AARP Eye Center
caregivers
In workplaces and at kitchen tables across the country, Americans are grappling with a growing issue that touches so many of us: the enormous struggles we face when caring for relatives and friends who need ongoing help because of a chronic illness, disability, or a serious health condition.
Many of you, like me, know that family caregiving for someone you love can be a source of deep satisfaction and meaning. But caring for a person with dementia, known as dementia caregivers, can exact an especially high emotional, physical and financial toll on family members themselves.
Being a family caregiver — that is, providing unpaid care to a parent, spouse, friend or other adult loved one — is hard work. It can also be rewarding work. The struggles, frustrations and stress associated with this caregiving journey cross gender lines. While the “typical” family caregiver is a…
November is National Family Caregiver month — when we recognize and honor the 40 million family caregivers across this country .
I am a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, having deployed on two different ships four times to the then-war-torn country. I married the love of my life, Mary, after my first deployment in 1970. Looking back these 46 years, I am so glad I married early in life; it enabled us to have so many wonderful…
Can technology transform aging in America? It’s a compelling question, and in fact I recently participated in a panel discussion with that very title. The panel, hosted by Politico, discussed community-based care and technological innovations to help older adults age in their own homes and…
While family caregiving is an intensely personal issue, it is critically important to the well-being of our aging U.S. population, families and society — and must be taken seriously as a critical issue of public policy.
In June, AARP hosted the premiere screening for Caregiving: The Circle of Love at the University of San Francisco. The 14-minute documentary tells the powerful and inspiring stories of three Chinese American caregivers.
Early this year, I lost my dear mother, Hattie Kane, a modest but blessed and beloved wife and mother. She died of a lengthy illness at the age of 93 after I’d cared for her for eight years, five of them in my home. Largely because of this experience, helping others with their caregiving journey…
On a cold March night in 2007, Jeff Brodeur got the phone call that changed his life. His son, Army Pvt. Vincent Mannion-Brodeur, 19, had been searching a structure near Tikrit, Iraq, when a mortar-shell booby trap exploded. His sergeant was killed instantly and Mannion-Brodeur suffered a…