Today I would like to share some of my favorite quotes about aging and life in general for caregivers and nursing students.
1. Sign seen in a store: Don' t let aging get you down it's too hard to get back up.
2. Gloria Pitzer: About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.
3. Mark Twain: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Each day brings its challenges, but looking for the bits of humor scattered there can be helpful. Let me share a chuckle my husband and I had recently.
We were driving to a local restaurant for our weekly family dinner. (We try to take Don's parents out each week for socialization and a different environment). We were using the drive time to remind my father-in-law why is was important for him to drink more fluids. Using his long-term memory to help this endeavor, my husband asked him if he remembered that water was a universal solvent. Getting a positive response, I queried "do you remember the periodic table of elements?" He thought for a second and responded "the periodic table of elephants?!"
We all had a laugh and he moved on to reading billboards and store signs oblivious to what we found so funny.
It's moments like these that balance out the hard times.

Why did I start this blog? Here are the statistics that should speak for themselves. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, by 2010 there will be 5.7 million people over the age of eighty-five. One fourth of all American families are full-time caregivers, 26 million to an adult family member and 5 million to a person with dementia.
People over the age of sixty-five account for 234 million medical office visits per year, 15.7 million emergency room visits and 13.1 million hospital visits per 1000 visits per year.
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, more than one million nurses are needed by 2016. Hospitals currently have 116,000 job openings. In 2007, 40,285 qualified applicants were turned away from schools of nursing due to insufficient faculty.
The ratio of trained nurses to the people most likely to need care in 2010 and beyond (the elderly) will decrease by 40 % in the next 5 years.
Time to talk about some solutions.

Welcome to the first entry in Nurse Nan's Notes. I will be posting regularly and discussing elder caregiving and nursing education in Geriatrics, my two favorite topics. Stay tuned for my first note.