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It is my pleasure to introduce you to our new guest columnist, Elaine Williams. Elaine is the author of the book “A Journey Well Taken: Life After Loss”. You can learn more about her and her book by clicking here. Elaine wrote this book after recovering from the loss of her beloved husband to cancer a few years ago. Midwest Book Review gave 5 Stars for this book. This book is a finalist in the USA Book News Best Books Awards 2008 (category: Health-Death and Dying). Her articles on loss, grief and recovery as well as other related topics have been published in various websites and eZines.

 We would also like to let you know that Elaine has graciously agreed to be a Boomer411 Trustee. That means she will be sharing her resource recommendations/website recommendations with our users on our search site. You can also get access to all her recommendations by clicking here.

So please allow me to present her maiden article on our blog…

Afraid to Talk About Dying
Elaine Williams copyright 2008
 
When my husband was diagnosed with esophagus cancer, we never talked about him dying, except in the very beginning. I think we were afraid to voice the worst scenario we could think of, him not making it through this disease. He refused to consider taking the traditional route in medicine, which was chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He told me early in his illness he was certain that the chemotherapy would kill him right away. When such a diagnosis is delivered, you begin to carry around with you a heaviness inside. When someone you care about is terminally ill, it dominates your thoughts and every waking moment. Your mind races over the different treatments and the newest drug trials, in the slim hope that things aren’t as bleak as they seem.
 
When the doctors told him he had this cancer, which essentially prevented him from eating, he wanted them to operate and take out the largest tumor at the junction of the stomach and esophagus. His doctor said it would be a major operation, where the ribs would have to be cracked open, and not one that he had the ability to perform. After more extensive testing was done, the doctors decided not to operate because they felt there was a good chance the cancer had already spread to the lymph nodes in the esophagus region. I didn’t know it then, but I guess I should have — they didn’t want to operate because they felt it was a lost cause.
 
We didn’t feel we should give up — we just knew that each human life is a cause worth fighting for. We never gave up hope that he could beat this cancer, even though it wasn’t discovered until almost last stage. I never actually asked the doctor what stage his cancer was. I believe it was an emotionally insulating factor for myself. I was afraid to know. I did so much research on alternative therapies that might help him, but I was afraid to know where traditional medicine saw him in his stage of cancer. Perhaps I was just better off that way. If I had known, perhaps that may have taken some of the fight out of both of us. We passed many milestones on our quest to heal him. To me, it wasn’t extending his life, it was attempting to heal his life and his body.
 
When someone is terminally ill, you want to preserve every moment, and that in itself becomes exhausting, though you’re not really cognizant of the toll day to day life takes on you. You want to try every avenue available to get better. I wanted my husband to visit a clinic we learned about in Mexico, where they had a good success rate of treating his type of cancer. I questioned our alternative medicine doctor about the latest therapies for cancer patients. I refused to let hope die, especially when my husband’s smaller tumors disappeared, and even when he kept losing weight. My mother said to me once, that some women might have left, but it never occurred to me. How could I ever think of leaving someone who I love when they needed me?
 
We took note of every mile marker along the way. Each step forward felt like a triumphant race to the ultimate goal, his being totally cured of cancer. I read many stories about others who had beat this devastating disease. It wasn’t until three weeks before my husband passed away, the night I had a dream, that I knew he was going to die. I’m sure many others knew right along he was going to die, but being in the thick of living this illness, it wasn’t an option for me. When I had the dream he died, I awoke and knew he was going to die. It was that simple.
 
All hope turned to despair. And still, we did not talk of him dying. Perhaps we should have, I don’t know. Perhaps he didn’t talk about his dying to spare me and my children. Perhaps he was afraid that even though I’d always been strong, maybe he didn’t want to see me break into a million tiny fragments. And I might have. I might well have broken apart, lost the emotional glue that was keeping me together in those last weeks. When hope flees, emotion and fear can break you down.
 
Some days I thought there was nothing more terrible than watching someone you love waste away from 200 lbs to ninety or so pounds. The spirit and the brightness in his eyes was undiminished, until the last eighteen hours. When you look into a loved one’s eyes and all you see is a black glassy emptiness, you know it is the end. For someone who likes to take control, and make other’s comfortable, I knew there was noting I could do. It was the most helpless I ever recall feeling in my life. The end had been written, but we never talked about the end. I think it was just too hard.

