Polio Place

A service of Post-Polio Health International

quality of life

When the “Cared For” Becomes the “Caregiver”

Audrey King
presented at FICCDAT Conference, Toronto, Canada, June 2011

I found my mother's diary recently – the one she kept during the 1950s when we were an Army family living in England. She’ll be 100 in 8 weeks. She lives with me, deaf, unable to walk & rapidly losing weight. She has dementia which roller coasters between inconsolable agitation and sleeping for days. During her lucid moments, she’s sweet – fascinatingly childlike – and still capable of the reciprocal love for everybody she has always had.

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Lonely, but Dating?

Post-Polio Health, Volume 28, Number 3, Summer 2012.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology. She is a polio survivor and single mother of two grown children.

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My Physician Retired

Post-Polio Health, Volume 27, Number 2, Spring 2011
Ask Dr. Maynard
Frederick M. Maynard, MD

Question: My physician retired, and my new primary care doctor is “reevaluating” everything. I am nervous because he is questioning my medications, and I am not sure he understands my history. Can you help me understand his approach and offer assuring advice as he and I get to know each other? I am especially concerned about my new doctor’s making me reduce the pain medications I need.

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Worried about Father (and Mother)

Post-Polio Health, Volume 27, Number 1, Winter 2011.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology. She is a polio survivor and single mother of two grown children.

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Rebuff My Attempt to Help

Post-Polio Health, Volume 26, Number 1, Winter 2010.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology. She is a polio survivor and single mother of two grown children.

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Tired Husband: Guilt and Talking about It

Post-Polio Health, Volume 25, Number 4, Fall 2009.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin is a Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, as well as Executive Director of the Institute on Disability and Health Psychology. She is a polio survivor and single mother of two grown children.

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"They just want me to be like I was."

Post-Polio Health, Volume 25, Number 4, Fall 2009.

Dr. Stephanie T. Machell is a psychologist in independent practice in the Greater Boston area and consultant to the International Rehabilitation Center for Polio, Spaulding-Framingham Outpatient Center, Framingham, Massachusetts. Her father is a polio survivor.

Question: I am getting weaker and my friends and family encourage me the find "the answer" and get irritated with me when I say there isn't one answer. I think they just want me to be like I was.

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A Gentle Death, Part III

Part III of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 4) in 2013. 

Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska

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A Gentle Death, Part II

Part II of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 3) in 2013.

Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska

Surely we don’t need studies to prove that planning ahead is a good idea, yet plenty of them exist, even when it comes to end-of-life issues. The goal, of course, is to assure that a patient’s medical care will ensure the greatest measure of comfort and serenity possible.

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A Gentle Death, Part I

Part I of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 2) in 2013.

Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska

My mother has been on my mind. She’s been gone now for ten years. Death finally came to her after several merciless years of progressive suffering and pain in the nursing home she had selected to take care of her. We had all discussed end-of-life issues with Mother; we knew this was exactly the quality of life she hoped to avoid.

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