Hands to Help Seniors

Community Hospital Of The Monterey Peninsula Lowers Price For Heart Calcium Score Scan : View From An In Home Private Duty Caregiver Serving Seniors In Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas,  Seaside And Soledad California

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula has lowered the cost of getting a calcium score scan to know your risk of artery disease.  It's recommended for those with one or more of these risk factors:

High cholesterol

Family history of heart attacks

Diabetes

High blood pressure

Smoking

Overweight

Physical inactivity

The test scans for calcium deposits on the walls of the arteries, which can be a major factor in a future coronary event.  Medicare may cover the cost of the scan if you have several risk factors, but if you have a high co-pay or only have two risk factors, this may be a good idea.  For more information, call Community Hospital Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at 625-4830.

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Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula has received accolades for its 1-year-old Hospital Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit.  The unit ranked in the top 10% of 783 similar facilities in the nation.  The IRU is a 13-bed unit at the hospital which provides intensive therapy to patients with neurological injuries such as a stroke or another traumatic brain injury.  Congratulations to the staff at CHOMP!

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At long last, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital has reached a tentative agreement with the California Nurses Association, narrowly averting a strike.  CEO Pete Delgado wrote a memo to his staff saying, "The union has withdrawn its strike notice, which is a good thing for our patients and this entire community.  Under the agreement, the hospital will keep charge nurses in place throughout the contract (which would expire in March of 2019).  This was the biggest sticking point for the union, which feared that charge nurses (currently supervisors but represented by the union) could be eliminated and replaced with managers who wouldn't be represented by the union.  Nurses are getting a 7.5% raise over four years as opposed to the 27.6% the union had sought.  

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There was a heart wrenching story in today’s edition of The New York Times about Sandy Bem, a well-known psychology professor at Cornell University who watched an HBO documentary called “The Alzheimer’s Project” at the age of 64 and realized that she might have this terrible disease.  After being tested by a neurologist, she was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) which he said would probably progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease within ten years.  Sandy described the feeling of terror as she envisioned her disease progressing and decided on the spot that she was going to take her own life.  She wrote a journal in which she described the maddening capriciousness of a mind that could be so alive one moment with thought and feeling building toward a next step, and then someone erases the blackboard.  “It’s all gone and I can’t even reconstruct what the topic was.  It’s just gone.  And I sit with the dark, the blank,” wrote Bem.  She told her neurologist, “I want to live only for as long as I continue to be myself.”  Unfortunately, her physician’s prognosis was optimistic; just a year and a half after her diagnosis her MCI turned into full-blown Alzheimer’s.  A few months before her 70^th birthday, Sandy decided it was time after her daughter came to see her and she asked a friend who that person’s mother was.  She was told that she was.  Emily was her daughter.  “I thought so.  I thought it might be me,” she said.  Her family had a celebration of life party for her a week before she took her own life. The story is so sad because Alzheimer’s impacts millions of people and there is no cure for this disease.  I watched my father and my grandmother go through the various stages and it’s very bleak.  I am proud to have raised nearly $100,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association and will be walking in their annual fundraiser on September 26 in honor of my father and my grandmother.

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The Alliance on Aging will hold its next Medicare Basics class on May 20 at the Marina Library at 190 Seaside Circle from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.  Come and learn what you need to know to make the best decisions for your health care needs.  This free seminar is intended for those who are turning 65 soon and have questions about the Medicare process.  For more information, call Tamara McKee at 655 or 4245 or click here.

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