 
A Journey Well Taken: Life After Loss
http://www.ajourneywelltaken.com
A Widow’s journey through loss, grief and renewal
Midwest Book Review - 5 Stars
Finalist USA Book News Best Books Awards 2008

Last Monday we published part 1 of our interview with Jill Gilbert. Jill Gilbert is the founder and CEO of Gilbert Guide. Gilbert Guide is the leading resource on the topic of elder care or senior care. It educates, entertains and provides listings of service providers in your local area for senior care. We would also like to highlight that GilbertGuide is a Boomer411 Trustee and you can find their recommended articles here. This interview is being presented in two parts. Part 1 of this interview can be accessed here. Today we present the second and concluding part of this interview…

Boomer411: What motivated you to start GilbertGuide? How long has it been?

JG: Well, to make a long story short, I was motivated by another idea first. I began my career working in the film industry and decided it was time for a change. My parents run a cancer center in Lodi, CA, where my dad is a radiation oncologist. Their patients received excellent treatment, but they were at a loss when it came to accessing all the other, supplemental information they needed. We originally discussed building a cancer resource center to complement their practice, but when I started looking for resource books and couldn’t find anything that encompassed every category, the idea began to change. One thing you should understand is that I came from a really different background-for one thing, the film industry has amazing resource books. And for another, I didn’t know anything about senior care, and the books that I did find didn’t answer my questions. It was 2003. That’s basically when Gilbert Guide began, and almost a year later, my brother Jason joined the team, really making it a family company. Gilbert Guide started out publishing geo-centric guidebooks with comprehensive reviews of every senior care provider in the area. Before then, I’d never set foot inside a nursing home. But I learned from the ground up and surrounded myself with experts. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. It gave me a unique perspective. And since then, of course, Gilbert Guide has expanded its offerings greatly.

Boomer411: You have an impressive team that produces interesting, informative articles on a variety of topics. Can you tell our readers more about your panel of experts and the topics covered by GilbertGuide?

JG: We have a wonderful, articulate bunch of experts who write their own columns on GilbertGuide.com. The authors and the topics they write on are wide-ranging. We have an incontinence specialist, a cancer doctor who is a practicing radiation oncologist, a pharmacologist, a naturopath, a dentist whose practice focuses on geriatric dentistry, a nutritionist, two geriatric care managers, a senior move manager, a long-term care insurance specialist, a financial planner who works exclusively with the elderly, hospice experts and more. In addition to our columnists, we have select experts who contribute original articles to other areas of the site. Also, we have many readers who leave insightful questions and comments to the authors at the end of their articles, which often starts an in-depth conversation between the author and other readers, so it’s really quite an incredible collaboration. It’s very community-oriented.

Boomer411: How do you come up with the topics?

JG: Oftentimes, the topics come from our readers. They’re very vocal in letting us know what they want to learn more about. A conversation that develops in a comment thread following a particular article might pose interesting questions that expose the need for developing that topic further. Sometimes people email us asking for coverage on a certain topic. We work very closely with our contributors to help guide the topics and answer our readers’ questions. All of our experts work in some professional capacity in the senior care world, so they propose topics as well, often writing on topics their patients and clients come to them for advice on. And of course, we’re a part of the senior care industry, so we report on current trends and issues in a more journalistic vein, to keep our readers abreast of those developments.

Boomer411: What criteria should one use when trying to determine what kind of care a loved one requires?

JG: I could go on for hours and still never completely answer this question! Let me explain. Every senior, every family, every facility-and every situation is different. That’s not to say that this question is unanswerable. Of course it is-but I’m going to point you to our Care Planner to answer it! The Care Planner provides each individual with a personalized care plan tailored to their unique situation, guiding them through the process step by step, and granting them access to our supportive “how-to” tool-kits.

Boomer411: What are some of the common pitfalls and mistakes that Boomers make in choosing a care provider and/or facility?

JG: You know, the biggest-and most common-mistake that I see is that people tend to get stuck in the present and they don’t troubleshoot the future. They think, “Oh, Mom’s healthy now, and Grandma died peacefully in her sleep, and never went to the doctor a day in her life” Or something like that. But the reality is: we are all living longer, and that presents complications. Many boomers are facing the challenge of caring for an aging parent, having them move in or choosing a facility for them, in addition to simultaneously caring for a spouse and children, and working and planning for their own retirement. The best move they can make is to plan for the future and try to avoid making uninformed choices. Many families that don’t plan ahead end up having to move a parent from one facility to the next as needs change. Doing so can be extremely costly and take a heavy toll, both emotionally and physically, on the senior and the entire family. It’s worth taking the time to consider all the factors and weigh your options instead of basing decisions on what’s relevant today.

