Helping Your Aging Parent: A Step-by-Step Guide -- Revised

Most of us don't know when to step in with an aging parent - especially if they're independent and living on their own. When should you get involved? How will you protect your parent's assets and provide emotional support? Here are the tools you'll need to steer through one of life's most challenging and rewarding experiences - caring for an aging parent. This revised guide takes you step-by-step through the caregiving process: - Be an advocate for your parent. - Assess existing asset protection, and adjust as needed. - Identify and manage physical symptoms complicated by age. - Locate community services and resources. - Deal with dementia and mental difficulties. - Find the best housing at an affordable price. - Choose and obtain acute, long-term, and hospice care. - Plan a memorial to honor your parent and help loved ones say "goodbye." Learn from a journalist who dealt firsthand with the problems encountered with his own aging parent. His "from the trenches" experience and research provide a candid resource. Facts, forms, worksheets, and references simplify the process. The humorous real-life anecdotes lend levity and humility to this serious topic.

About the Author :
William J. Grote has a degree in journalism and spent over 35 years in the publishing industry, specializing in technical manuals and helping guides. As editor of an architectural magazine, his job included writing technical articles and news releases.He was introduced into the field of aging when his once-independent 78-year-old mother began exhibiting signs of dementia. He learned "on the job" the sometimes-overwhelming complexities and emotional rollercoaster of dealing with every aspect of the process, from doctor visits, the understandable resistance of a person clinging to independence, the medical issues, finding appropriate housing - to the inevitable end. He wrote the first edition of "Helping Your Aging Parent" soon after, in 2002. Now, with the clarity of hindsight and with a newfound levity only the passage of time will allow, in this revised edition he provides a lighter, warmer, more personal look while retaining all the detailed facts, choices, and guidance you'll find essential if you take this challenging but greatly rewarding journey.Now retired, Mr. Grote spends his time writing, but also making wine each year with grapes from his own micro-vineyard in San Diego, and tending his garden of rare fruit trees.

Review :
William Grote's history in journalism is evident in this well-researched and thorough guidebook. His personal experience in managing his mother's declining physical health, dementia, need for assisted living, and financial matters adds humility, empathy, and a touch of levity to the challenges faced by adult children in caring for elderly parents. Beyond the necessary nuts and bolts, Grote's values in respecting his parent's wishes and honoring his mother for her unique self, make this book one I'd feel confident recommending to my own adult children (not quite yet!). - Sheri McGregor, M.A., author of the Done With The Crying books for parents of estranged adult children and founder of RejectedParents.Net. Mr. Grote's writing demonstrates a compassionate and intensely personal journey as he travels a very difficult road with his mother as her aging brain begins to sink into dementia. He writes very early on about the importance of family cooperative spirit. Instead of boring the reader with morose details about aging and dementia, he brings levity and his personal meaning of this often-devastating process to the reader. His writing is not meant to be a textbook on the subject of aging and dementia. The market is saturated with books on the subject. Instead, Mr. Grote writes from his own personal perspective in almost a conversational tone which I'm sure will resonate with parents, children and others who are looking to keep their mind, their emotions and their problem-solving abilities above water as they navigate their journey with their own loved ones. -Carole Beyers, PhD, Clinical Psychologist William Grote's latest edition of his book, Helping Your Aging Parent is a Must Read for every child with elderly parents. Through his own stories, he gives us a solid process for helping our aging parents. I wish I had this book when my parents were in their final years. In the last years of my father's life, it was chaotic and tragic. Had I had the advice contained in Mr. Grote's book, it would have been a great deal easier for everyone, including my young children who were close to both of my parents. Now that I'm reaching that final stage of my own life, I plan to give a copy of Helping Your Aging Parent to each of my three kids, now middle-aged adults with their own families. I face an incurable rare heart disease which is slowly killing me so giving them the information and tools to deal with me as my body and mind weaken is an important asset for us as a loving family. -Boku Kodama, Publisher, www.SilentStory.Org