Latest, from Caring Right at Home

When to Worry About Worrying: Identifying and Treating Anxiety Disorders

Alzheimer's Disease Doesn't Take a Holiday

December 5 - 11 is National Influenza Vaccination Week

Leftovers Save Money, But Save Them Safely

Student News Team Launches "Brave Old World"

Student News Team Launches "Brave Old World": Ten student reporters from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism produced a series of in-depth multimedia investigative reports on the elderly, depicting the complex dimensions of aging. The project involved comprehensive research to address a subject of growing importance to Americans: to show how communities may adapt to meet the needs of a growing elderly population. These informative segments include:

• “How We Live Now,” a series of six video portraits showing the places and circumstances in which seniors are carrying out their days.
• “Growing Old in Three Minutes,” short videos drawing from the latest science, which demonstrate the impact of aging on the body’s senses.
• “What We Know About Dementia,” a report on the impending crisis, including interviews with Alzheimer’s patients themselves.
• “Welcome to Elderland,” an animated illustration of how communities can adapt to an aging population."

Society Ignores Terri Schiavo But Health Care Rationing Not Going Away

Society Ignores Terri Schiavo But Health Care Rationing Not Going Away | LifeNews.com: Last week, former U.S. President, George W. Bush released a memoir called “Decision Points.” He revisits a number of official and personal events, as well as choices that shaped both his presidency and his attitudes in private life.

Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo, "was disappointed to learn that Bush’s actions in March of 2005—that led to the passage of Terri’s Law—were not a part of this account. . . . President Bush left his home in Texas—in the middle of the night—to return to Washington, DC, in order to sign this bill into law."

Some would praise him as a pro-life hero and a friend to the disabled. Others sharply criticized him for involving himself in a state circuit case. Yet nearly all would remark that his actions were extraordinary and historic. Why, then, has Bush not recounted that experience in his memoir?

Bad Dog. Good Life.

Bad Dog. Good Life. - What Helps. What Hurts. What Heals. - CarePages: Last night, David and I were not exactly at each other’s throats, but things were, let’s say, tense. Bean, our terrier mix “Beanometer” (a great guage of emotion), reacted by cowering behind my legs, as he always does when David or I feel angry or anxious. Poor little guy. And poor Penny Too, our recently adopted 8 year-old Chihuahua mix. Something was off. . . . Then I realized what was really happening. The next morning, David was to get his first stress test since his heart attack last year.

Endless Doctors

Endless Doctors - Emotional Health – CarePages Discussion Forums: "I am 14 years old. I have numerous medical issues. Which doctors believe have a single cause. But none of them know what. I have seen an uncountable amount of different doctors. I know exactly how it feels to have doctors that don’t try hard enough. If one of my doctors can’t figure something out they pass it on to another doctor. I have my good days and my bad days. But, I’ve learned that if I trust god and have faith it’s a whole lot easier to deal with. I am here to let others in my situation know that hope is the most important thing."

Letters of Love

Letters of Love - Parenting – CarePages Discussion Forums: Rebbecca was struggling with cancer. I was inspired and very much wanted to help the family. So I informed my Teen Leadership class of her story. We all were involved and made cards and letters for me to send to the family. Not only did we send letters to Rebbecca, but also her little brother and sister. The kids were thrilled by this! Rebbecca’s mom would send me letters explaining the excitement of the children and how they would wait each day for the mail to arrive. We supplied something for the kids to smile about.

Helping Kids Handle Cancer

Helping Kids Handle Cancer | Taking Care | CarePages.com: Twice each week Christine Grimaldi takes ten of her "kids" out to dinner. To each other, the members of this dinner club are friends, allies and fellow warriors who’ve battled a common enemy: cancer. Some are in treatment, others finished only a few months ago, still others are in remission, inching their way to that five-year survival mark. The table talk at these gatherings centers on life during and after cancer.

Perfect Gifts for Hospital Visits

Perfect Gifts for Hospital Visits - CarePages.com: These ideas will help you choose gifts for a friend or family member who's in the hospital or recovering that will brighten their spirits and help ease their recovery.

