February 2009 Archives

The day after the big family meeting and we're all feeling good. The paperwork issues have all been worked out and soon the Power of Attorney will be signed; we're just waiting till the Notary comes in around noon. But as we gather at the UPS Store the word travels fast, Dad's not going to sign. "No problem," I say, trying to keep my mother calm, "we'll start with you". The Notary overhears him mumbling his objections and tells us that she won't be able to work with him. Fortunately I've again brought the paragraph-by-paragraph draft which shows my mother's initials, so the Notary's assured and we can proceed with mom.

This past summer my dad observed my mother and I having a spat. She was being difficult and I was pushing back. His advice, "let it pass, it will pass". A message of patience that I could apply to his resistance. So instead of signed paperwork I took him and my brother for a haircut across the street. The barbers didn't believe we're related since he has a full head of hair while my brother and I take after my mother's side of the family; someday we'll be bald as cue balls.

Mom, Dad and all 5 children met in Newport Beach for a family meeting this Valentines Day weekend. My siblings and I felt that they had to have a Power of Attorney and a Living Will in place, and the Last Will & Testament had to be revised. Beyond paperwork, we wanted to hear their wishes; were they ready to sell the cottage, and if so, what about after the cottage?

How'd it go? It started out dramatically. Just before noon on Friday the 13th we had to dial 9-1-1. Mom has asthma and the prednisone she takes for it makes her skin paper thin so when she banged her leg against the bed frame it split wide open. After a trip to the emergency room and 17 stitches she was fine, but rattled.

The drama started on the way home from the airport. With my parents sitting in the back seat and unable to read lips, it took no time to realize their hearing had slipped another notch. Just mentioning getting it checked evoked a surprising reaction from my mother.

John Leland in the New York Times reports today that,

"many older people who live alone are not truly alone. They are being watched by a flurry of new technologies designed to enable them to live independently and avoid expensive trips to the emergency room or nursing homes".

The article features eNeighbor, a device that allows elders to live at home yet be safely monitored, which "comes with great promise of improved care at lower cost and the backing of large companies like Intel and General Electric".

Read the article.

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Can technology be used to keep seniors in their homes and out of assisted living? Steve Agritelley thinks so. He's the Director of Product Incubation and Prototyping in Intel's Digital Health Group in Oregon. He calls it Aging in Place.

"Imagine someone in a disease management program, taking home a monitoring system that's easy to use with a touch screen that everyday they can interact with," that's what Steve and his group are building. The device would communicate back to a clinician who's managing a variety of people facilitating remote monitoring. Meaning more seniors can live inexpensively in the comfort of their own homes and still receive effective care. Steve's research tracks the social networks of at-home Alzheimers patients and creates devices, like an iPhone, that can show a picture of who's calling and offer reminders of the last call and what you talked about.

But Steve's team doesn't start their research on the technology side, instead he has a team of ethnographers, from the field of anthropology, who do a 'deep hanging out' with the subjects to learn how they live in their homes.

"To be on the forefront of research is very, very exciting. The market is just starting to develop." He knows he can't do it alone so he's collaborating with the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH) at the Oregon Health & Science University and the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) In Washington, DC.

As the siblings prepare for the upcoming family meeting set for Valentines Day weekend, I was assigned the health care proxy. What's a health care proxy, or a Living Will? It's a legal document that gives someone you trust the power to deal with end of life situations if, say, you're in the hospital in a coma or otherwise can't communicate your wishes to the doctor. This is the document Terri Schiavo was missing and instead she was kept alive for years while in a persistent vegetative state.

Issues like Do Not Resuscitate and other artificial life support decisions need to be discussed with my parents. That might be awkward, but the chaos that could happen if we don't have their wishes written down would be much worse. So how to get this accomplished? The Living Will is a legal document, but there's no time to involve an attorney and their needs should be quite simple, there must be a document I can download from the web.

Well, yes and no. Then I found LegalZoom.

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This first interview starts with my sister Mary. The show will cover many topics and perspectives, but this whole concept started because of concerns about our aging parents.

I'm a baby boomer and so is Mary. Perhaps you, too are wondering about the options your parents face. Boomers are a huge demographic and our parents are living longer lives and facing great challenges in healthcare expenses and lifestyle choices.

As our parents grow into their 80's their dual lifestyle of winter in Florida and summer at the cottage in New Hampshire is suiting them less well than when they started retirement 20 years ago. Neither locale is comfortable for year round living, yet the back and forth and the dual sets of doctors is getting to be a bit much. Add to that, other than Mary, four of their five children and all their grandchildren are in California. Sounds simple you say? Move them west? But decisions are getting harder to make at their age, and there's the emotional bond to the cottage, not just for Mom & Dad, but for us siblings, too. So we're getting organized; there's a family meeting planned for Valentines Day weekend in Los Angeles. All the siblings will gather and Mom & Dad, too. What are the priorities we must negotiate as we try to align everyone's concerns, wishes and feelings for the cottage? Can my parents muddle through issues like healthcare proxies and a power of attorney? We know they must have them. No one's seen their will recently, my copy is dated 1986. It's rumored to name all 5 siblings as executors which sounds like the ultimate in fairness, but we suspect will be the ultimate nightmare. Can we siblings work together effectively? We've never had to. Let's start with Mary...

I spent all day looking at assisted living facilities in San Diego County this past week. My sister Maureen and I had planned this for about 2 weeks then at the last moment, my brother Eric could join us. I was pleased that the three of us would share this experience and begin to develop a common vocabulary to describe the options facing my parents.

It was coincidental that during the course of the day, we went from the least expensive, Atria in Encinitas, to the most expensive, Carlsbad by the Sea. I flipped over CBTS, it reminded me of my apartment at Lincoln Center in New York City years ago. It was right in the center of town, so simple opportunities to visit the hardware store, a restaurant, a book store, all this as accessible as crossing the street. But just how expensive is it? I'm calling back for more details, but at CBTS you have 'entrance fees' starting as low as $77,000 (for the maintenance man's broom closet, I quipped) and up. We were showed a beautiful 2-bedroom unit facing the hubbub of downtown for $450,000. And that got me thinking...