Today the Obama Administration announced the release of the National Alzheimer’s Plan. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius reaffirmed our nation’s commitment to conquering Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, with a specific goal of finding effective ways to prevent and treat the disease by 2025.
For more information about the plan and to watch a short video from Maine’s own Dr Coleman, Click Here!
Bay Square at Yarmouth and Advantage Home Care team up to provide caregiver training for those caring for someone with Dementia. Looks like a great program. Make sure you register to attend.
Studies have shown that art therapy might be particularly beneficial for people with Alzheimer’s disease because though they gradually lose the ability to express themselves with words, other parts of their brain that deal with colors and composition can still be used and developed. Even people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease can continue to create art.
Cape Memory Care in Cape Elizabeth recently started art classes in the Art is 4 Every1® method, developed by Elaine Griffith of Massachusetts during the nearly 25 years she taught at nursing homes, senior centers, kids camps and in her studio. It is a method that breaks the painting process into small steps, as tiny and as simplified as is needed according to the ability and experience of the student.
Pat Moshimer, Maine’s only certified Art is 4 Every1 instructor, brings her program into Cape Memory Care in Cape Elizabeth every week. As Cape Memory Care residents, right, participate in the weekly Art is 4 Every1® class, they practice small motor control, visualization and perspective just as artists without memory impairment do. Pat has been a scribe and illustrator for 30 years in the Kennebunk/Kennebunkport area.
Pat’s students remain remarkably creative and the painting program gives them an outlet for communication in a different and often very vibrant way. Is there an art show in the works? Will there be plein air classes as the weather improves? To find out more about this program, please call Olga Gross-Balzano or Bri Johnston at Cape Memory Care, 207-553-9616 or e-mail olgagross@woodlandsalf.com.
The Center for Disease Control has put together some interesting little awareness quizzs that you can take to see if you’re at risk for certain diseases or health complications. Since diabetes is one of the health issues that is occurring more frequently in the US, and at a younger age, it might be a good idea to take this simple little quiz, and then act on what you learn!
This quiz reinforces that I need to shed some weight and get more exercise. Neither of those is especially easy, but both of them are in my control! I couldn’t help that my mom and brother were both diabetic, and I can’t help that I’m a lady of a certain age, but I can control my exercise, starting with my fork hand.
Since we’re going in to summer (when we should be able to exercise more freely outside, and also eat more fresh fruits and vegetables) I’m going to give it a try. When I was honest on the quiz, I scored a 17. Bad news! How about you?
Holbrook at Piper Shores Receives 5-Star Ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 Best Nursing Homes
Holbrook Health Centerat Piper Shores has received a high ranking of five stars overall in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 Best Nursing Homes.
The rankings highlight top-rated homes in all 50 states and offers important guidance to families and healthcare providers caring for people in need of nursing homes.
“More than 3 million Americans will spend part of 2012 in a nursing home, and trying to decide under pressure which one is best isn’t easy,” says Avery Comarow, Health Rankings Editor. “Top-rated nursing homes are worth considering and deserve special recognition.”
U.S. News’s Best Nursing Homes profiles more than 15,000 facilities and ranks them by state, using data and quality ratings from the federal government. The rankings are updated quarterly.
The rankings rely on information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that sets and enforces quality standards for all homes enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid. Nursing homes receive an overall rating of one to five stars from the government based on a composite score from three distinct operational areas: health inspections, nurse staffing, and quality of care.
“At Holbrook, we believe in a PersonFirst® approach to resident care,” said Peggy Farrington, Piper Shores Administrator. “Each of our residents enjoy a private room, and 24/7 access to professional, respectful and compassionate staff that takes the time to get to know each resident individually. We are pleased that this approach is consistently reflected in our high rankings with US News & World Report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the State of Maine.”
Nursing home facilities that ranked highest in Best Nursing Homes 2012 earned overall five-star ratings. Of the 15,500 homes rated and profiled on the U.S. News website, only about one nursing home in eight met this 5-star standard.
The complete list of U.S. News & World Report’s 2011 Best Nursing Homes is available online at www.usnews.com/nursinghomes.
About Holbrook Health Center
Located on the beautiful Scarborough, Maine coast, Holbrook Health Center is the skilled nursing care component of Piper Shores. Holbrook and Piper Shores are owned by Maine Life Care Retirement Community, Inc., a Maine nonprofit organization formed by a group of prominent Maine citizens with a shared vision. Together, these individuals created Maine’s first and only lifecare retirement community that promotes residents’ long-term wellbeing and health within a continuum of lifecare services. Life Care Services, LLC, the nation’s leading development and manager of senior living communities, provides management services for Piper Shores and for Holbrook.
