Texas Seniors Guides

Seniors and their loved ones can plan ahead for a more productive, worry-free experience.

With limited time to meet with a physician, it’s important for you or your senior family member to have the most productive doctor visit possible.  By planning ahead, you can save time and remove some of the stress associated with visiting a health care professional. Here are a few tips that will help you be an ally and an advocate:

Visit the doctor’s website. Often, new patient forms are available online, so you can print them and complete the paperwork ahead of time.

Go together.  It’s good to take a companion to help communicate and be an extra set of eyes and ears.

For the millions of Americans diagnosed with a dementia disorder, the disease actually damages the brain in ways that can cause mysterious and even frightening behaviors in even the most mild-mannered person.   Caring for someone with dementia is a labor of love, but the behaviors that can occur as the disease progresses often strain even the most dedicated and loving relationships.  When the strain becomes too great, the caregiver has to find help.  Fortunately, caregivers who reach out for help are finding more and better information than ever before.

Making sense of the repetitive, strange and even childlike behaviors that occur in the person with dementia is not easy, but one geriatric psychologist has developed an experience that can help caregivers understand that those behaviors are actually predictable reactions of a person desperately trying to do their best under very trying conditions.