The Holidays and Nursing Homes

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday this week we are thinking about those people who live in a nursing facility.

As we age it can sometimes become too difficult to care for those you love.  They may require too much medical care.  It could also be that dementia has taken over.

It can be a hard decision to make but it is a part of the twilight in people’s lives.

For those in the nursing home, holidays can trigger many emotions.  They might recall celebrating at their homes or they may miss the hustle and bustle of the season.

Hopefully the residents have activities at their facility that keep them busy.  A school group, boy scouts or girl scouts could make cards or decorations.  They may even visit a facility..

During this year’s holidays we hope that you can find some time to get in touch with the resident family member or friend. 

Private Home Health Care knows how busy things can become with planning and shopping at this time of year.  We also visit nursing home residents and we know how happy it makes them to hear from people from outside the facility. 

Cranberry Relish

Today we are thinking about Thanksgiving and one food that has become a staple in many families, cranberry relish.

Cranberry relish or sauce came onto Thanksgiving beginning in the early 19th century but cranberries have been around for a long time.

Native Americans grew and used cranberries as food and medicine.

Today growing cranberries is a family farm business and they are native to us here in Massachusetts.

In addition to Massachusetts they are also grown in Wisconsin, New Jersey and a bit in Washington and Oregon.

Is it served at your Thanksgiving dinner?  What kind?

There are so many varieties!  Cranberry relish comes smooth, lumpy or in between.  You can make it yourself or buy it.

You’ll find many different flavors too.  Recipes call for oranges, apples, maple syrup and even bourbon. 

You can also head to the grocery store and get a can off the shelf.  It’s a smooth, easy to remove cranberry jelly and you can carve it into interesting designs.

Private Home Health Care loves to have the tangy flavor of cranberry relish on our Thanksgiving table.  It’s a great tradition.

Sports

Today we are thinking about sports and how sports can give us joy and heartbreak.

The Greeks enjoyed sports thousands of years ago.  They even held the first formal Olympics in 776 B.C.   

The Romans enjoyed sports too, not all of them safe but still considered a sport.  

Here in the United States, we have so many different sports, too many to mention.  No matter the sport there are benefits from being a fan. 

Camaraderie – watching with family or friends brings you closer, unless of course you are routing for different teams.

Travel – if you go to a game you get out of the house and may even join the masses in your travel excursion.

Mood Change – you forget about your worries and refocus your energies to focus on your team or you have a safe way to get anger off your chest.

Food Exploration – something different or tried and true classics, you eat at a restaurant or after preparing snacks to enjoy as the games go on.

Pride – should your team win the highest honor, the local pride and pomp goes a long way towards happiness.
Private Home Health Care is very busy but we understand how sports can help spread happiness and good will to their fans.

National Homemade Bread Day

Homemade bread.  Who doesn’t love that?  Do you have a favorite bread recipe?  Is it white bread, wheat bread, multigrain or sourdough?

We can smell the goodness coming out of the oven as we write this.

You can find a type of bread in just about every country in the world.  Some are familiar and others might be new.

We thought we’d share a few to give you some ideas of what to bake!

Italy has focaccia bread.  Focaccia bread has been around since the Romans.  A blend of yeast, flour, a small amount of sugar and olive oil come together to make a light and airy bread.

Head over to Ireland and you find the soda bread.  The British had a hand in this that involves flour, baking soda, buttermilk and a touch of salt.  Delicious with a cup of tea.

The Middle East has a couple of different breads.

Chapati is from India.  One of the oldest forms of bread and is enjoyed in India, Africa and the Middle East.  Flatbread and unleavened, you need a special flour called Atta to make it.

Matzo is another unleavened bread prominent in the Jewish culture.  It is used during Passover and is made into a matzo ball soup.

Two more breads take us to Ethiopia and Mexico.

In Ethiopia, injera is an unleavened flatbread.  Africa has many different grains and starches, one of which is called teff.  Injera is made from this.  

Cooked on an open flame it is a spongy, pancake-like bread.