Scots end-of-life Bill is ‘dangerous’

Scots end-of-life Bill is ‘dangerous’, say GPs | News | The Christian Institute: Writing to The Scotsman, 47 doctors cautioned that, if the bill was passed, people may consider assisted suicide or euthanasia if they felt they were a “burden” on their families. The GPs said they could not support any provisions which may encourage patients to believe “that they have lost their inherent dignity or which may imply, however subtly, that society might be better off without them.”

A chronically ill bioethicist tackles euthanasia

For Melbourne bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini euthanasia is more than academic. He is in chronic pain with a terminal illness. Earlier this week he published an open letter to the Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann, urging him not to support Voluntary Euthanasia Bill 2010. (It was defeated yesterday.) Dr Tonti-Filippini's professional credentials are impressive. He was Australia's first hospital bioethicist and is a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council and chair of the sub-committees on the Unresponsive State and Comercialization of Human Tissue. Read it in full here. 

Is it "mercy killing" or abuse?

Roy Charles Laird, 88, was arrested this week after allegedly shooting his 86-year-old wife, Clara Laird, in her nursing home. The couple's daughter described the act as a "mercy killing". Laird staunchly persisted in feeding and bathing his wife, Clara, 86, as dementia and crippling illness took away her ability to walk, sit up, feed herself or recognise visitors, according to the daughter. LA Times

Alex Schadenberg, a regular blogger on euthanasia, takes an interesting perspective. He quotes a recent study entitled "Domestic Homicide and Homicide-Suicide: The Older Offender", published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. The study states that "lethal violence is often a result of long-term abusive behavior by a man against his female partner" and that "spousal violence often continues into old age". The report continues, "it is important to note that the perpetrators of previous domestic violence cannot be established from available police reports. It should also be noted that, for various reasons, the prevalence of domestic violence is likely to be higher than reports indicate and that the apparent association with spousal homicide would therefore also be underreported."

Screening efforts have genocidal aims

Garth George : Screening efforts have genocidal aims - Opinion - NZ Herald News: A group of New Zealand parents and pro-lifers believe that antenatal screening for Down syndrome violates Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, because it imposes measures intended to prevent births within a specific human group. They say it discriminates against people with Down syndrome and that it is in violation of the Crimes Act 1961.

Experts on aging ponder best way to reduce disabilities

Experts on aging ponder best way to reduce disabilities - USATODAY.com: "No canes or walkers for me, thank you."
How to make that wish a reality for aging Baby Boomers will be one of dozens of health issues that aging experts will address at the 65th annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America beginning Friday in New Orleans.

Disabilities — expected to reach record numbers as the nation's 77 million baby boomers begin to grow old — could cut into their quality of life and put a huge burden on caregivers. The size of the older population is expected to swell to 90 million by 2050, nearly triple the current number.

Surrogate decision-makers' dilemma on end-of-life care requires more input from doctors

amednews: Surrogate decision-makers' dilemma on end-of-life care requires more input from doctors :: Nov. 15, 2010 ... American Medical News: Physicians and hospitals have failed surrogate decision-makers by hewing too closely to a protocol that delegates these life-and-death choices entirely to family members. The hands-off approach to surrogate decision-making 'leaves them hanging in the wind, saying, 'It's your decision,' said Dr. Sulmasy, associate director of the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. 'This is not like a menu in a restaurant. They need and ought to have some guidance in these decisions.'

Leaving choices in the laps of surrogates is especially problematic because they often do not have an advance directive to help them decide. Exploring patients' values can help physicians make appropriate clinical recommendations.

Editor: This is why BFL developed the Protective Medical Decisions Declaration, available at http://www.bfl.org/Services-Resources/LIFT/Protective-Medical-Decisions-Declaration-(PMDD).aspx.