Boomer411: What are your thoughts on the ‘aging in-place’ initiative being experimented around the country?

JG: Aging in-place is what most of us want for ourselves when the time comes. A lot of people don’t realize there’s such a thing as nonmedical homecare available. It means that you can get help for your mom or dad to help them remain at home for as long as possible, giving them access to the care they need without having to move them to a facility. Home care workers can help with all kinds of everyday activities, ranging from light housekeeping, to helping an elder eat, bathe, use the toilet and so on. They can even provide medication reminders. Some simple home modifications can go a long way to help, too. And the assistive technology that’s available today-well, it’s pretty amazing! Just wait until you see what’s coming in the near future.

Aging in place is also possible in a facility. For example, if a senior lives in an assisted living community, she could potentially remain there for the rest of her life, without having to move again, even if her health status changes. Of course, all of this depends on the contractual agreement that she has with the facility. But the idea is the same: the senior remains in the residence where he or she is comfortable, obtaining the necessary care as health needs increase.

Boomer411: What is your outlook for the future of retirement communities and long-term care facilities?

JG: There has been a huge growth in these types of communities and I think the industry is trying to figure itself out. There will always be a need for them. There’s a growing trend of communities specializing in particular interests, which I believe we’ll begin to see more and more of. For example, there are university-based retirement communities and Hollywood actor communities, and of course those which are backed by religious organizations. Lately there’s been a rise in the number of LGBT-oriented communities. But I think we will start to see more “special interest” communities forming. Those will really be the most successful-common interests make for much happier residents.

Boomer411: Any closing comments, insights you would like to share with our readers?  

JG: Gilbert Guide’s goal is to ease the process of searching for senior care. It’s a big world, and you can be sure that there will be questions and issues that creep up every step of the way. When that happens, Gilbert Guide will be there to lend support, advice and information.

This concludes our interview with Jill Gilbert, founder of Gilbert Guide. Please use the links below to learn more about GilbertGuide, what they have to offer and a listing of articles recommended by GilbertGuide. 

Resources:  

Gilbert Guide profile on Boomer411 

Gilbert Guide’s article recommendations on Boomer411 

Gilbert Guide Resources

Care Planner      

Find a Provider        

Senior Housing Solutions Center   

Alzheimer’s & Dementia Solutions Center  

Care at Home Solutions Center

Partner Marketplace        http://www.gilbertguide.com/preferred-partners/

By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist, Blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Guest Blogger

It’s not unusual these days for baby boomers to be working for younger bosses.

It’s a difficult situation, says Rachel Zupek, writing on CareerBuilder.com.

Today, it’s not uncommon for four generations – each with its own attitudes, perceptions, and values – to work side-by-side in the workplace. This sometimes makes it challenging for older workers to adapt.

It’s hard on boomers’ self esteem when younger bosses appear on the scene. In addition, younger generations tend to believe they have all the answers, and younger workers have a sense of urgency about the handling the latest challenge rather than reflecting on the best solution, according to Zupek’s article “Are You the Oldest Worker On the Team?”

Zupek offers these 10 tips to help you deal with adjusting to a younger boss:

1. Recognize that an important factor in managing any relationship is understanding the other person’s point of view.
2. Don’t assume traditional boss behaviors.
3. Never let ‘em see you sweat.
4. Keep an open mind.
5. Learn new things and look at things differently.
6. Use your experience to temper any potential insecurity about having a younger boss.
7. Help your boss get established.
8. Listen.
9. Spend time with your boss one on one.
10. Be the employee your boss doesn’t have to manage.

For additional tips on dealing with a younger boss, see:

“Younger Boss, Older Worker” — EmploymentDigest.net

“Bridge the Generation Gap with a Younger Boss” — Yahoo!hotjobs

“Meet the Young(er) Boss” — Christian Science Monitor

“Tips on How to Bridge the Generation Gap with Your Younger Boss” — Human Resource Solutions

Continuing our series on interviews with interesting people and providers, today we bring you our interview with Jill Gilbert. Jill Gilbert is the founder and CEO of Gilbert Guide. Gilbert Guide is the leading resource on the topic of elder care or senior care. It educates, entertains and provides listings of service providers in your local area for senior care. This interview is being presented in two parts. The first part of the interview is presented here for your information, education and enjoyment…

Boomer411: Tell me about Gilbert Guide and how you see it fulfilling a niche in the marketplace?
JG: Gilbert Guide is a “mecca” for Baby Boomers with aging parents. What I mean by that is we provide the most diverse wealth of information regarding senior care on the Web. Very simply, we guide people through the process of searching for senior care—answering hard questions, and tackling tough topics that you won’t see anywhere else. That’s where the “guide” in Gilbert Guide comes from.

