Resources

As I’m desperately trying to meet deadline, my Mom is happily sitting on my couch reading my previous columns on her new iPad. What she doesn’t know is that I’m currently writing about her physical challenges (she is in denial about her own aging, which she would deny if you asked her!) and holiday travelling.… Read more…

  Several of our clients have enjoyed travelling this summer, and we’ve had the privilege of assisting them with their planning. Along the way, we’ve learned a few new things about seniors travelling on their own and with a family member. It seems like a good time to share them. Whether you are taking a… Read more…

  I thought if I wrote about summer and heat perhaps we would be blessed by actually having some warm and sunny weather in the Comox Valley. Wishful thinking… Having come back from three glorious weeks in the Ontario and Interior heat wave, our family spent every day outside in the sun. Transitioning from the… Read more…

It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Monday and a colleague interrupts me from a board meeting to take an important phone call. It’s my brother from Toronto. The conversation is choppy. It’s Dad. He’s had a massive stroke. Don’t fly home. He was a candidate for surgery and is recovering in hospital. He should be fine.… Read more…

  I was going to write about stroke prevention for today’s column. Then I met Ben. Ben is a 44-year-old father, self-made cook and a community support worker. Ben had a stroke in 2008 at age 37; his kids were 12, 9, 6 at the time of his stroke. I met Ben through my work… Read more…

This, our third and final column on Work and Eldercare, will give you a summary of options to assist in balancing caregiving roles with your work. Many businesses have family-friendly options that can help balance the demands of family caregiving and work. The bulk of major Canadian collective agreements have options designed to increase flexibility… Read more…

If only balancing work and eldercare were as simple as a basic mathematical equation! But wait, maybe it is… Assessing work situation + assessing how eldercare activities affect your work = identifying a plan to achieve balance OK, OK, it’s a stretch but a good place to start. Our last column talked about the first… Read more…

You are in a work meeting and your cell phone vibrates. You ignore it. Two minutes later, it vibrates again. You check the number and see it’s your mother calling. Between meetings you call her back and she tells you she needs to go to a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. You wish that she had… Read more…

One of the biggest social phenomenon to hit our nation moves front and centre during Family Caregiver Week in British Columbia from May 7 to 13. Unpaid family caregivers are “unsung heroes” in B.C. communities and make up over 25 per cent of our population. Family Caregiver Week is an opportunity to increase public awareness… Read more…

My grandmother was a voracious reader. She was equally a discerning reader as she was an avid Harlequin Romance fan; just so long as she could enjoy a good book. She was in her late 80s when cataracts made it next to impossible to read. She went to large print until she couldn’t read the… Read more…