The Inglis appeal judgment is a fascinating revelation into how euthanasia works

John Smeaton, SPUC director: The Inglis appeal judgment is a fascinating revelation into how euthanasia works: The statement by the presiding judge is significant:

'We must also emphasise that the law does not recognise the concept implicit in the defence statement that Thomas Inglis was 'already dead in all but a small physical degree'. The fact is that he was alive, a person in being. However brief the time left for him, that life could not lawfully be extinguished. Similarly, however disabled Thomas might have been, a disabled life, even a life lived at the extremes of disability, is not one jot less precious than the life of an able-bodied person. Thomas's condition made him especially vulnerable, and for that among other reasons, whether or not he might have died within a few months anyway, his life was protected by the law, and no one, not even his mother, could lawfully step in and bring it to a premature conclusion.'

Repackaging death as life: The "Third Path" to imposed death

LifeTree: A major transformation of traditional medical ethics is taking place. What was once unthinkable has become acceptable, and no one really knows why. In the last half of the 20th century a multi-million dollar social engineering and marketing project financed by foundations and directed by bioethics think tanks has normalized the withdrawal of ordinary care.

Editor: A must-read on the history of the euthanasia movement.

Two-Thirds of Britons Support Legal Euthanasia

Two-Thirds of Britons Support Legal Euthanasia: Angus Reid Poll: An Angus Reid poll found that 67 percent of 2,015 adult respondents support legalizing outright euthanasia in the UK. Fifty-five percent said they believe parents who “assist a terminally ill son or daughter to die should not be punished,” and 58 percent think “people who help a person to commit suicide should not be prosecuted.” Eighty-three percent said that euthanasia would give suffering people “an opportunity to ease their pain” and 77 percent believed it would “establish clearer guidelines” for doctors to deal with end-of-life decisions. Only 30 percent said that legalizing euthanasia would “send the message that the lives of the sick or disabled are less valuable.”

Krugman: Death Panels Will Fix Debt Crisis

Krugman: Death Panels, VAT Will Fix Debt Crisis: Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist, apparently thinks death panels could be one way the federal government will be able to keep soaring medical costs under control as baby boomers enter retirement. Video

Editor: I thought there was no such thing as death panels in Obamacare.

Is activists' favourite suicide drug "torturous"?

It is unlikely to derail activists, but the drug of choice for assisted suicide activists is being described as "untested, [and] potentially dangerous, and could well result in a torturous execution" of an Oklahoma man on death row. The state has run out of thiopental sodium, which is used for lethal injections in the US. Hence it want to use pentobarbital - also known as Nembutal - which is used for putting down animals. But John David Duty's lawyers claim that this could constitute cruel and unusual punishment. It may not thoroughly anaesthetise prisoners and may cause them severe pain.

This puts an interesting twist on euthanasia rhetoric. "I wouldn't let a dog suffer like that" is a familiar argument for assisted suicide activists like Philip Nitschke, of Exit International, or Ludwig Minelli, of Dignitas. So they offer their clients Nembutal. Now, however, it turns out, Nembutal might make you suffer like the proverbial dog. Wall Street Journal, Nov 9, BioEdge.org

Euthanasia: The musical

It had to happen: a musical about euthanasia. Of course, nearly every film coming out of Bollywood is a musical, but director Sanjay Leela Bhansali has tried to make Guzaarish (The Request) a lush melodrama with Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai in the lead roles.

The plot, as in most musicals is not the most important element. An impossibly handsome Goan magician - the world's greatest - becomes a quadriplegic attended by an impossibly beautiful and devoted nurse. After 14 years in a wheelchair, he wants to die. His mother, an apprentice magician, and an old flame enter the plot as well. It culminates in a courtroom drama. With dancing. And songs. BioEdge.org

Dr Death: body parts for sale on internet

Dr Death: body parts for sale on internet by controversial anatomist Gunther von Hagens - Telegraph: The German entrepreneur whose Body Worlds exhibitions showed human cadavers in lifelike poses has told clients they will be able to buy the fleshless corpses which he injects with plastic resin over the internet.