New Hope for People with Urinary and Bowel Incontinence
By Roxanne Jones, Freelance writer specializing in health and medicine
If you think that incontinence is a normal part of aging and something you just have to live with, think again. Even if conservative treatment measures like medication and behavior modification haven’t worked, there’s an innovative option called sacral nerve stimulation (SNS) therapy that could be just what the doctor ordered.
SNS therapy has been available since 1999 when the FDA approved it for treating the symptoms of overactive bladder including urinary urgency (when you just can’t hold it), urinary frequency (the need to urinate at least 8 times a day), and urge incontinence (leakage when you get the urge to go). It’s also used to treat a condition called non-obstructive urinary retention, in which you can’t completely empty your bladder. And just last year, the FDA approved it for treating bowel (fecal) incontinence.
SNS involves implanting a neurotransmitter device under the skin in the upper buttock area. The device transmits mild electrical impulses through a lead wire close to the sacral nerve, a nerve in the lower back that influences the bladder, bladder and anal sphincters, pelvic floor muscles and colon. These impulses help provide better bladder and/or bowel control.
A real plus of this treatment is that it’s done in two steps. The first is a test to see if the therapy will work for you. If it’s successful, the device is then implanted and the electrode is tunneled under the skin and attached to the battery. Both procedures are minimally invasive, same-day surgery done under light sedation and local anesthesia, and the treatment is covered by Medicare.
While not a complete cure, SNS therapy has been shown to greatly reduce or eliminate bladder and bowel control problems in the majority of patients – and greatly improve their quality of life.
Bottom line: don’t assume that incontinence is an inevitable part of getting older, and don’t be embarrassed about discussing it with your doctor. Effective treatment options do exist. And you deserve the freedom and confidence to lead as active a life as possible.
NOTE: SNS therapy is provided by specialists: a urogynecologist (for women with urinary incontinence), urologist (for men with urinary incontinence), or colon and rectal surgeon (for people with bowel incontinence).
Congratulations to Georgianna Preacher, a resident of Thornton Oaks in Brunswick who is featured as a solo exhibitor at the Chappell Center for Book Arts at USM. The exhibit is open from February 1 to April 30. Mark your calendar for her artist’s reception Saturday, April 7.
90 years ago today, Elbridge Hutchinson McLean and Doris Horton Dennison were married in Portland, Maine. He, despite his tremor from being gassed in France, where he’d been a motorcycle dispatch rider and horse-drawn ambulence driver. She, despite watching her first fiance die of tuberculosis after they both graduated from art school. Both were much older than the average newlyweds, but that happened in war time.
February 14, 1922 was very probably a colder Valentine’s Day than the one we’re having. The world was recovering from World War I; my grandparents lived in the time of Downton Abbey and courted through written notes asking for chaperoned dates. The fact that she was 29 and he was 31 probably still did not allow them much alone time.
They married and the artist became a mother in a small mill town in the western Maine mountains. The family celebrated their 50th anniversary on Valentine’s Day in 1972. It was my senior year in high school and I was a newly-minted romantic, being firmly in love with one of my small town’s “bad boys” that my McLean grandparents thought very handsome and polite, but a little wild. I was sure I would marry him and we, too, would have 50 years of overall happiness, while suffering through tragedies together as my grandparents had.
I never heard my grandfather speak a single disrespectful word of or to my grandmother. It had been his idea to marry on Valentine’s Day and I believe he loved and respected her all his life. My grandmother made crisp sugar cookies and soft boiled eggs and oatmeal for his breakfast every morning for 50 years; she was of a generation that showed her love through care and cooking. She never tutted over him, but always firmly told us what would please Grandfather,which is what we were expected to do. She liked petunias; he grew petunias. He liked a simple yellow cake with fudge frosting; it was in the pantry weekly.
She wore a dress and stockings (not panty hose) almost every time I saw her. He wore string ties. She washed, he wiped. He was the one who scrubbed the kitchen floor. She was the one who made sure the cream on the top of the milk bottle was saved for his coffee. Their mutual affection and care for each other is still an example for me of what a long marriage means. Mammie and Grandfather, I remember: Love is a verb. It’s an action word. Thank you.
I never heard my grandfather speak a single disrespectful word of or to my grandmother. It had been his idea to marry on Valentine’s Day and I believe he loved and respected her all his life. My grandmother made crisp sugar cookies and soft boiled eggs and oatmeal for his breakfast every morning for 50 years; she was of a generation that showed her love through care and cooking. She never tutted over him, but always firmly told us what would please Grandfather,which is what we were expected to do. She liked petunias; he grew petunias. He liked a simple yellow cake with fudge frosting; it was in the pantry weekly.