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Web MD
What are Advance Directives?
A living will allows you to document your wishes concerning medical treatments at the end of life.
Before your living will can guide medical decision-making two physicians must certify:
A medical power of attorney (or healthcare proxy) allows you to appoint a person you trust as your healthcare agent (or surrogate decision maker), who is authorized to make medical decisions on your behalf.
Before a medical power of attorney goes into effect a person’s physician must conclude that they are unable to make their own medical decisions. In addition:
What Else Do I Need to Know? Read more …
Download Your State’s Advance Directives
Caring Connections provides free advance directives and instructions for each state that can be opened as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file.
To download your state’s Advance Directives by clicking here
Article from Caring Connections. Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), is a national consumer and community engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life, supported by a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The MedicMinder is the best single source personal health record system for aging and ill patients to quickly access and share medical and drug history, including contact numbers for family and doctors. The MedicMinder executive soft leatherette style makes a conservative statement in black and conveys distinction from every viewpoint. The binder features a hidden exterior pocket with an elastic pen loop conveniently located on cover. It has an interior organizer with zippered and gusseted pockets, two elastic loops for pens, multiple business card pockets, and an ID window. With a removable 1″ metal three ring binder. The MedicMinder logo is debossed on the front.
The MedicMinder system contains a 18-month calendar and the following forms: Personal History, Personal Medication, Blood Pressure and Weight Chart, Doctor’s Check List, Doctor’s Visit Record, ER Checklist, Diagnostic and Lab History, and Personal Inventory. It includes a set of 10 90lb. customized Mylar-reinforced tabbed dividers to keep the forms organized and another five blank white write-on (smudge-free) tabs for multi-purpose. They are ideal for organizing doctors. It also comes with high-capacity sheet protectors for storage of up to 25 sheets within one sheet protector. The top and partial side opening allows for easy insertion and retrieval of documents. The remainder of the right side is sealed and reinforced with a color strip ideal for color-coding. And a business card sleeve that holds up to 20 business cards so you are sure you always have fast and easy access to the doctor’s full name, address, phone and fax number.
$79.95 plus FREE standard S&H within the continental United States.
To reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke, work with your healthcare professionals to monitor and maintain healthy cholesterol levels. Even if your cholesterol levels are good now, it’s not too early to develop healthy habits that can help keep your numbers in check.
Learn Your Levels
Have your blood cholesterol checked regularly. Learn your levels and what the numbers mean.
Make A Plan
Work with your healthcare professionals to develop a treatment and prevention plan.
Prevent And Treat
Use these tips and tools for maintaining healthy cholesterol levels through lifestyle and medication, as your doctor may recommend.
Stay Informed
This site can help you and your doctor understand and address your unique cholesterol issues. Learn more about cholesterol and how it can affect your health.
To read more please visit the
Studies Show a Lower-Salt Diet Lowers Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke
By Salynn Boyles, WebMD Medical News
Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
Even modest reductions in salt intake can dramatically lower heart disease risk, new research shows.
In an extended follow-up of two rigorously designed trials, people who reduced their dietary sodium while participating in the studies saw 25% reductions in heart disease and stroke risk 10 to 15 years later, compared with people who ate their usual diets.
Most people in the intervention arm of the studies — where participants reduced the sodium in their diet — lowered their sodium intake by 25% to 30%, researcher Nancy Cook, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, tells WebMD.
“This was not salt restriction, it was salt reduction,” she says. “These people ate normal diets, but we taught them how to look out for hidden salt and avoid it.”
Hidden Salt
The findings are the strongest evidence yet linking dietary salt intake to heart disease, Cook says. It is the first intervention trial to assess cardiovascular risk long term.
Participants were between the ages of 30 and 54 when recruited for the two salt-reduction studies, which were conducted between 1987 and 1995. All also had slightly elevated blood pressures, but none had heart disease at recruitment.
During the initial trials, roughly half of participants were taught to identify, select, and prepare low-salt foods and asked to reduce the salt in their diets. The rest were not asked to lower the salt in their diets. One study lasted for 18 months and the other study lasted for 36-48 months.
Ten to 15 years after the end of the original trials, participants in the intervention arms of the two studies were found to have lower cardiovascular risk and a slightly lower risk of death from all causes than participants who ate their usual diets.
“Americans consume much more sodium than is necessary, and it comes mostly from processed foods and the foods we eat in restaurants,” Cook says, adding that initiatives aimed at lowering dietary sodium will have a bigger impact if they target the food industry and not individuals.
Calling for Change
Last summer, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for a minimum 50% reduction in sodium in processed foods, fast foods, and non-fast-food restaurant meals within a decade. The group also called on the FDA to work harder to educate consumers about the health risks associated with a high-sodium diet.
Texas cardiologist J. James Rohack, MD, who was on the AMA board that issued the directives, says 150,000 lives could be saved in the U.S. annually if everyone cut their sodium consumption in half.
Most people eat much more salt than they realize, he says, because restaurant meals and processed foods have replaced home cooking in the American diet. The American Heart Association recommends that healthy adults should not exceed 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. This is equal to about 1 teaspoon of table salt, but sodium is found in many processed and pre-packaged foods.
“The average American is eating three times as much salt as is healthy every day — the equivalent of 2 to 3 teaspoons instead of no more than 1,” he says. “The assumption tends to be, ‘If I don’t use my salt shaker much, I’m probably OK,’ but that just isn’t true.”
SOURCES: Cook, N.R. British Medical Journal online, April 19, 2007. Nancy R. Cook, ScD, associate professor, department of medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. J. James Rohack, MD, FACC, FACP, board member, American Medical Association; director, Center for Healthcare Policy, Scott and White Health Plan. “Reducing the Population Burden of Cardiovascular Disease by Reducing Sodium Intake,” AMA publication, June 2006. American Heart Association web site.
