Great ideas from the AGIS Caregiver Forums for the week of 2/4/2008

Our Forums are all about caregivers supporting each other. In this week’s highlights, members are sharing information on topics that concern us every day.

How do you open a dialog with a family member who lives far away about how he or she is really feeling? It’s not easy living miles away from a family member and suspecting that you are not getting the full story about what is going on with his health and other issues. In this post we discuss some ways that a concerned son can open a dialog with his dad about telling his son the truth about how things are going.

http://forums.agis.com/thread.jspa?messageID=735&

This forum post has a link to a recent NPR interview with Suzanne Geffen Mintz, president and co-founder of the National Family Caregivers Association. Mintz discusses a huge gap in our healthcare system that sends patients home to be cared for family members with little or no training. The stress and risk for patient and caregiver are enormous.

One way to address this gap is to use an online system like AGIS Family CareGroups to coordinate care for an ailing family member. Here’s a link to Family CareGroups http://www.agis.com/caregroups/

Here’s a link to the post about the NPR interview.

http://forums.agis.com/thread.jspa?threadID=223&tstart=0

It’s painful when children become fearful of a formerly beloved grandparent due to illness and aging related changes. In this post we discuss, how to tell children about illness and ways to handle changes in grandparents abilities and moods.

http://forums.agis.com/thread.jspa?threadID=204&tstart=0

The AGIS Network Caregiver Forums are a great place to get support and ideas for helping your family member. Will you join us? http://forums.agis.com/index.jspa

Filed under: Caregiving