Traveling CareGivers

Posts Tagged ‘Scottscale’

CareGivers providing in home care often are faced with various levels of Alzheimer’s disease. The memory loss found during home care varies in degree and thus requires flexible and sometimes creative caregiving techniques.  The follow is a recap of President Ronald Regan’s battle with Alzheimer’s.  Care-To-Go CareGivers in the Phoenix, Scottsdale, Chandler and Gilbert areas salute his contribution to America.

When Alzheimer’s Waited Outside the Oval Office

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.

WASHINGTON — Ron Reagan’s new memoir, “My Father at 100,” has touched off sensational headlines with its suggestion that President Ronald Reagan might have begun showing hints of Alzheimer’s disease while still in the White House.

But in two interviews this month, the younger Mr. Reagan said he never meant to suggest that his father had dementia before leaving office in 1989. And he graciously took the blame for not being more explicit in a passage that described a few personal observations along with comments from the former president’s doctors.

A “rather small section of the book has attracted outsize attention,” he said in a telephone interview from Seattle, where he lives.

All he meant, he continued, was that the amyloid plaque characteristic of Alzheimer’s can start forming years before it leads to dementia. The former president’s diagnosis was made in 1993, four years after he left office.

“Given what we know about the disease,” his son told me, “I don’t know how you could say that the disease wasn’t likely present in him during the presidency.”

Had it been stated that way, the assertion about Alzheimer’s would have stirred little if any debate. Still, the issue is important for anyone — including candidates for office — because of the difficulty of distinguishing the initial symptoms of Alzheimer’s from, say, simple forgetfulness.

The disease occurs most frequently after 70, but it can strike younger people. Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist, diagnosed the first case in a 51-year-old woman. It is now recognized as one of a number of types of dementia. And diagnosing it with certainty requires a brain biopsy, rarely done while a patient is still alive.

Mr. Reagan’s mental state was an issue even before he became the oldest man elected president, at 69, in 1980. Adversaries were fond of attributing his penchant for contradictory statements, forgetting names and general absent-mindedness to Alzheimer’s.

I reported on Mr. Reagan’s health, and he told me that his mother, Nelle, had died of senility — and that if he were to develop it in office he would resign.

As a follow-up to questions about Alzheimer’s, my extensive interviews with his White House doctors, key aides and others, I found no evidence that Mr. Reagan exhibited signs of dementia as president. The interviews did not include family members.

Moreover, until Ron Reagan’s memoir appeared, no other family member — and not Edmund Morris, the official biographer who spent seven years with Mr. Reagan in the White House — publicly hinted that he showed evidence of Alzheimer’s as president.

“My Father at 100” (Viking) is an affectionate, often lighthearted account of a son’s attempt to uncover his father’s character by going back to his early days. It is generally well written, except for portions of the closing chapter about Alzheimer’s — which Ron Reagan acknowledged were flawed because he “relied on memory” without checking facts about when and where the suspicion of his father’s Alzheimer’s was first raised.

He writes, for example, that after the former president fell from a bucking horse in Mexico in 1989, his doctors detected probable signs of Alzheimer’s in removing a blood clot that formed between his skull and brain. But such a procedure does not involve a brain biopsy that doctors would need to diagnose dementia.

Moreover, Mr. Reagan was flown to a military hospital near Tucson — not taken to San Diego, as his son writes — and the blood clot, a subdural hematoma, was removed weeks later at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

In the interviews, Ron Reagan genially acknowledged the errors and said that if he had anticipated the controversy he created, he “would have done more due diligence in terms of pinning down dates.”

When his father was president, Mr. Reagan, then a professional dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, visited him two or three times a year. Now 52, the younger Reagan has been a radio and television talk show host, commentator and magazine writer. In the book, he writes that he did not want his father to run for a second term, partly because of political differences (Ron has long been liberal) and partly because of his concern about Mr. Reagan’s health — not the possibility of Alzheimer’s, but the near-fatal gunshot wound he sustained in a 1981 assassination attempt.

Understandably, the son’s memories about his father’s Alzheimer’s focused on when it first produced symptoms. The anecdotes that he cites are either well known or lack convincing evidence for Alzheimer’s.

For example, he recounts the 1984 re-election campaign, when his father performed dismally as he floundered through his responses and was lost for words in his first debate with his opponent, Walter F. Mondale. But Mr. Reagan performed well in the second debate, 11 days later.