Steep rise in official Dutch euthanasia

The 2009 annual report of the five regional euthanasia review committees notes that the number of euthanasia cases has been increasing steadily, by about 10% a year, since 2006. The chairman of the committees finds this puzzling. "It is not possible to pinpoint exact causes," he says. The government has commissioned a study into the matter.

This year's report has to be interpreted carefully. Although the committees only found nine cases (out of the 2,636) in which the physician had not heeded the rules for administering euthanasia, it also mentions that one possible reason for the rise in cases is "a growing willingness to notify". In other words (as other studies have shown), an unknown number of Dutch doctors euthanase patients and do not report it.

Another worrying feature of the highly bureaucratised procedure is that the committees cannot cope with the paperwork. "The secretaries are overburdened and, despite working at maximum efficiency, are now forced to focus on their core task - supporting the committees in reviewing notified cases of termination of life - with the result that other tasks are not performed," says the report. BioEdge.org

What Doctors Think About Assisted Suicide

What Doctors Think About Assisted Suicide, Romance With Patients and Organ-Selling - Health Blog - WSJ: A plurality of respondents — 46% — were in favor of physician-assisted suicide in some cases. But 41% were opposed (the rest said “it depends”) and responses ranged from “I’d want it for me when the need arises” to “Assisted suicide is murder.” A majority of respondents (55%) said they wouldn’t halt life-sustaining therapy if they thought it was premature, even if the family demanded it.

Katie Beckett: Patient Turned Home-Care Advocate

After more than two years living in St. Luke's Methodist Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Katie Beckett's family reached the limit of what its private insurance would pay for Katie's care. Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance for the needy, started picking up the cost of that expensive breathing machine and other care. But Medicaid would pay only as long as the little girl lived in the pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital.

Beckett's parents, Julie and Mark, said they wanted their daughter at home. The girl's doctors agreed, saying she needed to grow up in a more normal environment than a hospital room. At first, federal officials refused to make an exception. But then Reagan was told about the family. A few days later at a press conference on Nov. 10, 1981, Reagan expressed his anger at what he called an example of a cold bureaucracy.

It cost six times as much for the girl to live in the hospital, the president said, and "this spending most of her life there and away from the home atmosphere is detrimental to her. Now, by what sense do we have a regulation in government that says we'll pay $6,000 a month to keep someone in a hospital that we believe would be better off at home, but the family cannot afford one-sixth that amount to keep them at home?"

President Reagan changed the Medicaid rules and Katie Beckett left that Iowa hospital and went home in time for Christmas. Shortly after, the government allowed exceptions in other states so that parents like the Becketts, who made too much money to qualify for Medicaid, could be covered for their children with extreme medical costs.

Families Fight To Care For Disabled Kids At Home

NPR News Investigation: Families Fight To Care For Disabled Kids At Home : NPR: 'I've had doctors, a couple of doctors, who have questioned a decision about doing something for Olivia, kind of on the basis of: Is she worth it? I've looked them in the eye and said, 'Don't you dare say that to me. Do you have children? What would you do for your child?' I think society can look at a person like Olivia and say, 'What can she contribute?'' Tamara Welter blinks back tears and then talks about how her daughter responds when her parents or nurses walk into a room — by glancing at them with her eyes and flailing her arms.

For anyone who suffers 'put downs'

A Life Beyond Reason

A Life Beyond Reason - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education: I agree with Rabbi Harold Kushner when he writes and talks about bad things happening to good people: August's disability does not form a part of 'God's plan' and does not serve as a tool for God to teach me or anyone else wisdom. What kind of a God would it be, anyway, to deprive my boy of speech and movement just to instruct me? A cruel and arbitrary God. August's disabilities are not a blessing; but neither are they a divine curse. To traffic in a cosmic economy of blessings and curses is to revert to an ancient prejudice. Indeed, even though August's disabilities offer ample opportunity for public interpretation, they do not mean anything at all in and of themselves—they have no intrinsic significance. They simply are what they are.

That is not to deny that August, along with my daughter and my wife, is the most amazing and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, for he has allowed me an additional opportunity to profoundly love another human being.

