Caregiving

I was a university teacher for 59 years. That’s the totality of my university, campus based classroom instruction, including the 15 years I taught through my retirement days and five years as a co-teacher during my wheelchair confinement as a disabled person. I continue to “teach” as a Guest Speaker in classes related to age and disability.

The ALF (Assisted Living Facility) I live in is located in a college town. That means all, or most, of our caregivers are university students. This has significant implications for our care. Since most of the residents are in their seventies or eighties, these young women – “she” is the usual personal pronoun used when talking about a caregiver - could be our granddaughters. It would be nice if they thought of us as “grandpa” or “grandma.” For the most part though, we’re the main ingredient of their job.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

AARP Oregon Staff and volunteers will be at the state capitol this year working on legislation that is important to people 50+ and their families. Join our email list by clicking here to receive advocacy updates so you can get involved.

It was April 1994. The newly elected President of the United States, Bill Clinton, was appearing at a Forum on Youth and Violence and other weighty subjects to which a president is compelled to apply his wisdom and intellect, while assuming the gravitas image assumed to be held by those who inhabit the Oval Office.

Volunteers makes our communities happier, healthier places to live, and it's also good for the individual!

I reckon when you read the title of this blog you think I’m going to rhapsodize about my Primary Care Provider – doctor - or conversely demonize him – truth be told, he’s actually a her. Fooled ya!

Hank hates prunes. At least in liquid form. At the dining table, when a caregiver/server pushes a glass of prune juice in front of him, his nose wrinkles, his nostrils spread, the lines on his forehead squeeze together, his eye’s external apparatus - lids, lashes, and brows – squish down - as though he were constipated. Ironic, because that’s the majeure raison for the prune juice in the first place -to ameliorate constipation.

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‘Tis the season to be jolly – especially if $$ signs have replaced your natural pupils.