GilbertGuide.com is supported by a virtual community of topic experts, senior care professionals and family caregivers. The idea is that by bringing all of these people together, the caregivers will become well-informed consumers, and the experts and professionals will learn from the people who require their services—to really understand, in great depth, what those needs are and how they evolve. In that way, Gilbert Guide is an agent of change for senior care world.

Boomer411: What services and products does Gilbert Guide offer? Briefly explain each
JG: A few of the many incredible services GilbertGuide.com offers are our Care Planner (I like to call it the “Action Plan”), Partner Marketplace and Provider Finder. The Care Planner is a great interactive tool that guides users through a series of questions and delivers a personalized action plan, expert recommendations, names of providers and contact information for them, and maps—all within minutes.

One of the services I’m most proud of is called “Find Senior Care” or “Provider Finder”. It is the most comprehensive, detailed national directory of senior care providers and senior service providers on the Web. It lists independent living, assisted living, nursing homes, continuing care retirement communities, home care providers (both nonmedical and medical), geriatric care managers, adult day services, hospice providers, and senior move managers. Basically, no matter where you live in the country, and no matter what your needs are, you will find what you need. One really cool feature is that anyone can review their experience with a particular provider—good, bad or just in between—so that others can make more informed decisions in the future. The best part is: every single service we offer is 100% free.

Boomer411: What’s new at Gilbert Guide?
JG: We recently expanded the site with the addition of three new Solutions Centers: Alzheimer’s & Dementia Care, Senior Housing and Care at Home. These centers  support readers through the entire process—for example, in the Senior Housing Solutions Center, you’ll learn about all of the housing options, beginning with independent living, continuing care and life care, assisted living and nursing homes. There’s detailed information, provided by the industry’s leading experts, on each of these subcategories as well as related topics like moving and downsizing. That’s actually a big issue—it’s tough downsizing after you’ve lived in your home for many years, accumulating more and more possessions. Readers come to Gilbert Guide for answers, and our Solutions Centers are where they find them. We take a very consumer-oriented approach in creating all of the content on our site. No matter what your level of knowledge, be it beginner, expert or something in between, Gilbert Guide’s job is to answer your questions.

Each center features multiple tool-kits with essential “how-to” information. In the Senior Housing Solutions Center, you’ve got access to an Assisted Living Evaluation & Moving Kit, in the Care at Home Solutions Center, you have How to Evaluate Home Care and How to Evaluate Home Health Care kits, and so on. We equip our readers with the best tools to get the solutions they need.

In the Alzheimer’s Care Solutions Center, users are guided through diagnosis and treatment, finding Alzheimer’s home care, finding care communities, and managing Alzheimer’s care. The topics encompass a broad range—for example, in terms of managing Alzheimer’s care, there are in-depth articles on: creating an Alzheimer’s friendly home (a step-by-step guide), dealing with combativeness, managing the behaviors associated with Sundowner’s Syndrome and much, much more. There’s a lot of information, but it’s all organized so that even first-time visitors to the site will have no problem finding what they need.

Boomer411: Do you have another outlet for communicating with your readers other than through your Web site?
JG: In April we launched our newsletter, Gilbert Guide Monthly to make sure our readers stay on top of what’s going on in the senior care world. It has been a huge success. I know a lot of people see senior care as boring and dry—so my biggest goal is to make sure everyone has a little fun with it! 

Boomer411: What can we expect next?
JG: We recently launched our version of Daily Candy (my personal newsletter staple—it gives me the skinny on new local restaurants and stores). It’s called The Weekly Insider. Here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect: “Get in-the-know advice and reviews on home modification tips and tools, senior gadgets, must-have services—and anything that’s new, helpful or just impressed the heck out us!”

Boomer411: What else makes Gilbert Guide unique?
JG: Our Partner Marketplace is a special part of the site where we link to the best senior-related products and services—but first, we do all the background research to make sure they’re reputable. Boomers are probably the busiest people on earth, so we’ve eliminated the time they would otherwise need to spend comparison shopping. When they click on the Partner Marketplace, they can feel good about making a solidly researched choice.

