When is it time to stop driving? During one of our family’s weekly visits with my mother-in-law, I was following her as she drove herself to the doctor in her purple Jeep. Suddenly, I watched her turn left on a one-way street into oncoming traffic. Thankfully, she quickly corrected course without an accident. On other […]
Seek support when caring for a partner with dementia In the basement of Frank Pagura’s Elk Grove Village home is a woodshop, a respite from his role as full-time caregiver to his wife Rosemary, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about five years ago. While Frank, 80, gets lost in the art of woodturning, Rosemary, 81, […]Read More
At age 68, Mary knew the time had come to sell the family’s two-flat on Chicago’s North Side that her grandfather purchased in the 1940s. She grew up with her siblings and parents on the first floor. After her grandparents passed away, Mary moved to their second-floor apartment where she was joined by her partner, […]Read More
Crafting a Memoir Helps Older Adults Connect By Melissa Ramsdell Chicagoan Beth Finke knows the power of a memoir. She teaches several classes in the Chicago area about how to write your own life story. Yet, a recent student served as a powerful reminder of the impact of writing down your memories. A woman […]Read More
Michael Grecco is currently at the end of his rope. Not only is he, along with the rest of the world, dealing with the continued uneasiness of the pandemic, but for more than 15 years, he has had the responsibility of taking care of his now-81-year-old mother. A proud woman at her core, Grecco’s mother […]Read More
Finding one’s way through mourning and loss Carisa Urban was quite literally at the end of her rope. Working tirelessly as a nurse in a Covid-19 intensive care unit at a busy Chicagoland hospital, the Bolingbrook resident had her hands full. She found herself not only treating an onslaught of severely ill patients, but also personally dealing […]Read More
Making the most of hospice and palliative services Dealing with a loved one’s decline may be one of the hardest experiences a person can go through. There is so much uncertainty about making the right decisions, and, at times, no decisions seem right. Certain organizations are dedicated to supporting people dealing with terminal illness. Palliative […]Read More
Flexibility is key when aging parents move in with their adult kids Jivabhai P. Patel contracted Covid-19 a few weeks before Christmas, and he did not recover. But because he lived at home with his grown son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, Patel, who was 89 years old, did not die behind glass in an intensive care unit, […]Read More
Taking care of an older adult can be exhausting for family caregivers, who learn as they go from one precarious situation to the next. If you’re not prepared for the challenge, every mishap can feel like a one-two punch. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you feel like you could benefit from […]Read More
Chicago Health is committed to publishing a diversity of opinions. The opinions expressed in this op-ed article are the author’s own. My husband was diagnosed out of the blue with stage 4 lung cancer. We never saw it coming; he was a non-smoker and health nut. Plus, he had no alarming symptoms, just some back […]Read More
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