What We Cannot Afford

Last week, we hosted our tenth anniversary Fearless Caregiver Conference.  I have to say it was a doozey. We had experts on social security, long term care, and hospice on the panel and hundreds of family caregivers in the audience. It was a packed house of information, advice and sharing topped off with a proclamation from the honorable Lois Wexler, Mayor of Broward Country, Florida and a caregiver advocate,  officially noting the date as Fearless Caregiver Day.   Dr. Jamie Huysman, an old friend and Co-founder of the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation shared his thoughts on caregivers as first responders, and we honored our 2008 Caregiver Friendly Award winners.

As any event, there is always one moment which literally took the breath away from everyone in attendance. That moment came when a caregiver stood to talk with Florida's Secretary of Elder Affairs, Douglas Beach. She spoke of the times when she would bring her 54 year old daughter to the hospital.  When the hospital staff would realize that that the family was dealing with Alzheimer's care, they would address her daughter and ignore the caregiver who stood before us. The only problem with that situation was that it was the daughter and not her mother who was living with Alzheimer's disease.  She went on to say " If anything happened to me, there would be absolutely no one to care for my daughter, so I cannot afford to die."  It took many moments before anyone in that conference hall remembered to start breathing again.

See you on the road!

Register for a Fearless Caregiver Conference

The 2008 Caregiver Friendly Award Winners

Take care

Gary Barg
Editor-in-Chief
gary@caregiver.com

PS.  Our Respite survey is still available on the home page.

Let's Talk About It - May 2008
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I am interested in how difficult it is to cruise, travel both in and out of the country with someone on oxygen. My husband needs it 24/7 and at night with his cpap. When at home he uses liquid oxygen when we are outside of the home and in the house we have the electric concentrators. When we fly we rent the INOGEN which airline's accept. These run on our current not on any foreign current.  What would we use instead of liquid oxygen when we are away from the place we stay? How difficult is it to travel with someone on oxygen? Even on a ship when we would go out of our cabin what kind of oxygen would he use? With liquid he can be away for hours and not need a refill. I am always being negative to any kind of extensive travel because of these issues as I have to do everything and worry about all these things if we should travel. That is not to say we just stay at home we do not. We fly from the east coast to the west 2 times a year and have homes in both places so that all the oxygen equipment is there for us. We went on a day's trip once but I had to take all kinds of bullets of oxygen which is cumbersome and hard to do. Do you have any suggestions?  Answer This Week's CareNote: carenotes/2008/index.htm
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