Birth Classes and Death Classes
Three years ago my wife and I had a baby. Prior to our son entering our lives, we attended a number of "New Beginning" classes with other parents-to-be at United Hospital in Saint Paul. I might be wrong in this, but I seem to recall our insurance paid for these. United Hospital's teachers did a fantastic job of preparing us for our baby's birth.
With all the resources we put in health care toward birth and beginnings, should we be doing the same with death and endings? Would people find benefit in having classes to prepare for their inevitable end? Or would no one show up because death is simply not something people want to deal with before its time?
NIMBY And Memory Care in Woodbury, Minnesota
It's been interesting - and sad - to watch how some people in one Twin Cities neighborhood are reacting to the possibility of having seniors with Alzheimer's living near them.
What kinds of communities and neighborhoods do we want as we age?
It's a question for all of us in this era when a person is diagnosed with Alzheimer's every 70 seconds.
Today the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio looked at the story of the proposed housing and the neighbors' reaction. (Ecumen has been a consultant to the Woodbury developer). Both insightful stories. Bob Collins' MPR piece provides a video story from a Duluth TV station at memory care at Ecumen's Lakeshore community in Duluth. It's a great look at life in memory care.
We'll all benefit if our neighborhoods and communities are neighborhoods and communities for a lifetime.
Happy Birthday Sid Hartman
There are not many people who more than a million people know by just their first name. Sid is one of those rare folks.
For those who aren't within earshot of Minnesota, I'm talking about Minneapolis Star Tribune sports columnist Sid Hartman, who yesterday turned 90. To say he outworks people 60 to 70 years younger than he is, would be an understatement.
WCCO-AM has some classic Sid moments here. Enjoy.
How Long is Your Sex Life?
In our era of record longevity, here's another reason to stay healthy longer: it extends your sex life, according to a new University of Chicago study:
Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova of the University of Chicago analyzed data about health and sexual activity collected by two nationally representative surveys. The surveys involved 3,032 adults aged 25 to 74 and 3,005 adults aged 57 to 85 between 1995 and 2006. Among key findings are:
- Men More Sexually Active: Particularly among individuals between the ages of 75 and 85, men report being more sexually active than women – 39 percent of men versus 17 percent of women.
- Sexual Life Span: Researchers found that the average person’s sex life winds down by the age of 70. By age 55, men can hope for another 15 years while women generally have another 11 years of sexual activity. But . . . At age 55, men in very good or excellent health on average gained 5-7 years of sexually active life compared with their peers in poor or fair health. Women in very good or excellent health gained 3-6 years compared with women in poor or fair health.
- Interest in Sex: Overall, people in very good or excellent health were 1.5 to 1.8 times more likely to report an interest in sex than those in poorer health.
- Interest Gap: Across all age groups, men were more interested in sex than women, and the gap increased with age.
Changing Aging Editor's Note: Seventy seems very young to have a person's sex life be depleted.
The Tenacity Factor
Some people age gracefully, some with panache. For many it's a bit rocky, or even painful, journey. It's not easy getting old, we've heard time and again. Sometimes it just takes stick-to-it-ness to finish the race. Literally.
Regular readers of the Changing Aging blog will remember my mom Nickie, the Facebooking 80 year old great-grandmother. Here, in her own words, is the story of her latest 10K cross-country ski race.
The race began at Telemark Lodge, in Cable, Wisconsin. In the past, we always were able to park in the parking lots fairly close to the Lodge. Well, this time all cars were shunted off the main drive to a parking field near the airport up there. We took a school bus in to the lodge area -- banging and clanking with our equipment, finding a seat, and disembarking. Then we trudged around the interior of the lodge (with our equipment), looking for the place to pick up our bibs, then weaving our way to the little girls' room because it was our last chance. Outside, after donning our skies and grasping our poles, we battled our way to the Start Line. Bang! We were off and sliding, jockeying for position and, in my case, being blindsided by a wayward skier. Yes, I fell, and in that short moment, time slowed down and I pictured my landing and the emergency crew coming to haul me off to the medical airlift. Bang! I landed and was fine, only a little embarrased as skiers sped by me, smiling and gliding. It was a beautiful day in the Northwoods - the sunshine made all the hill climbing worth it. After the breathless 10k's, I was coming into the finish area. A little three-year-old girl dressed in baby blue was ahead of me by about 50 yards. We were the last ones on the course, heading for the finish line. I had to beat this little kid or I would never forgive myself. I mustered up all the energy I could and beat the little darling by a couple of ski lengths. The next challenge was getting back to the car. The line for the buses (there was a sum total of two buses) was a mile long or so it looked to me and my companions. We elected to walk back, taking a "short-cut" designed for snowmobiles. Piece of cake. After carrying skis and poles a short distance, I found I needed help. My son-in-law carried my skiis and I used my poles to lean on as I trudged slowly behind. I spent the next day in my PJs on the couch. I decided that this will have to be my last year for the Cheqtel Family Fun x-c ski race. But then I remembered the sun slanting through the birch and pines, the beautiful snow conditions, and the joy of not being the last one to cross the finish line and knew that I would sign up next year for the priviledge of skiing in God's country.
As I often tell my friends, when I grow up I want to be just like Mom. ~Helen Rickman
Do You have $570,000 for Long-Term Care? Look at New Boston College Study on Long-Term Care Costs
Do you have $200,000 saved?
Do you have $260,000 saved?
Do you have $570,000 saved?
According to a new study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, a typical couple would have to save nearly $200,000 to pay for their out-of-pocket medical costs from the time they are 65 until they die.
