Record Your Family’s Favorite Stories & History - Giving the story of a Lifetime!

StoryCorps helps seniors preserve memories of the past for the city’s future. Their mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

Some Austinites were able to have their precious stories recorded when StoryCorps drove from Brooklyn to help preserve memories at risk of being lost.. forever. StoryCorps is a nonprofit Memory Loss Initiative who travels city to city in a mobile recording booth, facilitating conversations of memories between families, friends, caregiver with loved ones who have memory loss.

The StoryCorps work will remain in Austin till August 9th at the Austin Museum of Art called The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art. See the full story by picking up a copy of Austin Monthly Magazine, July 2009 issue at your local newstand.

For more information, please visit StoryCorps website.

Source: Austin Monthly Magazine

Image Source: StoryCorps.com

On a recent episode of ABC’s “What Would You Do”, the TV show setup a scenario to determine how bystanders would react to an elderly driver exhibiting signs that he shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car. The aging driver, an actor, aged 92, approaches people on the street asking for help getting out of his parking spot (his car is parallel parked on the street) since his son who was supposed to meet him has failed to appear. Three of the four people featured in this first segment of the episode, which tests what people would do when faced with an elderly driver with impaired abilities, help the senior into his car. The bystanders help the senior driver with starting his ignition and putting his car in reverse; only to direct him from the spot to have him run down the motorcycle parked in the spot behind.

Watch “Driving While Disoriented”

What would you do when faced with the same situation? While statistics show, that apart from drivers under 25, drivers over 70 are involved in the most driving related accidents; family members in particular are very reluctant to take away a senior’s main source of independence. And while some states do mandate stricter licensing standards for drivers who have reached old age, very little mandatory testing is in place to ensure that older adults can drive without impairment so the decision of when to take away the keys is often left up to the family to determine.

If you’re starting to wonder whether it might be time to take away a senior’s right to drive, look at the following factors to determine if they might be a hazard behind the wheel:

• Does a loss of hearing acuity affect their ability to respond to sirens or honking horns?
• Has the old driver’s sight been tested? Do they have trouble seeing lines on the road, especially during night driving?
• Is the senior driver physically able to control the vehicle safely? Do they have any conditions, like arthritis, which might affect their reflexes?
• Do they take any medications that could affect their driving abilities? Do any medicines interact to make driving unsafe?

Sources: http://www.abcnews.go.com/whatwouldyoudo - February 17 (Driving While Disoriented) Episode
http://www.troubledwith.com/Relationships/A000000656.cfm?topic=relationships%3A%20caring%20for%20elderly%20parents

Keeping Aging Relatives in Austin Safe and Independent at Home by providing senior home care for Austin Seniors and Elders.  Call Home Care Austin  512-347-9207.

Heart of a CAREGiver
Heartofacaregiver.com was developed by Home Instead Senior Care to raise industry awareness of the growing need for CAREGivers across the healthcare industry. A majority of families will experience a CAREGiving opportunity at least once with aging parents or spouses and children with disabilities. A crisis in health or accident will leave even the most cohesive family at a sudden loss as the dynamic and roles change. Respite care is a valuable and underutilized service available in nearly every community. After families go through crisis, often years after a loved one has passed, family caregivers often reminisce about their experiences with a new perspective and desire to give back to others in their communities.

Take a moment and watch this video about the joys that CAREGiving can bring to your life.