The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents
A New Caregiver Book Review for People Taking Care of Their Parents
Feb 28, 2009
The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents: Reassuring Advice to Help You Support Your Loved Ones written by Kathy Quan, a registered nurse, will appeal to people at any stage of relating to or caring for aging parents or other elderly loved ones.
The Everything Guide Re-educates Readers About Late Life and End of Life
As nurses are trained to do, Quan treats the subject matter from all angles: social, familial, emotional, medical, nutritional, and just plain practical. This is what makes The Everything Guide so helpful.
Quan addresses:
- dealing with siblings;
- relationship boundaries and who is in charge;
- how medical regulations in health care affect aging parents and their caregivers;
- nutrition and how to get help with meals;
- how to get in-home help
- how to address household and other safety issues like driving;
- how caregivers can assist with and coordinate medical care;
- options for advanced levels of care;
- typical medical problems affecting the elderly and practical remedies;
- types of products and resources that exist to help seniors medically;
- dealing with distance and emergencies;
- how to approach discussion of legal, health care, and end of life planning;
- what happens when the body dies;
- grief and loss;
- caring for the caregiver.
New parents bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital often lament that there is no manual to teach them how to care for the baby. But as a culture, American's seem to know much more about birth and family life than they do about late life and death. Quan’s book serves as the manual for anyone who wishes to have wisdom about late life issues and relate better to aging parents and loved ones.
The Best Thing About The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents
Aside from the valuable medical and other information it provides, the best thing about this book is that it helps the reader understand what aging parents need from their adult children in this stage of life. In turn, readers will feel like they have the permission and confidence to grow into the valued new role of helper to aging parents, whether their parents are sick or well.
This is important because even when people know exactly what they need from others - which doesn’t happen regularly - they are often loathe to ask for it. Quan saves readers and their aging parents years of miscommunication, misunderstandings, and feelings of isolation.
Caring for Parents When The Relationship Was Rocky
Even if the parent-child relationship was rocky, Quan makes the case for helping the relationship evolve at this stage. And though Quan quotes statistics that show that great sacrifices are often made by family caregivers in the sandwich generation, Quan never assumes that an individual caregiver can or should do it all. She makes caregiving seem like a natural evolution as opposed to an overwhelming burden.
Minor Drawbacks of The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents
Some of the subjects in the book are given more depth than others. For example, the chapters on what happens when people die, and what is considered a nutritious diet, are excellent and really go into concrete detail. Other chapters, like getting help from siblings, describes ideal outcomes but doesn’t go into detail about how to achieve them. Readers will have to look elsewhere to find out how to achieve certain outcomes suggested in the book if they are having difficulty.
Though The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents is written for adult children caring for aging parents, it will also be useful for elderly individuals caring for their spouses.
The book is: The Everything Guide to Caring for Aging Parents: Reassuring Advice to Help You Support Your Loved Ones, by Kathy Quan RN, BSN, PHN, published in 2009 by Adams Media in Avon, MA. ISBN 10: 1-59869-648-3 ISBN 13: 978-1-59869-648-6.
Kathy Quan is a Registered Nurse who has worked in the healthcare field for thirty years. She is the Health Field Feature Writer for Suite101.
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