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Kapok Aging and Caregiver Resources: What to Expect from Your Medicare Annual Wellness Visit
By Angelica Herrera Venson, DrPH, MPH
The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from Kapok Aging and Caregiver Resources.
As you get older, it’s important to take control of your health through routine and preventative care. One way to do this is through a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV). This is free to all individuals on Medicare, with or without an advantage care plan or ‘supplement.’ Some seniors get confused about how it differs from a physical and what’s covered. We’ll try to clear this up in this brief post.
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Kapok Aging and Caregiver Resources: Powerful Types of Self Care Journaling for Caregivers
By Angelica Herrera Venson, DrPH, MPH
The following excerpt is reprinted with permission from Kapok Aging and Caregiver Resources.
At its most basic, journaling involves recording your thoughts and feelings, often by making an entry each day. The habit is one that most of us have tried at least once before – and many have given up on. Yet, self care journaling is more powerful than you might realize. It offers a way to connect with yourself, to reflect, and to grow.
Journaling can also be critical to self care, especially for caregivers.
One reason is that journaling gives you the chance to reflect. It takes you out of the moment and lets you look back on the situation as a whole. Doing so matters, as caregivers can often get swept away with the tasks of the day. A journaling habit also helps you to start picking out the good things that happen, to hold onto them.
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One Thing or Another: Why November?
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
November seems like an orphan month, stuck between the festivities of Halloween and the extravagance of Christmas. It’s that month when we wave goodbye to moderate weather, and say hello to furnaces and fireplaces. We watch leaves fall helplessly, their spectacular colors melting to a dull compost brown. November has a way of confirming our suspicions that nothing lasts forever. We get the tires checked or replaced, knowing they’ll soon be slipping and sliding in winter weather. We twiddle our thumbs, waiting for sleigh bells and gift ideas. November is just there, like a stretch of time spent in a waiting room. Eventually the door will open and we’ll be invited to the party, but in the meantime we’ll be reading a magazine on dental hygiene and hoping for the best.
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One Thing or Another: Cooler Heads (Hello September)
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.
I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?
I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.
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One Thing or Another: Cooler Heads (Hello September)
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.
I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?
I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.
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Lee Lynch Retires Her Amazon Trail Column
For almost as long as I’ve had this website I’ve enjoyed sharing author Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail columns. I often said, if it’s a new month, it’s a new Amazon Trail. I looked forward to each and every one, offering Lee’s wisdom, experience, humor, and passion, as she shared her perspective on the world she’s lived in and the world we share. Lee is not shy, and her candor is among the most refreshing things about her. She’s also a legend in lesbian fiction, most deservedly so, with a Golden Crown Literary Society award named in her honor. My appreciation for her wit, her talent, and her personal generosity is boundless, and I’m most pleased to call her a friend. Some people lead by simply being who they are, and Lee has always been, and will always be, one of them.
You can read many of her collected columns in her book, An American Queer: The Amazon Trail
“This collection of Lee Lynch’s columns chronicles over a quarter century of queer life in the United States, from the last decades of the twentieth century into the twenty-first.
“From the beginning of my writing career, I just wanted to write about lesbian/gay life as I experienced it. Like so many, I came from a place of great isolation. At the same time, being gay filled me with great pride and joy. Writers Jane Rule, Isabelle Miller, Radclyffe Hall, Valerie Taylor, Ann Bannon, and Vin Packer gave me inspiration and even the lesbian companionship I needed as a baby dyke. More than anything, I want to give to gay people what those writers gave me. And I want to do it well enough that my words might someday be considered literature and, as such, might endure because, as open as some societies have become, there are always haters, and cycles of oppression. Our writers strengthen us, offer a sense of solidarity and validation that we are both more than our sexualities and are among the best that humanity offers.”
About Lee Lynch
Photo by Sue Hardesty Lee Lynch is the co-curator, with S. Renee Bass, of the recent collection, Our Happy Hours, LGBT Voices From the Gay Bars, available from Flashpoint Publications. Her novel, Rainbow Gap, is available from Bold Strokes Books and other outlets. Her book, An American Queer, a collection of “The Amazon Trail” columns, was presented with the 2015 Golden Crown Literary Society Award in Anthology/Collection Creative Non Fiction. This, and her award-winning fiction, including The Raid, The Swashbuckler, and Beggar of Love, can be found at http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/Author-Lee-Lynch.html.
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Savvy Senior: Does Medicare Cover Home Health Care?
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior,
How does Medicare cover in-home health care? My husband has a chronic health condition that makes it very difficult for him to leave the house, so I’m wondering if he could qualify for Medicare home health care.
Seeking Help
Dear Seeking,
Medicare covers a wide variety of part-time or intermittent in-home health care services to beneficiaries in need, if they meet Medicare’s criteria. Here’s how it works.
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One Thing or Another: Found At Sea
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Bodies of water hold a fascination for many people, as well as providing an indescribable comfort. I grew up in an Indiana town with two rivers, and I live just a mile from the magnificent Delaware flowing slowly between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For me there has always been something about the movement of these vast waterways that felt like home, as if I really am a fish out of water longing to jump back in where I belong and swim away.
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One Thing or Another: Found At Sea
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Bodies of water hold a fascination for many people, as well as providing an indescribable comfort. I grew up in an Indiana town with two rivers, and I live just a mile from the magnificent Delaware flowing slowly between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For me there has always been something about the movement of these vast waterways that felt like home, as if I really am a fish out of water longing to jump back in where I belong and swim away.
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One Thing or Another: Comparatively Speaking
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.
What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.
I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.
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One Thing or Another: Comparatively Speaking
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.
What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.
I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.
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One Thing or Another: Let’s Face It (Unmasked At Last)
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.
For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.
Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.
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One Thing or Another: Let’s Face It (Unmasked At Last)
By Mark McNease
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.
I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.
For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.
Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.