Now . . . add in long-term care costs . . . and they are likely to need $260,000.
Now . . . get this . . . About 5% of 65 year-old couples will face catastrophic medical and long-term care costs exceeding $570,000, according to researchers Anthony Webb and Natalia Zhivan. The Boston College researchers estimate those expenses would have exhausted the total financial assets of 85 percent of all retirees even at the peak of the stock market in 2007.
Another example of why we need to have a long-term care savings program in America.
Ecumen Expanding Home Care Services in Mankato
One of the things fascinating about our profession is the evolution.
University of Minnesota Seeking People for Alzheimer's and Exercise Study
The University of Minnesota's School of Nursing is seeking Twin Cities volunteers with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease to participate in a study on the the impact of aerobic exercise on people with Alzheimer's.
This is a great opportunity for a person with Alzheimer's who is looking for a way to safely increase their activity level. The researchers are trying to learn regular aerobic exercise training can slow down the progression of dementia and improve cognitive function.
- A fitness trainer will train the person to cycle on a stationary cycle 3 times a week for 6-months. The
trainer will monitor the person's responses to exercise. If the person cannot cycle, other exercise will be used.
- The participant will receive a gym membership and compensation.
- The U of M will provide transporation to and from the exercise facility, so the U is looking for people in a 20-mile radius of the U of M.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO ENROLL, PLEASE CONTACT:
Dr. Fang Yu at 612-624-5435
Christine Peterson at 612-626-9669
The Opportunity for Social Media in Senior Housing and Services
In senior housing and social services, we work in the ultimate "social" profession. We're people serving people. We're people building community. We're people who either thrive or fail because of people. Our profession is perfectly built for social media.
Last week, I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Ted Goins, president of Lutheran Services for the Aging in North Carolina; and Larry Zook, CEO of Landis Homes in Pennsylvania, the AAHSA Future of Aging conference in Washington, D.C. It was a great discussion. If you get a moment, check out Ted's blog post on his journey into social media.
Good stuff.
Earlier this week we started our Ecumen Facebook work group. It was driven by colleagues who want to use it at our local sites to enhance their community building work. Again, good stuff. We'll share things we're learning in our Facebook pilot. Hopefully, they'll be helpful to others. And a heads up . . . the invite will be coming to you to join our fan pages. Have a great day.
Jim Klobuchar - Dwindling Candidates for Trust
Ecumen guest blogger Jim Klobuchar is a journalist, author, and global travel guide. He wrote for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis for three decades and is the father of two daughters, including United States Senator Amy Klobuchar. To read past blog posts, simply use our "search" box and type "Jim Klobuchar."
Basically for re-assurance, I dug out a $5 bill from my pocket this morning. On its well crumpled reverse side I read the inscription, which said “In God We Trust.”
This is good, I told myself. But I had to intrude a well-intended question: What else is left?
Bad news and daily chaos were my natural habitat for 40 years in daily journalism, which I survived with reasonable health and happy vibrations. In that condition I don’t find myself filing for protection from the normal calamaties of the world that are available in the morning newspaper or on the television screen. A lot of the news is bad. But it might have been almost as bad when they were building pyramids and even worse when they lived in trees.
Events of the past few weeks led me to wonder how much further do we have to go in the legally-protected scamming and chiseling of the buying public?
I walked into my favorite office supply store for a stapler and computer paper and, spotting a familiar salesman, said: “That printer I bought here two weeks ago is doing well. But I’ve had it only two weeks and it’s telling me I need to change the ink cartridge because the ink is running dangerously low. I got the impression that if I ran one more sheet of paper through that printer I was going to get blown through the roof. ”
He shrugged, suggesting “Why should you be surprised?”
The salesman broke the news gently. “I thought everybody knew by now,” he said. “The companies sell printers. They keep the prices low (and changing models) so they can make their big money on the cartridges.”
So I was being muscled. “I just checked those prices” I said. “changing cartridges every two weeks would put me in the poor farm. And it wasn’t one color. I’m looking at your shelves here and if I want black ink in this standard printer, which is basically all I need, I have to buy four cartridges-in-one—black, raspberry, a mellow yellow and, would you believe, a magenta!! The only people I know who need magenta make flight maps, and you can’t read the magenta in half them. I want to write letters and files. I’m not decorating a birthday cake.”
The salesman tried to be kind, suggesting “it’s life,” in other words a ripoff but legal.
But it’s not all that different, when you think about it, from the infuriating daylight theft by the credit card bankers and hustlers-- exposed in recent legislation that took effect two weeks ago—but which the card companies already are finding ways to avoid by inventing new language in their indecipheral billing policies.
The old policies gave the most prominent credit card companies doing business today, including companies whose cards you may be carrying, permission to swamp gullible users with penalty fees. Under the old license-to-steal policies some of the card companies were increasing the base payment rates of their customers by up to 25 per cent or more, including those who paid on time. Millions of others who were as little as one day late found their actual billings doubled in penalty fees.
In the time of the country’s deepest economic crises in 70 years, the opportunists and sharks were making up for lost revenue from millions of Americans unable to spend as much on essentials—or to spend at all—by soaking those least able to pay.
What the new legislation does fundamentally is to set new boundaries on leeching practices in the credit card industry.
It doesn’t prevent them from finding new dodges, which already are being seen.
Only a genuine consumer protection agency with powers of enforcement to launch criminal prosecution can do that. In the meantime, you might keep a magnifiying glass at hand. Most of that small print is not going to get much larger.