Boomer411: Who can benefit from your services? Where do they start?
JG: Baby Boomers who are searching for services for their parents OR who want to understand more about an aging parent’s condition OR who want to connect with other boomers and caregivers—these are the people who are on our site every day. Baby Boomers drive GilbertGuide.com. They tell us what they want to read about, what they want to educate themselves on, and we fill those needs. The starting point for most everyone is our Care Planner.

This concludes Part 1 of our interview with Jill Gilbert. Stay tuned for the second and concluding part of this interview to be published this Thursday…

By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist, Blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Guest Blogger

Although we had a couple of sunny weeks in October, the winter rains are now descending on the Pacific Northwest. Today it’s raining, sometimes pouring, and 52 degrees.

All fall, I’ve been dreaming about living in California. One place I’ve thought about retiring to is San Luis Obispo. With a population of 44,174, it’s halfway between Sacramento, where my oldest daughter lives, and Los Angeles, where my youngest daughter may move.

When my California daughter went to visit San Luis Obispo recently, she bought me a copy of a new biannual magazine called San Luis Obispo County: An Insider’s Guide to California’s Natural Escape. The Insiders Guide reports:

• Cultural activities include plays, a symphony, festivals, art shows and galleries, and music.
• Educational and cultural opportunities at California Polytechnical State University.
• A farmers’ market with 120 vendors and an estimated 10,000 weekly shoppers.
• An elephant seal rookery north of San Simeon.
• The William Randolph Hearst Castle, rising from a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon.
• Dozens of vineyards, many with wine bars and specialty tastings.

In North San Luis Obispo County, Paso Robles also is appealing to me. I’d like to live in co-housing, and the city, with a population of 28,639, has a co-housing complex. However, my daughter told me Paso Robles is further inland than the city of San Luis Obispo, and it can get very hot in the summer. That’s a drawback for me.

What’s boomer living like in this part of California?

My daughter also sent me an Oct. 19, 2008, newspaper article from The Tribune, San Luis Obispo’s newspaper, called “Four More Boomer Stories.” It describes these couples:

• Susan and Ed Cox moved to Morro Bay on the coast from Southern California for a mellower lifestyle. Both educators, they worked when they moved, but Susan, 61, has retired for a second time. Ed, 63, is an executive coach, and he plans to continue to work for at least five years.
• Boomer Carolyn Elliott, 45, has an aggressive approach in saving for retirement. Elliot works in a salon and owns a permanent makeup business. Elliott could retire at 55 or 60, but it’s likely she’ll work longer.
• Gayle Hulburt and William Kennedy moved from Colorado to Trilogy, a community that’s drawing boomers with amenities such as a golf course and swimming pool. They sold their basement finishing company when they moved, but Hurlburt, 56, works as a Web site developer.
• Dennis Delzeit, 62, worked for 13 years as director of public works/city engineer for Pismo Beach, a city on the coast in South San Luis Obispo County. Delzeit plans to work as a part-time consultant in retirement. His wife, Sherrie, is a retired social worker.

But, is living in California all sunshine and happiness?

I read a sobering article in AARP Bulletin, the Oct. 1, 2008, issue, called “Why Are More Older Americans Sleeping in Their Cars?”

In Santa Barbara, Calif., an ultra-affluent oceanfront city surrounded by mountains south of San Luis Obispo County and 95 miles north of Los Angeles, a grandmother sleeps in her Jeep Grand Cherokee. The woman, whose name wasn’t used in the article, recently owned two homes worth nearly $2 million. She was unable to sell her homes or pay the $10,000-a-month mortgage payments, so she declared bankruptcy in 2005. A year later, she lost both properties.

To help people who work and can afford cars, gas, and insurance, Santa Barbara provides recently homeless people the opportunity to sleep in their cars every evening in a dozen private and municipal parking lots throughout the city, according to the AARP Bulletin article. Two social workers check the lots each night as part of a safe parking project.

Most of these homeless people are over 50 and have been driven out of their homes and onto the street by the nation’s economic turmoil and the record foreclosure rate.

In Los Angeles, hundreds of people are living in their cars because shelters can accommodate only about a third of the city’s estimated 73,000 homeless population, the article reports.

While living in sunny California would be great and I’ll keep researching it, it’s important for anyone wanting to live there to realize the cost of living is expensive.

That’s an important factor to consider it you’re thinking about retiring where it’s warm.

For tips on how to research retiring to warmer climates, see my articles “The Dream of Retiring Where It’s Warm in the U.S.” and “The Dream of Retiring Where It’s Warm Abroad.”