Home Or Nursing Home: America's Empty Promise To Give Elderly, Disabled A Choice

There's been a quiet revolution in the way the elderly and young people with disabilities get long-term health care. A new legal right has emerged for people in the Medicaid program to get that care at home, not in a nursing home. States, slowly, have started spending more on this "home and community based care." But there are barriers to change: Federal policies are contradictory and states face record budget deficits. As a result, for many in nursing homes — or trying to avoid entering one — this means the promise to live at home remains an empty promise. National Public Radio

Why Not College for the Disabled?

Why Not College for the Disabled? | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction: Russ Kinkade holds up a pen. If it were broken, he says, he would toss it. 'So if you objectify people and see they are broken, then it makes logical sense that you would discard them,' concludes Kinkade, executive vice president of Shepherds Ministries.

Located south of Milwaukee, the nonprofit Christian organization has 53 years of experience in overcoming the perception that people with disabilities have little to contribute to society and thus can be discarded.

In 2008, the ministry launched Shepherds College, the nation's first faith-based residential college exclusively for students with intellectual disabilities. At the end of the current academic year, Shepherds, a three-year program, will graduate its first class.

Canadians Worry about Vulnerable People if Euthanasia is Legalized

Canadians Worry about Vulnerable People if Euthanasia is Legalized: Poll: A year of public debate about legal euthanasia has left Canadians with concerns about how vulnerable people - those who are elderly, depressed, disabled or chronically ill - will fare if the law changes. A new pollhas found that although 59% said they support legal euthanasia, the number who “strongly support” it has declined by 3 points since last year. Almost two-thirds, 63%, are worried that elderly Canadians would feel pressure to accept euthanasia to reduce health care costs, up from 57% in 2009. Canadians are also worried about people being euthanized without their consent.

End-of-Life Care for Patients With Advanced Dementia

End-of-Life Care for Patients With Advanced Dementia - NYTimes.com: “People with dementia get sicker inch by inch,” said Lin Simon, director of quality at Gilchrist Hospice in Baltimore, the largest hospice organization in Maryland. “Trying to say, ‘Now, she’s ready for hospice’ is much harder.”

Study Casts Doubt on Hospice Admission Criteria for Patients With Dementia

Study Casts Doubt on Hospice Admission Criteria for Patients With Dementia - healthfinder.gov: Many people with advanced dementia aren't getting much-needed hospice care because the admission criteria is flawed. Dementia is a leading cause of death in the U.S., and hospice care can benefit patients with dementia. The main hindrance to getting palliative [comfort] care is guidelines that try to guide practitioners to wait until an estimated life expectancy of six months. Such end-of-life predictions are difficult to make with certainty in dementia cases. Instead of using life expectancy as the requirement for admission, hospice care for dementia patients should be offered based on the patient's and family's desire for comfort care.

Hope is More Powerful Than Death

Assisted Suicide Advocates Forget Hope a More Powerful Force Than Death | LifeNews.com: The choice to end one’s life is not an exercise of freedom; it is ultimately a manifestation of loss and despair. The desire to end a painful health condition is one reason for a suicidal tendency, but there are ways to eliminate pain without killing the patient.

Dying patient heard his unborn grandson's heartbeat

Dying patient heard his unborn grandson's heartbeat after a nurse arranged for his daughter to have a scan at his bedside - mirror.co.uk: Vicci Smith Scott, 40, was seven months' pregnant when doctors warned her that dad Roy Smith, 83, had just hours to live. Intensive care sister Sandra Wood arranged a scan so Roy could hear the unborn baby boy. A Doppler machine, which detects a child's heartbeat, was brought to his room and Vicci sat beside her dad as her child's heartbeat was monitored. Roy died just two hours later.

Vermont Gov. Candidate Vows to Legalize Assisted Suicide if Elected

Vermont Gov. Candidate Vows to Legalize Assisted Suicide if Elected: The Democratic candidate for governor of Vermont has told a pro-euthanasia lobby group that he would push to decriminalize the actions of those who help others kill themselves. 'I support end of life choices,' said gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin in a September interview.

