I didn’t want a caregiver. My daughter and my sisters were determined to get me one. I had broken my wrist in a fall and couldn’t do anything with a sling on my arm. Everyone who stopped by my apartment to see how I was doing had to open a jar or a bottle of ...
By Judy Goddess and Mary Hunt Debbie Gulli always enjoyed older people – her grandma, her in-laws. So, when slow business forced her to close her gift shop after 12 years, she began taking classes to qualify for a nursing assistant license. She already had a degree in health sciences with a minor in gerontology ...
How many teachers do we know whose deepest concern is over-enrollment? That was a worry of Dennis Treanor, a practiced art educator. Through word of mouth and social media, his ceramics classes filled to the brink every term. He worried about limited resources and his ability to give sufficient time and energy to each student. ...
Debbie Aguilar’s husband, Roberto, had a major stroke that paralyzed his right side and rendered his speech almost unintelligible. It happened during the pandemic, so she was allowed in the skilled nursing home only one day for training before he was sent home. “Life turned upside down. My husband used to do everything,” she said. ...
Despite bad knees and respiratory problems that take her “forever to do things,” Jay Duchene admits, she is “not good at asking for help.” The retired nurse, now 86, has asked neighbors for an occasional ride, but trips to the doctors wait until one of her three daughters – two on the East Coast and ...
Searching for a way to stay in touch with friends after retirement, Ralph Pujolar and his college roommate started a walking group. They called it the Aloha Walkers, he said, “because my wife was born and raised in Honolulu, and I was always saying ‘Aloha’ when greeting someone.” The idea caught on. People heard about ...
