BY SUSAN M. MATHEWS, PhD, RN, MSBE Have you ever found yourself singing along to all of the lyrics of a song you knew in high school but can’t remember what someone told you last week? Well, there may be a scientific basis for this amazing recall. A research team from the Boston University Alzheimer’s […]
An overwhelming 80% of Americans want to die at home but the reality is that 60% die in the hospital and another 20% die in a nursing home.
Knowing the Right Question to Ask BY SUSAN M. MATHEWS, PhD, RN, MSBE The call from the nursing home came at 8 on Wednesday morning. Mom was not getting up for breakfast. Mom was always dressed, with make-up on by 6:30. I told the caller I had a 2-hour drive but was leaving immediately. When […]
BY DANIEL GAITAN | daniel@lifemattersmedia.org The vast majority of aging motorists haven’t spoken with family members or physicians about their driving abilities, according to a troubling report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The AAA study, conducted with the Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers project (LongROAD), found 83 percent of drivers aged 65 to […]
BY SUSAN M. MATHEWS, PhD, RN, MSBE What happens when you make a promise to yourself and to your mother “I will never…put you in a nursing home?” Does life get in the way of those plans and promises? I posit that it does, and painfully so. My mother is 96 years old and has […]