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Pat Howard, living with multiple sclerosis for decades, gets around in a powered wheelchair since she can no longer put any weight on her legs. Last summer, her daughter Cindy was driving her 74-year-old mom back from an adult day care facility 30 minutes from her Santa Clarita, California, home when the car overheated and broke down. “We were stuck,” Cindy recalled in a recent phone call. “I was freaked out about driving the overheated car and worried about our safety. Our only vehicle was now sitting by the side of the road.” They called for...
It's the holiday season and that means visitors, decorations and lots of food. All of which is fun for humans but might be stressful or even dangerous to your pets. Here are some tips to make this a safe and fun holiday for your four-legged family members. Food, the center of all holiday gatherings Many human foods can cause intestinal distress or may even be poisonous to our animal friends. This list includes: • chocolate – remember that dark chocolate is more dangerous than milk chocolate. • a...
Every day across the country more than 4,800 home burglaries occur, mostly in daylight hours, and in one out of three of those break-ins, a family member is home. The U.S. Justice Department says in about 7 percent of cases, violent crime is involved, and in less than 14 percent of burglaries, arrests are made (according 2014 statistics). And even when an arrest is made, chances are, the victims don’t get their stolen property back. What can you do? Two separate groups of researchers asked inmates serving time for home burglaries how they c...
The Alaska Commission on Aging (ACoA) will hold several meetings in December, including its quarterly meeting December 7, 2016, via videoconference and teleconference from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The videoconference sites for the quarterly meeting are: • Anchorage Senior & Disabilities Services, 550 West 8th Ave., Room 201 (Contact: Allison Morrow, 269-3666) • Juneau Senior and Disabilities Services, 240 Main Street, 6th Floor Conference Room (Contact: Lesley Thompson, 465-4793) • Palmer Mat-Su Senior Services, 1132 South Chugach Street (Cont...
Family caregivers spend an average of nearly 20 percent of their income providing care for a family member or other loved one, according to a new AARP Research Report, “Family Caregiving and Out-of-Pocket Costs: 2016 Report.” The report shows that family caregivers spend an average of $6,954 in out-of-pocket costs related to caregiving, with Hispanic/Latino and low-income family caregivers spending an average of 44 percent of their total annual income. “This study spotlights the financial toll on family caregivers – particularly those with mo...
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles Senior Voice will publish in coming months on various topics from the Diverse Elders Coalition. Each article will cover a different segment of the elder population. Despite their resilient nature, Hispanic older adults continue to face a plethora of challenges, which include retirement insecurity, lack of access to health care, housing and programs, as well as hunger and chronic disease. The National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) — the leading national organization working to imp...
I hope you’ve all had a great Thanksgiving and will have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year. I have been under the weather, but I have met a wonderful group of friends, who are “dog people”. I had been wondering what I could do for my adorable, sweet Portia. She is an Italian Greyhound, all of 15 pounds and the sweetest, smartest dog (without having had any training) I have ever been around. She loves people, cats and dogs and not necessarily in that order. My newly found frien...
To all, death must come. The time to get your affairs in order is now and not impose another stressful duty on your loved ones left behind. Some of the items on your list should include the following: a living will, a last will and testament, your wishes for burial and access to your banking account by your executor to pay for the expenses. This article will focus on burial in an Alaska’s two national cemeteries, Fort Richardson and Sitka. As in any quest for your veteran’s benefits, locate and...
Last year prices for Medicare held fairly steady, and of course, there was zero increase in your Social Security check. This year, the cost-of-living raise is tiny, at .03 percent (about $3 if your monthly benefit is $1,000). In fact, Part B premiums rose more than the COLA. Here’s a summary of the figures that have been released so far. Part A premiums (hospital, nursing, hospice, home health) According to Medicare.gov, most people get Part A coverage free of cost. However if you buy it, the monthly cost in 2017 will be $413 per month (up from...
Everyone is aware of the assault that your stomach takes from antibiotics. You might think cramps and diarrhea are bad enough, but at least those are transient problems. Brand new animal research suggests these drugs trigger Type 1 diabetes, especially when toddlers take them. Keep in mind that back in 2015, a Denmark study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism correlated the use of antibiotics to type 2 diabetes in adults. From all of this, and other research, I think it’s safe to conclude that antibiotic usage increa...
