Wise, smart, and ever-helpful, an essential guide to caring for aging parents.

When Jane Gross found herself suddenly thrust into a caretaker role for her eighty-five year-old mother, she was forced to face challenges that she had never imagined. As she and her younger brother struggled to move her mother into an assisted living facility, deal with seemingly never-ending costs, and adapt to the demands on her time and psyche, she learned valuable and important lessons. Here, the longtime New York Times expert on the subject of elderly care and the founder of the New Old Age blog shares her frustrating, heartbreaking, enlightening, and ultimately redemptive journey, providing us along the way with valuable information that she wishes she had known earlier. We learn why finding a general practitioner with a specialty in geriatrics should be your first move when relocating a parent; how to deal with Medicaid and Medicare; how to understand and provide for your own needs as a caretaker; and much more.

Includes chapters on the following subjects:
Finding Our Better Selves
The Myth of Assisted Living
The Vestiges of Family Medicine
The Best Doctors Money Can Buy
The Biology, Sociology, and Psychology of Aging
Therapeutic Fibs

Author: Jane Gross
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 05/01/2012
Pages: 448
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.17w x 0.95d
ISBN: 9780307472403


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 07/01/2012 pg. 28
Library Journal 12/01/2013 pg. 50

About the Author

JANE GROSS was a reporter for Sports Illustrated and Newsday before joining The New York Times in 1978. Her twenty-nine-year tenure there included national assignments as well as coverage of aging. In 2008, she launched a blog for the Times called The New Old Age, to which she still contributes. She has taught journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Columbia University, and was the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship. She lives in Westchester County, New York.