Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

What Good Life to The Very End Can a Care Manager Bring ?

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Bringing Good Life to The Very  End

What Good Life to the very end can you bring -in the terminal phase of life -? Here is a wonderful example 

 Bill died at the home of his son after he had accepted that he was to die of liver failure and stopped all lifesaving treatment, like dialysis at the hospital and entering hospice. The decision was made that he would die at his son’s home with 24 care from his Care Management agency Livhome and his ongoing care manager Mary Brennan.

After his coming to terms with his death, Bill and his family, sons,  grandchildren, and great grandkids were able to say their goodbyes and offer the unconditional love that they had been fearful to express before his acceptance of death. A feeling of light & joy permeated his room, a family room overlooking the garden, where his hospital bed was set up. Great-grandchildren brought pictures and marveled at “grandpa grandpa “ high up in a hospital bed.

The  Good Life to The Very End -Joy of Hearing

His son put headphones with a mike on and William could hear and speak, as he had not in years.  It was like the wonderful film and concept  Alive Inside.  Hearing was a gift that gave him such joy in his last weeks of life.

The Good Life to the Very End- Let Family Just be Family

The family could just be family because they had care providers to care for bill. His 24-hour caregivers were gifted loving care providers from a GCM agency  Livhome. The 24-hour shifts included a nurse of 18 years from Central America and a man finishing his Ph.D. from the Congo. They cared for him with great warmth, so his family could just be family, relaxing in their love and surrounding him, as if in a circle, that swirled with 4 generations, going every which way while he watched, really loved, and melted into his last stage. His sons, grandchildren great grandchildren, and nephew ate meals, chitchatted, and welcomed each new family member coming in to see William, as he remained in the center in his hospital bed, the fulcrum of the gathering.

The Good Life to the End of a Great Care Manager620-amy-goyer-juggles-work-and-caregiving-mobile-technology.imgcache.rev1382542973676.web.jpg

The geriatric care manager, GCM Mary Brennan, from Livhome, a seasoned powerful and so kind LCSW, adjusted here and there, with care providers, and family needs. Bill’s needs followed the guidance of hospice, who were slowly increasing the pain meds, and supporting his health and medical care needs in death. The geriatric care management agency worked as a partner supplying 24 care and support for the family.

Bill was able to have again, a magical care provider from Livhome, who had been with him for almost two years and was so at the end.

You are only as strong as your weakest link- those are the care providers. These people were the raft that floated Bill up while the family, offered love and hospice provided medical and end-of-life support. Together they buoyed Bill into his last stage of dying, knowing that his family was the fabric of every step he took toward forward towards death. They gave him that good life till the very end.

If you want to add an End of Life service and other services, plus all the forms necessary, go to my website,  and check out GCM Manual 

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Good Life to The Very  End

 

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new se

 

 

 

Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and families. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team.
Find out how to Use COVID -19 family coaching for GCM. Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

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Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

Sign Up for My Webinar on Death Doulas and End of Life

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Add Death Doula &Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Deliver a Good End of Life-

Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part

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Join me on January  24 and 2 PM and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

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Sign up for my free webinar on Death Doulas

Death Doula – What is that?-In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn “What is Death Doula and how Care managers can work with them.

Sign up for my webinar on Death Doulas and End of Life.  In A Washington Post, this week a Post article said that Death Doulas have become a nationwide death-positive, national movement mirroring the traditional ritual in Mexico that many Americans also celebrate, the Day of the Dead. That ritual holiday celebrates death as a positive part of life by remembering those who have died, honoring them with flowers ( marigolds), and “commemorating death as another element of life.

We live in a culture that is afraid of death- where death, like birth, was hidden in institutions, like nursing homes and hospitals for decades so that families never had to experience it. This hiding away from the entrance and exit of life is one reason why we fear death. Death-like birth used to occur at home, where families could see and feel the dying person, hold them, and smell them, so those fears were not there. Now like a birth, that can happen at home death can too at home with the help of a  geriatric care manager and a Death Doula who like a midwife of birth –  is a midwife of death. This a reason you should sign up for my webinar on Deliver of Good End of Life.

Sign up for my free webinar in Death Doulas and  End of Life and learn from an interview with Patti Urban ALCA care manager and Death Doula

What is a death doula? 

what exactly does a death doula do?

Do Death Doula work with Hospice, Care Managers, or just families

Is there a Charge

How can I contact a Death Doula

How can a care manager be trained as a Death Doula?

 

Patti, a Certified Dementia Practitioner, Senior Advisor, and End of Life Doula, is the owner of Aging Care Planning Solutions, a geriatric care management and end-of-life planning practice.  She is the former Executive Director of Shoreline of Clinton, a memory care assisted living community, and the former owner of Comfort Keepers, a home care company serving seniors, both located in Connecticut.  She is the founder of the Shoreline Area Senior Network, a local networking and educational group for professionals serving the senior community along the Connecticut Shoreline.  Currently, she is a member of the Advisory Council of the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut and is a former Board Member of the Shoreline Eldercare Alliance, Association of Women Business Leaders, Orchard House Adults Day Center, Shoreline Chamber of Commerce, and National Speakers Association Connecticut Chapter.

She resides in Connecticut and is the mother of three daughters and one son, all adopted from China.  She can be reached at 845-641-8123, pattiurban@agingcarePS.com, and www.agingcarePS.com.

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Sign up for my webinar on Death Doulas

We will Also Cover Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part

  • Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death
  • Help clients be active participants in their care
  • Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
  • Provide family center care to  family caregivers and family
  • Choose the right support services through all stages of death
  • Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
  • Use ALCA End-of-Life Benefits During COVID
  • Use  COVID -19  Family Coaching for GCM

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If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

How to Capture Family Stories from Seniors on the Holidays

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Capture Family Tales From Aging Parents 

Have you captured family tales from older family members? Or have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions about their past, your family history, and your childhood? Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized that you could have just listened closely to the stories your deceased parents told you and written them down?

Do not look back! Make this New Year the year you collect the stories from your family. Learn to use 10 reminiscence tools, technology, and techniques to hear family history at holiday dinners and events during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Years.

10 Tips to Capture Family Tales from Aging Parents

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all say, “I want to listen to you.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years’ Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, or Spotify, to play  40’s

and 50’s music or especially the -Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6. Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and is deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element

Family With Grandparents Enjoying Christmas Meal At Table

of memory attached to family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here in the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift. He wrote down 40 stories or memories from his past. They were being published by Story Worth in a book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now is found in a  book that was given to our adult children and then generations to come.

This is a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them.

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

Use reminiscence as a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality-of-life reminiscence program like Nina Herndon describes in her chapter on Quality of Life in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 

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