Using the nose to treat damaged knees Researchers are now reporting they have successfully harvested cartilage cells from patients’ own noses to produce cartilage transplants for treating bum knees in 10 adults. All the patients had cartilage that was damaged by injury. Two years after reconstruction, most recipients reported improvements in pain, knee function and quality of life. They also developed repair tissue in their knees that was similar in composition to native cartilage. R...
The Kenai Peninsula Family Caregiver Support Program will hold the following peer support meetings in December. This month’s focus is “How to Measure Vital Signs.”. Dec. 1, Caregiver support meeting at Sterling Senior Center, 1 p.m. Dec. 8, Caregiver support meeting at Soldotna Senior Center, 1 p.m. Dec. 15, Caregiver support meeting at Kenai Senior Center, 1 p.m. Dec. 15, Caregiver support meeting at Anchor Point Senior Center, hosted by Paula Koch, 3 p.m. Dec. 29, Caregiver support meeting at Soldotna Senior Center, 1 p.m. Support meeti...
They were going to work on Monday morning, so they'd had their nails done, and special attention had been paid to their grooming on Sunday evening. Then early on a grey, grim November morning they waited inside the front doors of Anchor Lutheran School, taking up their post as welcoming greeters. Max and Nyxie, two English Black Labs, were jubilant, on the job. They are two of Dennis Morner's therapy dogs, and he has brought them to the school for over five years. He had been the pastor of...
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) has released its first Tlingit podcast for students who want to learn the language through their mobile devices. The podcast is part of SHI’s “Learning Tlingit” app, which was released in August. It includes 26 episodes that cover a wide range of topics, including verbs, tools, colors, places, carved objects, anatomy of a building and cooking phrases. The episodes are offered in audio (.mp3) or video (.mp4) formats. “Our ‘Learning Tlingit’ app currently offers audio sections on vocabulary, phrases and the alp...
My two-year-old grandson is crazy about dinosaurs. So much so that we decorated his birthday cake with small brontosaurus, nanosaurus and T-rex replicas. He received an abundance of dinosaur-themed gifts, too, including dino sippy cups, dino books, dino imprinted T-shirts and a multitude of dinosaur toys. I went to bed that evening and dreamt about dinosaurs all night! When I woke up, I still was thinking about T-Rex and his buddies. Then something rang a bell in my memory bank about dinosaurs o...
Were you one of those kids who dashed home from school in the late 60s to catch the latest developments in the fantasy/horror TV serial "Dark Shadows"? When the show first aired on daytime television on June 27, 1966, Kathryn Leigh Scott was among the original cast of the landmark soap opera. Five years and 1,225 episodes later, Scott had left the series, but Lara Parker was on hand for the final episode. The actresses have been attending conventions and reunions all year to commemorate the show...
This month’s column is about the novelist Charles Dickens, and the artist formerly known as Prince. Yes, there is a connection. Bear with me. Dickens, as you may know, wrote a novel called “Bleak House.” It followed the travails of a group of people connected to a chancery suit (what we would call a “probate case” in America) which has dragged on and on for generations, sometimes ruining the heirs who keep expecting it to be resolved at any time. Because of Bleak House, Dickens is credited...
Q. I have used an iPod for years, but now that I carry a smartphone, I’d like to use it for music. What is the best way to do that? A. Any smartphone can replace an iPod. To get started, try installing the music you already own onto your phone using the same connection formerly used for the iPod. Moving from an iPod to an iPhone is very simple, since everything is managed via iTunes. Moving from an iPod to Android may require a new app, but generally it can be done. Where smartphones surpass the iPod is their ability to use streaming music s...
As the centennial year for the National Park Service comes to a close, I want to share some of my favorite parks in Alaska because this state has the most parks, the largest park and the most varied geologically. With its 54 million acres in the state's eight national parklands, add on top of that national historic areas. Alaska has 15 prehistoric landmarks that are archaeological sites dating back to pre-European (also called pre-contact) time and 34 historic landmarks detailing the state's pas...
