Women

Alzheimer’s Hits Women Hardest

Angie and John

Women are carrying the bigger burden of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S., according to a new report — making up not only most of the cases, but paying more of the cost of caring for the growing population of people with the mind-destroying illness.

The new report from the Alzheimer’s Association paints Alzheimer’s as a disease that disproportionately affects women, both as patients and as caregivers. It points out that women in their 60s are about twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s over the rest of their lives as they are to develop breast cancer.

“So women are at the epicenter of Alzheimer’s disease today, not only by being most likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but also by being the caregiver most of the time,” said Maria Carrillo, vice president of the advocacy group.

Alzheimer’s affects more than 5 million Americans, a number projected to soar to 13 million over the next 35 years. A study published earlier this year suggested it’s a big killer, taking down more than 500,000 Americans every year.

Angie Carrillo and John Wallace didn’t expect that he’d develop early onset Alzheimer’s

Three out of five of those living with Alzheimer’s are women, the report finds. “The surprising statistic we pulled out of this report actually is that women over 65 have a one in six chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease, in comparison to one out of 11 in men,” Carrillo said. And that compares to a one in eight lifetime risk for developing breast cancer.

“John and I had a whole plan. And all of a sudden, that was not going to happen.”

Even if they escape the disease themselves, women often are burdened in another way, by having to care for afflicted loved ones. There are more than twice as many women as men taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s all day, every day, the report finds.

One of them is Angie Carrillo of San Jose, Calif. Carrillo — no relation to Maria Carrillo — was stunned when her then-61-year-old husband, John Wallace, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2008. Things went downhill quickly and Wallace, an accountant, lost his job.

“John and I had a whole plan. And all of a sudden, that was not going to happen,” Carrillo, now 61 herself, told NBC News.

“He had long-term disability, but in order to qualify for that, you had to be disabled for 90 days. So for 90 days, we didn’t have his income, and not that we were living large, but we were spending our paycheck.”

They had to dip into retirement savings.

“It was a scramble to keep my job, go to all of these doctor’s appointments to verify that John indeed was disabled,” Carrillo added.

It’s a pattern the Alzheimer’s Association sees across the country.

The report finds that 20 percent of women cut their working hours from full-time to part-time while caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, while just 3 percent of men did. Federal survey data show that 65 percent of caregivers for patients with dementia are women.

The group analyzed data from federal health surveys, the Census Bureau, National Alliance for Caregiving, AARP and its own poll of 3,000 people to show that 18 percent of women have taken a leave of absence to care for someone with Alzheimer’s, and 11 percent of men have. Eleven percent of women say they have quit their jobs, while 5 percent of men have. Ten percent of women say they’ve lost job benefits because of time taken to care for an Alzheimer’s patient.

“It was a scramble to keep my job.”

And at the same time, they’ve often lost income from a disabled spouse.

“We’re still dipping into our retirement funds,” Carrillo said. “Someone told me, ‘You need to go talk to a good CPA’ and I said, ‘I have a good CPA. Unfortunately, he has dementia’,” Carrillo said.

The disease also hits family life, including grandchildren. “We were the family hub,” Carrillo remembers. “All of the birthdays happened here, all of the holidays … we had six grandchildren sleeping in the den.”

Like millions of U.S. women, Angie Carrillo struggles to care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease: her husband, John Wallace.

Dementia changed that. “It went from a really happy place to a place that’s not so happy. Papa all of a sudden wasn’t able to drive a car and take them to the skate park … or to go play miniature golf with them … so our life became smaller and smaller,” she said.

This can leave women feeling alone, the report finds. “The higher care giving burden placed on women has many consequences, including higher emotional and physical stress, strained family relationships and lost employment opportunities,” it concludes.

Carrillo eventually had to put Wallace into a full-time care facility. He would wander and get lost and couldn’t be left alone for a moment.

“The memory care facility he’s in now is $5,000 a month,” Carrillo said Carrillo, who blogs about her situation.

“I don’t quite know where I’m going to get that money,” she added. “So I’m in the process right now of creating a rental space in my home.”

Medicaid will help, but only once Carrillo is broke. And that often happens, the report finds.

“Given the high average costs of these services (adult day services, $72 per day; assisted living, $43,756 per year; and nursing home care, $83,230 to $92,977 per year), individuals often deplete their income and assets and eventually qualify for Medicaid,” the report reads. “Medicaid is the only public program that covers the long nursing home stays that most people with dementia require in the late stages of their illnesses.”

The Alzheimer’s Association says the total national cost of caring for people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias is projected to reach $214 billion this year. The report calculates that unpaid caregiving by family and friends would add up to another $220 billion.

“In 2014, the cost to Medicare and Medicaid of caring for those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias will reach a combined $150 billion with Medicare spending nearly $1 in every $5 on people with Alzheimer’s or another dementia,” the association says.

Right now, there are no good treatments for Alzheimer’s and certainly nothing even close to a cure. The biggest advance lately is a blood test that appears to show who’s likely to develop symptoms — but researchers say all that really does is provide a way for people to prepare for the inevitable, and perhaps for their doctors to try treating them earlier to see if current less-than-useful medications might do better in someone who hasn’t begun to show memory loss yet.