By: Hugh Delehanty and Elinor Ginzler | Source: AARP The Magazine
Caring for our parents as they age is a job most of us shoulder willingly, yet with warring emotions. Despite our desire to repay the love they showed in raising us, the shifting dynamic of the parent-child relationship can spark feelings for which we are unprepared. For both generations, this is a complex passage—a time of burden and reward, of conflict and reconciliation, of frustration, fulfillment, and finality.
Fortunately, there’s a practical roadmap through that complex emotional terrain. Drawing on AARP’s wellspring of expertise, “Caring for Your Parents” lays out proven methods for helping your aging parents live their lives to the fullest.
Step by step, co-authors and AARP experts, Hugh Delehanty and Elinor Ginzler, guide readers along an innovative and resourceful path to caregiving—a path that deepens the intergenerational bond, transforming an undeniable duty into a journey of spiritual growth and personal discovery. If you, too, are one of the 30 million Americans engaged in providing care to an older parent, relative, or friend, “Caring for Your Parents” is for you—and for your family.
As he neared the end his life, the American novelist William Saroyan quipped, “Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?” Saroyan was being lighthearted, but his question—Now what?—could also sum up the purpose of this book.
The journey through the late years is likely to bring moments of uncertainty and even bafflement, not just for those making the passage but also for the caregivers helping them down the mysterious road. The specifics may vary, but every adult child taking care of an aging parent faces some version of Saroyan’s question. What is coming next? How should I get ready for it? How do I cope? Along the way many difficulties will arise. Caregiving can tear you apart. After all, this is your mother or your father. And you are their child.
I think of my friend Rosemary. She spent much of her adult life trying to free herself from her mother, Arlene, a tough-minded, fiercely independent woman who raised five children on her own after her husband died in a plane crash. Then, one night when Rosemary was in her 40s, Arlene packed a suitcase and wandered away from her house in Brooklyn, hallucinating about a helicopter on her roof and men under her bed. She was later diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s, and Rosemary, who is a gerontologist, volunteered to become Arlene’s primary caregiver.
It has been a wrenching experience. Rosemary moved Arlene to an assisted-living facility a few blocks from her apartment in Manhattan and tried desperately to communicate with her. At times Arlene would start screaming and lash out at her for no discernible reason. But, with the help of an Alzheimer’s support group and a lot of persistence, Rosemary slowly learned new ways to interact with her mother, and their dynamic changed.
“When you are a caregiver, a lot of what you do goes unrecognized,” Rosemary says. “Then there are times when the eternal mother-daughter roles dissolve. She’s softened and I’ve softened. She’s become the loving mother I’ve always wanted, and I’ve become the loving daughter I always wanted to be.” (pp. 8-9)
Before initiating The Conversation, you’ll need to make two kinds of evaluations: one about the relationship dynamics in your family and the other about how you parents are handling the routines of daily life. On the first score, take some quiet time to think about your lifelong relationships with your parents and siblings and how those can help shape your choices going forward.
Consider not only how things have been in recent years but also how they were when you were a child. The dynamics of how all the members of your family interacted back then may bubble to the surface again now. Were you “Daddy’s girl”? That may be something you can appeal to as you open discussions with your father about what the future holds. Are you the eldest? Your parents—or your siblings—may look to you to carry the weight of a difficult situation. You may feel comfortable doing so, but consider whether it might be better in the long run for others to shoulder more of the load.
You and your siblings will need to pull together in coming years; if a foundation for cooperation doesn’t exist already, it’s crucial to establish one now. Indeed, there may be liabilities in your relationship with your parents that will make it difficult for them to hear what you have to say; in that case, it might be more productive for a brother or a sister—perhaps even a close family friend—to initiate the discussion. If it seems likely that tensions will run high, it can also help to have a neutral third-party present, such as a counselor or clergy member. (pg. 17)
In many ways, learning the reason for a parent’s strange behavior can help. “Once we knew the diagnosis,” Susan says, “it was easier to support him. Instead of making light of his memory lapses, we could validate what was going on for him. He would often come to me and say, ‘Susan, I think there’s something wrong with my brain. Everything has an air of strangeness around it.’ I was stunned at how clearly that describes the state of mind.”
Loath to distress their parent, many families struggle with the decision of whether or not to inform the parent of his or her own diagnosis. At one point, Susan thought it might help her father to know; she says, “I got a film to show him, then tried to prep him for it by asking if he had ever heard of Alzheimer’s.
“He said, ‘Yes, that’s one of the dementias, isn’t it?’
“I said, ‘Yes, it affects your memory.’
“He said, ‘Well, at least I don’t have that problem.’
“So I decided not to show him the film, and we don’t use the term ‘Alzheimer’s’ around him.” However, when a parent realizes they are declining, it is a good idea to explain that they have a disease—and that you will be working with their doctor to arrange the best care possible for them. (pp. 112)
As the following stories reveal, everyone finds their own way to relieve the stress of caring or their parents. Look for methods that work for you.
Isabel (60): The best thing is when another family member takes my mother out of the house for a meal, and to visit their family. It breaks up whatever tension may have developed in our house. People get cranky if they don’t leave the house occasionally. It’s the best possible thing for my mother—and for us. It gets her out into the world. And it give us the chance to relax in our own home—to talk openly and to have uninterrupted quiet and privacy.
Hannah (58): My parents are in a retirement home, where my 90-year-old father is caring for my mother, who has Alzheimer’s. I go over there every day. For my own sanity, I go and get a massage every two weeks. I also make sure I go out with friends every couple of weeks. And I’ve hired someone to come in for an hour or two a couple of times a week so my dad can have some time for himself as well. (p. 161)
