Aging

Seamos claros. La razón principal para vacunarse contra la culebrilla (shingles, la infección que genera el virus herpes zóster) es que dos dosis brindan una protección del  90% contra una enfermedad dolorosa, que produce ampollas y puede causar dolor nervioso persistente y otras complicaciones graves a largo plazo. Y que afectará a un tercio de […]

SANDY, Utah — Justo en las afueras de Salt Lake City se encuentra un viejo hotel de ladrillo de dos pisos. Hoy tiene una nueva función: refugio para personas mayores sin hogar. El refugio para Personas Médicamente Vulnerables —conocido como MVP, por sus siglas en inglés— está destinado a personas de 62 años en adelante, […]

Estás listo para salir del hospital, pero todavía no te sientes en condiciones de cuidarte solo en casa. O bien ya terminaste un par de semanas de rehabilitación. ¿Podrás manejar una rutina complicada de medicamentos, además de hacer las compras y cocinar? Tal vez te caíste en la ducha y ahora tu familia quiere que […]

You’re ready to leave the hospital, but you don’t feel able to care for yourself at home yet. Or, you’ve completed a couple of weeks in rehab. Can you handle your complicated medication regimen, along with shopping and cooking? Perhaps you fell in the shower, and now your family wants you to arrange help with […]

Year after year, Mary Bucklew strategized with a nurse practitioner about losing weight. “We tried exercise,” like walking 35 minutes a day, she recalled. “And 39,000 different diets.” But 5 pounds would come off and then invariably reappear, said Bucklew, 75, a public transit retiree in Ocean View, Delaware. Nothing seemed to make much difference […]

A bankruptcy judge blocked an attempt by a nursing home chain’s primary investor to shield himself from settlement payments and liability in lawsuits alleging hundreds of patient injuries and deaths, encouraging those pursuing millions in damages. Genesis HealthCare, once the nation’s largest nursing home chain, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in July with a […]

In her house in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Barbara Meade said, “there are walkers and wheelchairs and oxygen and cannulas all over the place.” Barbara, 82, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, so a portable oxygen tank accompanies her everywhere. Spinal stenosis limits her mobility, necessitating the walkers and wheelchairs and considerable help from her husband, Dennis, who […]

Nancy Hunt arrived at an emergency room from a Genesis HealthCare nursing home in Pennsylvania in such dreadful shape, including maggots infesting her gangrened foot, that the hospital called an elder abuse hotline and then the police, her son alleged in a lawsuit. Hunt died five days later. Her death certificate said the foot injury […]

Liz Dunnebacke no se está muriendo, pero durante un reciente taller sobre cuidados al final de la vida en Nueva Orleans, fingió que sí. Acostada e inmóvil sobre una mesa plegable que hacía las veces de cama, Dunnebacke se quejaba de dolor en las piernas. La enfermera Ana Kanellos, enrollando dos pequeñas toallas blancas, mostró […]