At our Symposium in June, two of the breakout sessions focused on exercise. Ceilia Maccani, one of our presenters, put together some general exercises you can do at home to address some of the problems found in Parkinson’s.
If you have more specific problems, please consult your physical therapist or physician.
Have you been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within the last 5 years, and are your motor symptoms mild? Dr. Timothy McCulloch’s research lab at the University of Wisconsin Hospital is recruiting subjects for a study evaluating changes to chewing, swallowing, voice, fine motor, and walking function in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, as well as healthy controls.
Participation in this study lasts about 2 hours and participants are paid $60. Contact study coordinator Dr. Suzan Abdelhalim at 608-265- 2470 or [email protected] for more information.
If you are caring for a loved one, there are certain legal strategies and tools that you need to utilize to ensure that your loved one gets the best quality of care possible and has the highest quality of life. The tools and strategies come in two forms, the basics that everybody needs and then more advanced planning strategies.
There are certain basics that every caregiver needs to have in place for their loved one. Those basics include things like financial powers of attorney, medical powers of attorney, and personal care plans it is important to work with a certified elder law attorney to ensure that you have these documents in place, because these are the key tools that will allow you to provide and care for your loved one.
The first of the basic tools is a financial power of attorney. The financial power of attorney is a document that allows you to make financial decisions for your loved ones. For example, the financial power of attorney would allow you to pay the bills, work with the bank, move money around to protect against long-term care costs. The financial power of attorney is probably the most important document when it comes to caring for a loved one. It is not a document to be treated lightly or to skip over.
Not all financial powers of attorney are created equal. Many financial powers of attorney put limitations on what you can and cannot do as a POA. In fact, many of the financial powers of attorney actually put handcuffs on the agent, in fact not allowing them to do the things they may need to do when caring for a loved one. For example, many financial powers of attorney do not allow you to create an asset protection trust for a loved one. That is why it is important to work with a certified elder law attorney (CELA) when crafting a financial power of attorney.
The next key tool when caring for a loved one is a medical power of attorney. These may go by different names including patient advocate designation, advanced directive, or living will. What this document does is gives the ability to the person you’ve named to be able to make medical decisions for you, including the ability to remove you from life support. The defaulted in many states is that if you are in a vegetative state you are to remain that way unless there is some clear, written, evidence to the contrary. That is why having a medical power of attorney that includes the ability to be removed from life support is important. Typically, this is the document that doctors and hospitals will ask for.
Now one of the basic documents the many people do not have is a personal care plan. A personal care plan is a document that gives instructions to the financial and medical power of attorney on how best to care for you. The provides guidelines on what type of care do you want to receive, for example do on receive care at home or would you prefer to be in an assisted living. Another example would be what type of food do enjoy or what type of television programming would you want to watch. Now this document is not set things in stone, but it does provide a good guideline for your caregivers, whether those caregivers or family or professional caregivers.
Now that the basic documents are in place, now we need to talk about some advanced planning tools such as personal care contracts and asset protection trusts. But, before those are discussed, it is important to understand some governmental programs that are available to help pay for long-term care costs. There are two very important governmental programs. The first is Medicaid, which in many states can help pay for nursing home costs. However, Medicaid has a $2000 asset limit for single individual as well as a five-year look back period. The second governmental program is the VA benefit which can help pay for home care as well as assisted living. The VA benefit also has an asset test where, typically, if you have more than $30-$60,000 of countable assets you are not going to qualify. So, with these two governmental programs the next tools that will be discussed help us qualify for those governmental programs. They are not always necessary, but they can be helpful in qualification.
An asset protection trust is a great way to protect assets from the devastating cost of long-term care so the governmental benefits such as the VA benefit or Medicaid can help pay the cost of care and then the assets in the trust can be used to pay for additional services. Asset protection trusts will differ depending on the governmental program that they are set up to qualify for. For example, an asset protection trust set up to qualify for the VA benefit will have different rules and regulations around it then and asset protection trust set up specifically to qualify for Medicaid. That said typically a VA asset protection trust will also start the five-year look back. For Medicaid. So, a VA trust also will help you get qualified for Medicaid.
in addition to having an asset protection trust, it also may be important to have a personal care contract if you are providing care for a loved one because by you providing care to your loved one may be entitled to the VA benefit if they were veteran or surviving spouse. One of the qualifications for the VA benefit is long-term care costs. By setting up a personal care contract and having the veteran or surviving spouse pay a family member under the personal care contract, that could constitute long-term care costs for purposes of the VA benefit. In other words, if daughter was providing care for mom was a surviving spouse, mom could pay daughter under a personal care contract and now qualified for the VA benefit, which could pay mom an additional $1153 per month. Another important piece of the personal care contract is it if it’s set up properly the money that mom moves to daughter would not be a divestment under Medicaid’s five-year look back period.