Shumlin sympathetically described an encounter he had with a cancer-stricken woman who expressed a wish to be able to kill herself legally. 'I can't imagine in my wildest dreams why government would get in between that woman ... and her doctor,' he said. Shumlin highlighted that his Republican opponent, Brian Dubie, opposes assisted suicide as well as abortion, which the Democrat vowed he would 'defend until my dying day.'

Editor: Oh, the irony of that last statement.

The real meaning of rationing

Rationing already takes place in many ways in health care. Managed care is exactly a form of rationing in which a private insurer determines whether patients should or should not receive services. In addition, private sector rationing injects profit motives into the calculations. The recent debate over health care has centered around who should do the rationing: private enterprises, often driven by profit or other private objectives, or government officials who are easily characterized as motivated by the immediate political returns of lower taxes or hiding the true shortcomings of services they administer. JAMA

Nurse caught on CCTV turning off paralysed patient's life support machine

Nurse caught on CCTV turning off paralysed patient's life support machine - Telegraph: Violeta Aylward, an agency nurse working for the NHS, was caught on camera turning off the ventilator keeping quadriplegic Jamie Merrett alive. The 37-year-old, left paralysed from the neck down following a car accident in 2002, had a bedside camera set up at his home after becoming concerned about the standard of care he was receiving.

Footage recorded only a few days after it was installed shows Miss Aylward fiddling with the ventilator before a high-pitched warning tone sounds, indicating it is switched off. Mr Merrett is then left fighting for life as the nurse panics about what to do next, unable to restart the ventilator or properly operate resuscitation equipment. It was not until 21 minutes later that paramedics who rushed to the scene managed to turn the life support machine back on. But by that time, Mr Merrett had suffered serious brain damage.

A message of hope

St. Nazaire.maville.com A message of hope

France has just awarded the Légion d'honneur to a woman who has been a locked-in quadriplegic for 30 years. Maryannick Pavageau received the distinction for her battle against euthanasia.

Mme Pavageau is a member of the Association of Locked-in Syndrome (ALIS) and contributed to the 2008 Leonetti commission report about euthanasia in France. "All life is worth living," she told the newspaper. It can be beautiful, regardless of the state we are in. And change is always possible. That is the message of hope that I wish to convey. I am firmly against euthanasia because it is not physical suffering that guides the desire to die but a moment of discouragement, feeling like a burden... All those who ask to die are mostly looking for love." Despite her paralysis and her need for round-the-clock care, she was inspired by her love for her family to fight for life.

Family, doctors battle over ‘do not resuscitate’ order

Family, doctors battle over ‘do not resuscitate’ order - thestar.com: As Mann Kee Li lies in hospital fighting dire prospects, his family is engaged in a life-or-death struggle, not with the cancer spreading through his body, but with the doctors treating it. Li, a 46-year-old Toronto accountant and father of two young boys, wants doctors to use all medical measures possible to save him in the event of a life-threatening emergency. He made those intentions clear to his doctors when he entered the hospital in August. He wrote it in a power of attorney document and confirmed it in a videotape statement, his lawyers say.

While his doctor initially agreed to respect those wishes, physicians unilaterally reversed the decision a week ago without consultation and imposed a “do not resuscitate” order, his family alleges. “There’s something seriously wrong with the system,” says David Li, Mann Kee’s younger brother who travelled to Toronto from his home in Singapore this week to join the family’s 24-hour watch at the hospital.

Family suicides may be the next step for Dignitas

Family suicides may be the next step for Dignitas - Telegraph: Ludwig Minelli, a former journalist who runs the Zurich clinic, told a Swiss newspaper that a recent attempted suicide by a dementia sufferer and his partner illustrated the need for a change in the law. “Legislation is needed to give dementia sufferers and their families more options.”

“Relatives should also be allowed to have a prescription for suicide drugs even when they are not terminally ill.” A family suicide package is illegal under Swiss law where assisted euthanasia is only permitted where a person has an incurable condition or terminal illness.