“Despite being the nation’s biggest health threat, Alzheimer’s disease is still largely misunderstood. Everyone with a brain — male or female, family history or not — is at risk for Alzheimer’s,” said Angela Geiger, chief strategy officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Although millions of Americans are in the same situation as Carrillo, “It’s a lonely journey,” she said.

Source:  NBC News First published March 18th 2014, 9:01 pm

‘a lifetime of happiness is awaiting you…’

Lara and Erin with Grandmother

I’m going to be honest. There was a time in my life where I wasn’t so happy. I was satisfied, because I really did have everything I needed, but I wasn’t happy. And I’m not sure if there was even a life-shattering event that took place which made me become a truly happy person. But I do know this — I am the happiest now I have ever been.

For the past five years, I have seemed to build an empire of happiness around me. I have surrounded myself with happy people, which means selectively choosing my friends and acquaintances. I don’t allow negativity into my space — whether that is my mental space, my physical space or my emotional space. I have learned how to be so in tune with myself that when something is making me unhappy, I take time to reflect on it, meditate and explore the circumstances surrounding the emotion, instead of pushing it aside and burying it. And above all, I have learned to be present and find joy in the smallest aspects of life, from a cicada that made a racket outside my window this week to the elderly man I say hello to while walking past his Brooklyn stoop each morning. (He doesn’t ever respond, but I know he hears me, as he gives me the slightest head nod.)

When I sat down to write this article though, I became stuck in the writing journey because I had never thought about how I had built this empire of happiness. So, I laced up my running shoes and went for a run, because running is what gets me unstuck when I have a writing project that just doesn’t seem to be flowing.

I took off around the block and headed toward my neighborhood park. I decided in mid-stride that I would take some time to reflect on this topic underneath my favorite tree in Brooklyn. It is an oak tree which is about 80 years old, with a thick curved branch perfect for sitting on or hanging from. And when I arrived at the tree for my mid-run stretch, I said aloud, “How do you build an empire of happiness?”

Read more‘a lifetime of happiness is awaiting you…’

Women ANCHORING Women

Two young children

International Women’s Day, which has existed for more than 100 years, was the product of an era marked by rapid change and upheaval in the industrialized world. As the planet’s population grew and the demand for labor increased, and as new ideologies took shape, women were thrust into a brave new world and confronted with a host of challenges.

The first day dedicated to women was established in 1911, and it was observed for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, when more than 1 million people attended rallies around the world to assert women’s right to work, vote, be trained and hold public office. Two years later, the day was officially changed to March 8, the date on which it’s been celebrated globally ever since as International Women’s Day.

Today, International Women’s Day is recognized by the UN and is an official holiday in 27 countries. On this day each year, men are asked to honor their mothers, wives, girlfriends and colleagues — similar to Mother’s Day, when boys and men celebrate and give gifts to their mothers and grandmothers.

While women have made great strides, a gender equality gap still exists. In 2014, International Women’s Day will focus on the role men play in standing up for women’s rights. According to a World Health Organization report, men can play a critical part in reducing domestic violence and increasing communication about contraception, children’s health and social support for wives and partners.

“It’s an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women,” actor Matt Damon, founder of Water.org, a nonprofit group that provides access to safe water and sanitation in Africa, South Asia and Central America, said about the UN’s “He For She” campaign, which was unveiled on Friday. “They’re the ones who will get it done.”

“This is a moment when we review past achievements and look ahead to the challenges that remain, as well as to untapped potential and opportunities,” she said. “In moving forward, we must ensure that women’s empowerment and gender equality stand at the heart of all of our work to craft a better future.”

International Women’s Day will be celebrated on March 8, 2014, with an event held on March 7 at the UN headquarters in New York at noon. A live stream of the event can be viewed here.

For those celebrating International Women’s Day 2014, below are 25 empowering quotes to share:

Empowerment Quotes

“Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.” — Ghandi

“Women are leaders everywhere you look — from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.” — Nancy Pelosi

“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.” — Virginia Woolf

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” — Roseanne Barr

“I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.” — Louisa May Alcott

“The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.” — Charles Malik

Inspirational

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” — Margaret Thatcher

“In too many instances, the march to globalization has also meant the marginalization of women and girls. And that must change.” — Hillary Clinton

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” – Marilyn Monroe

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” — Maya Angelou, African American Poet

“Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.” — Susan B. Anthony, Women’s Activist

“Men and boys, we show our manhood through the way we treat our women. Our wives, our sisters, our mothers.” — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” — Simone de Beauvoir

“Women are the real architects of society.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe

“A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.” — Melinda Gates

“A charming woman doesn’t follow the crowd. She is herself.” — Loretta Young

Funny

“I’m supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I’ve flunked more often than not. I’m very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don’t understand them.” — Frank Sinatra

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.” — Joseph Conrad

“The reason women don’t play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.” — Phyllis Diller

“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” — Coco Chanel

“Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy, fat women.” — Nicole Hollander

“God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.” — Farrah Fawcett

“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.” — Anne Morrow Lindberg

Source:  IBT Times