Aging

I've been trying to kick a 20-year habit of being on someone else's schedule. Our dogs have been my methadone. They cannot feed themselves and we don't live on a farm so they don't run wild and free. But I find them to be far more flexible than my former charges -- our children. Read More

What if Shakespeare had lived today? Would he still have such pessimistic views about aging? Though his wisdom has survived throughout the ages, his description of old age does not appear to have captured a universal truth. Read More

Several weeks ago my mother, in her eighth or ninth year of Alzheimer’s Disease, and 63rd year of marriage, began wielding knives and trying to stab people, verbally threatening to kill my father, throwing dangerous glass objects and screaming bloody murder at her own image in the mirror—“I DON’T WANT YOU HERE, GET OUT!!!” My brother and I finally intervened and had her temporarily hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, hoping we could buy more time for her at home through stabilizing her on the right meds, and getting Dad more help. Read More

The lives of creative older people, such as Katharine Hepburn, can serve as an inspiration to all of us. How can you benefit from their examples to become an Age Buster in your own right? Read More

OK, so you now understand your parent's doctors' treatment plans (Step 1) and you have acquired a certain proficiency in gathering medical information (Step 2) and non-medical information (Step 3) specific to your personal situation. The next step is pulling everything together - multiple doctor's appointments, tests, procedures, medical information, home care services, medication management, devices, and as many other services as your aging parent requires to be safe at home, wherever home is. Read More

Like many of us, until my forties, I had gone through life feeling rather invincible. Not only was it inconceivable that something bad could ever happen to me, even my very mortality seemed suspect. Then, feeling creaks and aches in bones I hadn't thought about since anatomy class in medical school, made me reluctantly concede that I actually was mortal - or even worse - getting older. Read More

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey for O Magazine, Maya Angelou remarked, "I'm going to die. So why can't I do everything?" Read More

The idea for the happiness journal came from a little book called A Life of One's Own written by the British psychoanalyst Marion Milner and published under the pseudonym Joanna Field in the 1930s. Milner's idea was that if she recorded the best moments in her daily life, she might begin to trace patterns from those moments and discover the conditions for lasting happiness. Read More

There has been a lot of recent press regarding the presence of cognitive impairment and even dementia in NFL players who have suffered repeated head trauma and concussions. Read More