Caring for a loved one can be confusing and frightening. It is important to use the right legal tools to make the process as easy as possible. Those legal tools include things like personal care plans, powers of attorney, asset protection trusts, and personal care contracts. It is important to work with a certified elder law attorney (CELA) to set up these documents and to make sure that you receive as much assistance from the governmental programs such as Medicaid and the VA benefit as possible.
Article from Caregiver.com
People with the movement disorder Parkinson’s disease have a much higher risk of the skin cancer melanoma, and vice versa, a Mayo Clinic study finds. While further research is needed into the connection, physicians treating one disease should be vigilant for signs of the other and counsel those patients about risk, the authors say. The findings are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Overall, patients with Parkinson’s were roughly four times likelier to have had a history of melanoma than those without Parkinson’s, and people with melanoma had a fourfold higher risk of developing Parkinson’s, the research found.
Medical experts have speculated about the relationship between Parkinson’s and melanoma for decades, with varying conclusions, the Mayo researchers note. Several studies have suggested levodopa, a drug for Parkinson’s, may be implicated in malignant melanoma, but others have found an association between the two diseases regardless of levodopa treatment, they add.
“Future research should focus on identifying common genes, immune responses and environmental exposures that may link these two diseases,” says first author Lauren Dalvin, M.D., a Mayo Foundation Scholar in Ocular Oncology. “If we can pinpoint the cause of the association between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma, we will be better able to counsel patients and families about their risk of developing one disease in the setting of the other.”
The Mayo study used the Rochester Epidemiology Project medical records database to identify all neurologist-confirmed Parkinson’s cases from January 1976 through December 2013 among Olmsted County, Minn., residents. The study examined the prevalence of melanoma in those 974 patients compared with 2,922 residents without Parkinson’s. They also identified 1,544 cases of melanoma over that period and determined the 35-year risk of Parkinson’s in those patients compared with the risk in the same number of people without melanoma.
The results support an association between Parkinson’s disease and melanoma, but argue against levodopa as the cause, the researchers conclude. It is likelier that common environmental, genetic or immune system abnormalities underlie both conditions in patients who have both, but more research is needed to confirm that and refine screening recommendations, they say.
In the meantime, patients with one of the two diseases should be monitored for the other to help achieve early diagnosis and treatment, and they should be educated about the risk of developing the other illness, the researchers say.
The study’s senior author is Jose Pulido, M.D., an ophthalmologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who treats eye melanoma.
Article from Science Daily.
Managing a chronic illness can be difficult. There are many different medications to take (often at different times), appointments to remember, symptoms to keep track of, and lots of information to absorb. Thankfully, living in a digital age means that there are numerous mobile apps that can help you manage your chronic illness.
We’ve put together a list of some of the best mobile apps for managing your chronic illness:
Medisafe is an app that helps patients manage medications. It helps with dosage and reminds you when you need to take your meds, increasing adherence rates. The information can also be shared with your healthcare team and pharmacy.
Pain Diary works for anyone with a chronic illness. It allows patients to chart and score pain as well as record and track other symptoms of the disease such as fatigue and mood swings. This app also has a feature where patients can connect with others living with the same chronic illness and swap best practices.
ZocDoc is a handy app if you’ve recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness, since one of the first things you’ll need to do is find a doctor to treat you. ZocDoc allows you to search for local specialist doctors who are approved by your insurance company. The app will even tell you when the doctor is available to see you.
My Medical Info is an app that stores all your relevant health history and insurance details. This makes filling out those endless forms a little less challenging, since you won’t have to rely on your memory for all the details. The app will also allow you to program in doctors’ appointments and all the medications you’re taking.
Fooducate helps you keep track of your diet and make healthy choices. Eating well is an integral part of managing any chronic illness and this app will help you to eat the right foods and get you to a healthy body weight. You can program in how many calories you want to consume a day and then add in the food choices you make, the app will work out the nutritional values of everything you eat and tell you how many calories you’ve consumed. It also works in conjunction with many fitness apps to add in details of any physical activities and calories burned.
Sleep Cycle helps you get the best out of your sleep. The app analyzes how much sleep and the quality of sleep you get each night and you can also have the alarm set to wake you when you’re in your lightest sleep, leaving you feeling less groggy and more refreshed each day.
Article from Parkinson’s News Today.
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