Some days seem to offer too many things to deal with at once for elders. Today is a good example. Following a month of dealing with what may have been a virus, I am discovering that it appears to be subsiding, just in time for the scheduled colonoscopy that was ordered while undergoing the discomfort of daily diarrhea. This lands on the same day as an eye appointment to correct lenses that seem to work better with a magnifying glass. Is this the way it is as we move into the seventh decade? Is this what we can expect in our senior citizen years? Is this the joy of growing older?

Why can’ t we schedule one thing at a time? Can’t the body recognize

Many of us seniors watch our adult children and their workout programs.  That generation is heavy in to exercising because of their desire for a healthy life.  Some of us elders have been told by our physician that we also need to exercise to improve the quality of our lives.  For some, physical exercise is [...]

Most veterans understand and make good use of the gamut of medical care offered by the Veterans Administration; health care for vets is a really good example of socialized medicine for this group of people, and the program works very well. It is the equivalent of Medicare for non-vets.  In addition, many elderly people who [...]

A little-known center within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is beginning to get national attention.  The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was established in October 1998; it’s parent organization was the Office of Alternative Medicine, established in October 1991. NCCAM is the Federal Government’s lead agency for scientific research on complementary and [...]

Senior citizens continue to be interested in and concerned about the new health care law that impacts those of us with Medicare as well as every other citizen in the country.  Now that some of the health care reform hype and hysteria has calmed down, let’s take a look at the FACTS regarding the bill [...]

The focus of this column yesterday was on Taking Care, coming to the recognition that care needs may be delayed as you intentionally use good judgment in taking care of your own health and aging needs.

Needing care, on the other hand, offers hard moments to come to. Admitting the need to receive care brings with it a surrendering of some independence, management of one’s own life and turning over decision making to others. These are debilitating, at least potentially, experiences which require careful and diplomatic approaches.

No matter the circumstances, even those in which, for the most part, there is little to no concern for the economics of the situation, the emotional, logistical and psychological affects are many and varied. Presently, in one family I am aware of, all the adult children

As early as mid high school, my vision revealed a strange and troubling problem for me. I began by having to have frequent refractions and changes in my prescription for glasses. At first, I enjoyed it because I liked experimenting with new styles of frames, which I then thought helped make me look more sophisticated. I did not realize the cost issues involved nor the implications to my declining vision.

In late high school, early college I was told by the first opthamologist I saw that someday I would probably be facing a corneal transplant. Like many at a young age, I was not prepared to deal with the implications of such information. The physician informed that I had a condition known as keratoconus. That simply means that, at my birth in 1938, I was one of 100,000 who would require a transplant to correct the condition. The condition