Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Can Blue Blue Christmas and Hanukkah Come From Dementia ?

December 2, 2020

As Elvis Predicted

Many families have a Blue Blue Christmas-or Hanukkah. Why does an aging crisis occur so often during the holidays? How can so many desperate adult children get care managers on the phone and howl about Mom or Dad in December? There are a million bad reasons, – too much alcohol, too many folks who do not get along and drink that alcohol.  But the physical basis for all of this misery in an elder is often a loss of executive function and IADL’s and ADL’s

Why ADL’s and IADL’s.

It takes  IADLs- (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) shopping for gifts, cooking ritual meals and ADL’s walking to shopping

, decorate serve a ritual meal, climbing ( getting all those decorations out of the attic), grooming ( Mom can be found – in a “messy ensemble” at the feast) by the older person in charge of the holiday to pull it off.  Then add depression to the aging stew – widowhood, loneliness and you have the challenges to an elder, usually the woman in the family,  in managing this entire titanic ritual.

Crash of Executive Skills

The holidays in aging families can be a disaster for another neurological reason. Mom or Dad’s Executive Skills have crashed just like a computer.

Executive functioning involves the ability to organize, plan, and carry out a set of tasks in an efficient manner. It also includes the ability to self-monitor and control our behaviors and multiple other cognitive functions and to perform the goal-directed behavior. It can be described as high-level thinking skills that control and direct lower levels of cognitive functioning.

Planning for the holidays takes those high-level thinking skills -to execute and carry out 25 different major tasks according to a study in the UK- Just think, planning a 

specific holiday ritual menu,( brisket and latkes or popovers and beef prime rib )- then shopping for it cooking it, planning the ritual items in the celebration – a menorah and

Hanukkah bush, Christmas tree, and creche buying them or getting them out of storage on and on.

Why we may end up with burned brisket or turkey.

This is a massive task event/ planning job taken on by one woman usually and as executive functioning power down in her brain- the computer-, which is our aging brain starts to crash- the result- the family freaks out because Mom forgot the ritual steps.

That’s why we need aging life or geriatric care managers to help divide the tasks when Mom cannot do this any longer

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to learn More- Geriatric Care 1 

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FINAL DAY TO SIGN UP!

8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

 

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Thursday, December 3, 2020, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: ADL Loss & Holidays, Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Alzheimers, Alzheimers & Holidays, Blog, care manager, case manager, Concierge Senior, Dementia, Dementia & Holidays, Dysfunctional aging family, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, Alzheimers, alzheimers & holidays, care manager, case manager, case manager geriatric social worker, COVID & Christmas, COVID & Holiday Season, COVID Virtual Hanukkah Visit, Dementia & Holiday Tasks, early Alzheimers, Executive Skills, Functional Assessment, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, holidays with aging parents, IADLs, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

Coming to you-Town Square- San Diego 50’s Fake town that Revolutionizes Reminiscence Therapy

September 23, 2018

Last week the Wall St Journal covered the most revolutionary version of Reminiscence therapy-  Town Square. Reminiscence therapy is a treatment that uses all the senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound — to help people with dementia remember events, people and places from their past lives, just as Town Square does.

I took a tour of Town Square on Friday while attending the Western Regional Aging Life Conference in San Diego and it was at the same time mind boggling, fabulously fun and a trip back to my childhood in the 50’s.

The man who discovered the beta-amyloid plaques, George Glenner funded reminiscence therapy through Adult Daycare for 3 decades. His reminiscence legacy has exploded into Town Square, this fake 50’s town built for dementia sufferers so they can spend their day where their mind is calmest in their  50’s past.

Built by the San Diego opera the town has a  kitchen refrigerator like the one in my house in the early 50’s, a barbershop with Elvis hanging on the wall , a Malt shop called Rosie’s Dinner with jukebox, just like the ones my boyfriend Steve Paul and I played while we ate greasy french fries and mooned over each other in the early 60’s. Rosie’s has now collectible formica tables, with chrome chairs but that is a sturdy replica that seniors are safe in with added chrome arms.

https://cathycress.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/Rosey-dinner-.m4v

Town Square Rosie’s acts as act as a lunch spot for the 90 participants, spilling out into the patio.

It has a garage with a luscious, shiny black T  bird from the early fifties with gleaming chrome, my dream car when I was in Atlantic City High School.

Not only in this open for the last month but they rent it out for corporate events for fifties parties where everyone can dress up like Mad men and women in those divine 50’s dresses that I still lust for. And on top of this Town Square will franchise and its next ideation will appear in Baltimore

I came home hearing Patti Page sing Old Cape Cod , thinking of 1956 when I discovered Elvis, puberty, boys, small breasts, adolescence and wildly danced the jitterbug in Lou Molinari garage with all my friends, my life exploding. I was there again and felt glorious just like the lucky residents of Town Square.

 

 

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Filed Under: Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, caregiver, case manager, Dementia Activities, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminiscence Therapy, Town Hall Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, Alzheimers, assessing for quality of life, care manager, case manager, Dementia Activities, Dementia Quality of Life, emotional quality of life, Four senses dementia activities, George Brenner, nurse advocate, quality of life assessment, Reminicence and Dementia, reminicence and elder, Reminicence Therapy, Town Square

Caregiver Burden- Whose Problem Is it?

February 5, 2015

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Whose Problems is it?

After climbing through the barbed wire of who is my client the care manager faces, whose problem is it. Many times caregiver’s seek help from a care manager or other professional, asking them to fix the care receiver’s problems. But even though caregiver or person who asked the care manager to find a solution to the problem, the care receiver or patient may deny anything is wrong. So when the care receiver or patient won’t work with the care manager the care manager may have to “ fix” the person who asked for help in the first place, the caregiver. Steven Zarit points out that this is often the case with patients Alzheimer’s disease.

 Rarely does the dementia clients seek help for themselves. Instead often the family member approaches the aging professional, on behalf of the “ patient”. Usually this is because problems have begun to erupt in the caregiver’s life related to care receiver.

The problems that come up for the family caregiver are dependent on how the family member appraises the situation and then take responsibility for the older person. In the meantime the older family member with the problem usually does no acknowledge that there is any problem at all

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: Alzheimers, Alzheimers caregiver, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, family caregiver

PBS series ” Taking Care” Begins

May 31, 2013

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PBS series Taking Care – PBS News Hour Series on Long-Term Care in America on caregiving features excellent first segment  segment on mothers and daughters  showing why the Whole Family Approach is so important in aging.  The series is sponsered by the SCAN Foundation a-profit public charity devoted to transforming health care for seniors in ways that encourage independence and preserve dignity.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, Aging Professional communication with adult siblings, Alzheimers, Area Agency on Aging, assessing the caregiver, care monitoring, care plan, care plan interventions, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, caregiver overwhelm, caregiver stress, Cognitive Assessment, Continuum of Care, cost of long term care, early Alzheimers, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care managers, long term care, Medicare, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care crisis, PBS, PBS series Taking Care, SCAN Foundation, senior centers, Senior Information and Referral, stress and burden

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