As 2011 comes to an end, we would like to pass along a book suggestion that just might offer a possible solution to the age old question: What's the right thing to do for Mom and Dad as they get older?
We would also like to wish our readers and all of our colleagues who serve our senior community every day, a very safe, happy and healthy Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!
Read on....
We have recently been collaborating with Dr. Dennis McCullough, author of My Mother, Your Mother, on the discourse of the best approach to helping seniors age comfortably while fulfilling their own best interests in the latest stage of their lives.
Thanks to advances in science and medicine, more of our parents are living longer than ever before. And though we are rewarded with more time with the people we love, we are also faced with new sets of complications - more heart diseases, more disability, more need for support and careful judgements. Yet while our health care system may help people live to an older age, it doesn't perform so well when decline eventually sets in. We want to do the best thing but are overwhelmed with the staggering choices we face.
Geriatrician Dennis McCullough has spent his life helping families to cope with their parent's aging and eventual final passage,
experiences he faced with his mother. In this comforting and much needed book, My Mother, Your Mother, he recommends a new approach, which he terms "Slow Medicine."
Shaped by common sense and kindness, grounded in traditional medicine yet receptive to alternative therapies, Slow Medicine advocates for careful anticipatory "attending" to an elder's changing needs rather than waiting for crisis that force acute medical interventions - an approach that improves the quality of elders' extended late lives without bankrupting their families financially or emotionally. As Dr. McCullough argues, we need to learn that time and kindness are sometimes more important and humane at these late stages than state-of-the-art medical interventions.
My Mother, Your Mother will help you and your family to prepare for the complex journey ahead. This is not a plan for getting ready to die; it is a plan for understanding , for caring, and for helping your loved one live well in their final years.
You can order the book at www.amazon.com
For more information about this and other senior related issues, please visit our website at:
www.hearthside-homeinstead.com
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