Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified medical writer specializing in vascular medicine and geriatric cardiovascular care Your parent's legs hurt when they walk, their feet are always cold, and a small scrape on their heel has not healed in three weeks. These seemingly unrelated symptoms point to peripheral artery disease,
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified medical writer specializing in cardiac electrophysiology and geriatric cardiology Your parent's cardiologist has recommended a pacemaker or defibrillator, and the word "device" carries a particular weight. Something inside the chest, sending electrical impulses, requiring surgery. This article explains what these devices do,
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified physician. For educational purposes only. Your parent manages their diabetes. They check blood sugar, take insulin or their pills, try to eat reasonably. They've been diabetic long enough that it doesn't feel like an emergency anymore. Then they get diagnosed with heart
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified physician. For educational purposes only. Your parent probably doesn't feel their high blood pressure. That's the whole problem. It doesn't hurt, doesn't cause dizziness or fatigue, doesn't send any obvious warning that something is wrong. You
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified physician. For educational purposes only. The emergency room is chaos: beeping machines, urgent voices, medical personnel moving with purpose while you stand there watching someone else's crisis unfold around your parent. Someone explains they've had a heart attack, and the word carries
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified medical writer specializing in geriatric cardiology and palliative care Your parent has had two heart attacks. Stents, medication changes, more hospital stays than you can count. Now the cardiologist is talking about advanced heart failure, and the conversation has shifted from "how do we fix
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by Dr. Marcus Webb, M.D. Atrial fibrillation affects more than 12 million Americans, with prevalence increasing sharply after age 65, according to the CDC. It is the most common heart rhythm disorder and the leading cardiac cause of stroke. The condition is manageable with medication, but it requires
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by the How To Help Your Elders medical review team Cognitive tests are screening tools that measure your parent's performance on specific tasks on a specific day. They check memory, attention, language, spatial reasoning, and executive function, but they are not diagnostic on their own. A score
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by a board-certified physician. For educational purposes only. The day your parent's doctor says "congestive heart failure," something catches in your chest. Heart failure sounds final, like the heart is shutting down, like time is running out. It's not. People live with congestive
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by the How To Help Your Elders medical review team Watching your parent's brain disease progress triggers a grief that does not follow a neat timeline. You will move through shock, obsessive research, anticipatory mourning, and a hard-won acceptance that circles back on itself with every new
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by the How To Help Your Elders medical review team Having a parent with dementia increases your statistical risk, but it does not determine your future. The NIH reports that late-onset Alzheimer's, which accounts for more than 95 percent of cases, is influenced by hundreds of genes
Understanding What They're Facing
Reviewed by Dr. Marcus Webb, M.D. Falls are the leading cause of traumatic brain injury in adults over 65, according to the CDC. The symptoms often develop slowly over days, not minutes, which means the connection between a fall and a brain injury gets missed more often than it