawl,
They married on March 8, 1946, and have three children. They traveled to 30 countries. They settled in Thousand Oaks in 1964, after Cy left the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.
Their living room is lined with Edna’s paintings of the scenes and people of Asia. Above the fireplace is a portrait of a geisha and samurai — the last picture she ever painted.
Just recently he removed the art supplies from the shelves in her bedroom. They had collected dust — something Cy notices now that he is in charge of the housework.
On a recent Thursday, Edna was in their den, working on wooden puzzles with her caregiver Yolanda Baker.
Baker is one of three godsends, according to Cy. The others are Meals on Wheels and Senior Concerns.
Studies show that 65 percent of caregivers die before the person they are caring for passes away. Symonds, of Senior Concerns, said caregivers try to take on too much and hit the wall.
Respite programs like the adult day center give caregivers a chance to pay the bills, shop and socialize while their spouses are looked after, she noted.
It’s also a place where caregivers can come to realize they are not alone.
Bud Wandrey’s wife, Penny Deakin, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2001, after they had been married 32 years.
“I lost my friend and now I’ve got a little girl I love,” said the 73-year-old retired aerospace engineer, who settled Deakin in the activities room before attending his support group meeting.
For the party, Wandrey dressed Deakin in a red jumpsuit, red sneakers, Valentine socks and topped off the ensemble with a red-spangled baseball cap.
“The other day I said ‘I love you’ and she winked at me,” Wandrey said.
Young love may demand great gestures; old love may well rest in the details. And on the morning of the Valentine’s event, Cy had an emergency. Their adult daughter had just been taken to the hospital after a seizure.
While paramedics tended to her, Cy dressed Edna, helped her in and out of her wheelchair and dropped her off for day care at Senior Concerns.
Before he wheeled her into the dance, he pulled two headbands out of a paper bag. He asked a staff member to pick the one that best matched Edna’s sweater.
In the Christmas letter of 2008, he wrote: “No trips to visit friends or relatives, no social events. As boring as that sounds I can’t imagine my life without Edna’s darling expressions.”
Even though she may not know her husband’s name, she probably senses he is an important part of her life, Hayden said. Studies show Alzheimer’s patients react physically to a loved one’s presence. Their heart rate may increase and their breathing becomes faster.
Hayden puts it this way: “The love endures, even if all the details don’t.”
-Colleen Cason
Ventura County Star

Changes in Medicare Deductibles and Co-Insurance For 2009

First let’s mention the Social Security cost-of-living increase in your January check. The increase is 5.8 percent and the largest in many, many years. The average increase will be $63. In 2009, the monthly premium for Medicare Part B (medical coverage) that is deducted from your Social Security check will again be based on your adjusted gross income taken from your 2007 income tax return. Basic monthly premium for singles earning $85,000 or less and for married couples earning $170,000 or less will remain at $96.40, the same as in 2008.For single individuals earning between $85,001 and $107,000, the premium will be $134.90; between $107,001 and $160,000, it will be $192.70; between $160,001 and $213,000, it will be $250.50 and for those earning over $213,000, the Part B premium will be $308.30.For married couples filing a joint return and earning $170,001 to $214,000, the premium will be $134.90; $214,001 to $320,000 will be $192.70; $320,001 to $426,000 will be $250.50 and for those earning over $426,000, the premium will be $308.30. For those who are married but filing separate returns, the premium will be $96.40 for incomes of $85,000 or less; for incomes of $85,001 to $128,000, the premium will be $250.50 and for incomes greater than $128,000, the cost will be $308.30. The Part B annual deductible you must pay out of pocket before Medicare will cover claims will remain at $135, the same as in 2008. Medicare Part A (hospital coverage) deductibles and co-insurance have increased. In 2009, the hospital deductible per benefit period will be $1,068 — an increase of $44 (up from $1,024 for 2008). Medicare Part A has no co-insurance for the first 60 days of a hospital stay. However, for days 61 through 90, the co-insurance will be $267 per day and for days 91 through 150, it will be $534 per day. If you are transferred to a skilled nursing facility and meet Medicare’s strict eligibility requirements, there will be no co-insurance for the first 20 days. For days 21 through 100, the co-insurance will be $133.50 per day. Medicare does not cover stays beyond 100 days. For those who have assigned their Medicare benefits to a Senior Advantage Plan (an HMO or PPO), there may be additional premiums. Blue Cross offers one PPO, Freedom Blue 1, with no monthly premium and a deductible of $1,050. The HMOs in Ventura County are Aetna with two options — one with no premium and one with a premium of $22.30; Kaiser with no monthly premium; SCAN with no monthly premium; and Secure Horizons (in west county only), with two plans, each with a $60 monthly premium (however, one plan has no Part D prescription coverage). I think that basically covers Medicare changes for 2009.