While spending a day in the Oval Office in 1987, the younger Reagan noticed that aides were providing his father with scripted index cards — a technique he often used when giving speeches — for phone calls lasting five minutes at most, implying signs of a failing memory. But in an interview, Mr. Reagan said it was “hard to know what to make of that” — and laughed as he said he was using similar notes in our conversation.

The son noted little things that he could not explain and to which he did not attach a name at the time. Based on knowing his father’s demeanor and cognition over a lifetime, the observations created an impression “that something was amiss.” But, he wrote, he did not want to leave an impression that his “father was catatonic or mumbling incoherently” at any period in the White House.

In his last months, Mr. Reagan held court from a hospital bed in his den, uncomplaining and gently agreeable. By this time he looked younger; his face had lost many of its worry lines and wrinkles. But as he stopped eating and drinking and his kidneys failed, Mr. Reagan lost the decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s and died on June 5, 2004.

Alzheimer’s hereditary patterns are not precisely known. Ron Reagan said he is aware that he is at risk for the disease. But he has not had genetic tests for it, and has not been asked or volunteered to take part in any study of the family history of Alzheimer’s.

Care-To-Go provides home care and caregivers in the Phoenix, Scottsdale, Chandler and Gilbert areas.

Caregiver Explains How To Prevent Falls With Better Balance

Unintentional falls among those 65 and older are responsible for more than 18,000 deaths and nearly 450,000 hospitalizations annually in the United States, according to the Centers in Atlanta. Most of these falls are caused by a decline in that complex and multidimensional human skill known as balance.

We all know of someone who “just fell” and broke something, a hip, an arm, an ankle or leg. We usually write it off to just old age, weak muscles, or failing bones. If you ask the senior who fell it was usually someone else’s fault. One lady told me that a cat ran between her legs and tripped her causing an ankle and eye injury.

The debate rages on about calcium and bone density. Did someone fall and break a hip or did the hip just give way and they fell. You can read more about calcium and bone density in our nutrition section at MyNaturalSuppliments.myShaklee.com.

Balance is a function of inner ear sensations transmitted through a series of nerves to the brain and signals sent via more nerves to the muscles of the body. If you sense you are falling, you adjust your torso, legs or arms to maintain in balance.

The old adage of use it or loose it applies here just like most things in life. It does seem to apply more to brain use and muscle use though.

Inactivity in seniors as well as nutritional levels can lead to the loss of use or slowing of brain recognition and nerve transmission, thus the inability to recognize when they are loosing their balance or falling. By the time they realize the need for a readjustment to maintain balance, it is often too late.

In an article by John Hanc of the New York Times the benefits of strength and balance training are explained. Dr. Thurman explains that strength and balance training can reduce the rate of falls by up to about 50 percent.

While most public health agencies recommend 30 minutes a day of cardiovascular exercise and two or three sessions of strength training, there isn’t a recommendation for balance training.

There are a number of good balance exercises to use. The best bet is to go to a gym and use a personal trainer. Many gyms offer low impact stretching and balancing sessions. Gentle yoga would be wonderful for stretching and balance. Those yogis live to 125 you know.

At home one of those big balls to sit on and raise up feet land lets would be a good idea.

Try walking a straight line with both feet hitting the line. Kind of like when the police give a sobriety test on the street. Next try walking the line with arm out to the sides and cross over the line with each step. Put your left foot on the right side of the line and visa versa. This is the model runway walk. Have someone stand behind for safety and stand on one leg with arm out. Just raise one foot up a little. When this becomes easy, reach down and put your palms under the raised foot and balance for 15 to 30 seconds.

Remember safety first. You don’t want to get hurt exercising so you won’t fall. Have someone with you for support.

For assistance in the Phoenix area contact Care-To-Go at 480-284-8611

Read the Complete article

Care-To-Go Travel Companions are always on the lookout for interesting travel deals and ideas.  The following article for travel agents reveals Top 30 Themed Cruises for 2010.  Traveling Caregiver assistance can make a vacation for a senior an enjoyable and safe event.

Tapping into themed cruises that precisely match your client’s interest, hobby or passion is equivalent to adding a “must-have” ingredient to your recipe for sales success.

Themed cruises often include private onboard events or activities not open to regular cruise guests. So, “the cruise isn’t sold based on price, it’s sold on a specific experience,” stresses Susan Schaefer, independent affiliate of America’s Vacation Center, Brentwood, TN. “Your client isn’t looking for the lowest price, so you aren’t competing with pricing when selling a themed cruise.”

Read entire article

Care-To-Go Travel Companions can be reached at 800-818-0407 or on the web at www.CareToGoTravel.com