It’s powerful how people’s caregiving experiences drive them to share and contribute to make the experiences of others better.  Here are two new resources from former family caregivers that have been brought to our attention:

eCare Diary

eCare Diary is a website created based on the founder’s, John Mills, experience as a caregiver for his father who suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. Having spent over 20 years working in the health care system, John found coordinating long term care to be difficult because of the lack of good information.

eCare Diary provides comprehensive information, tools and resources to help those seeking and providing long term care. A unique feature is the Care Diary, a set of online tools designed to make coordination of care and sharing of information easy amongst family members and other caregivers. eCare Diary also has a comprehensive database of nursing home and home care services, guides on long term care financing and information on important health care documents everyone should have.

An Alzheimer’s Caregiver Journal

The Seasons of Good-bye: An Alzheimer’s Caregiver Journal was compiled and written by Robyn Feld, a woman who walked the Alzheimer’s caregiver journal for six years with her mother.

The book contains over 600 anecdotes under 47 topics from caregivers across America who share how they handled the various stages and challenges of dealing with their loved one. Individuals and educators are using the book as a resource to help caregivers and other work more effectively with Alzheimer’s patients.

Since dealing with feelings is a huge part of the Alzheimer’s caregiver’s challenge, each topic has space for journaling or just keeping notes for future reference.  Robyn contributes $1 from every sale of the book to Alzheimer’s research and support services.

Thank you to Robyn and John.