-Betty Berry
Senior Concerns Advocate

Featuring:

Ken Westling

Happy, outgoing and comical might just be a few of the words that describe our senior of the month, Ken Westling. Ken has been participating at Senior Concerns for about two years, and everyday he comes with a smile on his face. He was born in Florida and grew up with one brother. He later became a successful engineer where he traveled all over the United States and even to Saudi Arabia. Ken is married and has three daughters and six grandchildren. We want to thank Mr. Westling for being such a great participant and always filling our ears with his lovely songs!

Senior Knowledge: How To Use Prescription Medications Correctly

Now might be the perfect time to address this subject because most seniors have just completed an annual review of their medications to determine if they needed to change insurance carriers for Medicare Part D prescription coverage. This is a good time to review those prescriptions with a physician to make sure you understand why they have been prescribed and any special rules associated with them. I checked with a friend who is a pharmacist to see if there were any particular areas that could cause a potential problem and was surprised at some of what I learned. It all starts with making sure your doctor or doctors know what other herbs, vitamins, supplements or over-the-counter medications you are taking. The combination of any of these items with certain prescription drugs can cause some unpleasant surprises. When given a new prescription, make sure your doctor is aware of all other items you are taking. In reverse, if you are already taking a prescribed medication and want to start taking a new herb, vitamin, supplement or OTC medication, check with your doctor before doing so. If a new drug is prescribed, make sure you learn everything you can about it. Ask for literature about the drug so you can read about it and have something to refer back to. You want to know what the drug is meant to do, when you should take it, how you should take it (with or without food), how long you will have to take it and what its potential side effects are. Also, ask what you should do if you forget to take a dose. One common slip-up is the failure to check the prescription before leaving the pharmacy or receiving it in the mail. Make sure you have received the correct medicine, dosage and number of pills. If this is a new prescription, review the literature that came with it. Become aware of the size, shape and color of the pill and any markings that appear on it.
Whenever possible, have all your prescriptions filled through the same pharmacy. By sticking to one pharmacy, the pharmacist knows all the drugs that you are taking. This allows him or her to be on the lookout for potential interactions. After taking your prescriptions home, there are a few things you can do to prevent mismanagement on your part. First, consider where to store your medications. A bathroom medicine chest is probably a bad choice because bathrooms tend to have moist environments. Moisture can cause medications to deteriorate, which could result in drugs becoming less effective or even toxic. It is far better to keep them in a moisture-free environment and in a place where children cannot gain access. If you have a prescription that you take occasionally, check the expiration date before using it. If the prescription is out-of-date, it might be ineffective or toxic. Checking the date on OTC medications is just as important as it is for prescribed medications. Last, but certainly not least, lending or borrowing a prescribed medication is always a no-no. Medications are prescribed on an individual basis, and no two people are alike. Never take the chance of taking a drug that is not prescribed for you.
These are just a few of the more common slip-ups that can occur. To play it safe, become an educated consumer and always ask before acting.

Betty Berry
Senior Concerns Advocate