Finally, from the Mayan culture there are tortillas popular in Mexico and other latin countries. These started as a rather complicated processing of corn to make a flat bread.  Flour was introduced later for flour tortillas too.

Here is one we found from All Recipes:  www.allrecipes.com/recipe/272420/easy-100-whole-wheat-bread/ 

Private Home Health Care loves to indulge in homemade bread.  What will you bake?  

Happy Baking!

Operating Nurse Day

Today is Operating Nurse Day.  There are many different types of nurses and today we thank all of the nurses that work at hospitals on operations.

Have you ever needed an operation at a hospital?  If you have then you along with your doctor you would have been cared for by one or more operating nurses.

An operating nurse is also called a perioperative nurse.  They have an important role in anyone’s surgery.

If you go into a hospital for surgery the day of your surgery you are cared for by an operating nurse.  

Your nurse greets you prior to surgery, talks with you and brings you to the operating room. They are also with you and caring for you after the surgery. 

For the surgery, an operating nurse is also responsible for assessments, documentation and administering medication.  The same as other nurses but they have to do it in a specific amount of time.

A perioperative nurse helps prepare the surgical room, helps the doctors and helps the patients. 

For terrified patients an operating nurse can be a calming and reassuring partner in the operating room to help you.

It’s very nice to have a bit of reassurance during any type of surgery.

Along with a nursing degree, an operating nurse has a minimum of 6 months of operating room training.  They work a standard 12 hours, 13-14 in an emergency.

Private Home Health Care has dealt with many different nurses.  Those nurses in the operating room are so important to surgical wards.  We salute operating nurses today! 

World Pneumonia Day

On this World Pneumonia Day we highlight the importance of our lungs and how pneumonia is an infectious disease that affects children and adults alike.

Did you know that pneumonia is the largest of the infectious diseases that kills the most children and adults across the globe?

This infection is very common and has been around for quite a long time.  Our lungs that help us to breathe every day can become infected and make it difficult to breathe.

Pneumonia can be very scary, especially for those whose lungs are already compromised or in the young that are still growing.

During the winter months pneumonia can be more prevalent.  Close contact and closed spaces and keep germs active.

Today there are vaccines available to children and adults so it’s important to talk to your medical professional if it’s right for you and your family.

There are a couple of types of vaccines, one of which is called the Pneumococcal vaccine.  Since 2000 we have had access for vaccines and they have proven helpful.

The CDC has the following recommendations of who should get the vaccine:

All children under age 5; ages 5-8 if certain risks exist

All adults over the age of 50; ages 19-49 if certain risks exist

There are some exceptions on the type of vaccine for children under the age of two so check with your pediatrician.

Keeping our lungs healthy and being aware of the importance of our lungs is what this day is all about.

Private Home Health Care wants you to be aware that if you start to have persistent coughing, fever and difficulty breathing you could be getting pneumonia.  Please contact your health professional for aid.

Happy Veteran’s Day

Tomorrow we celebrate Veteran’s Day.

Private Home Health Care extends our thanks to all of our veterans in these United States for their service.

You and I have been celebrating and honoring our veterans since 1954 when Dwight Eisenhower signed Armistice Day into law.

World War II was a war made up of those called the Greatest Generation.  Amazingly, there are still approximately 66,000 still living from that war.

We honor the sacrifices of all of the service men and women of old and currently serving.

There are a variety of services to show our respect offered on Veteran’s Day so we hope you will have an opportunity to thank and honor a veteran tomorrow.

Photo by Kevin McCartney

NYC Kidney Walk

Kidney disease affects more than 37 million people in the United States or 1 in 7 adults.

Tomorrow in NYC a week of walking begins to raise awareness about kidney disease and to raise funds.

This one in NYC is sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation.  The Foundation uses 80 cents of every dollar raised to help with research, patient treatment and public education.

Your two kidneys play an important role in keeping your body functioning. Kidneys help to balance water and minerals in your blood.  They help to remove waste from your blood and manage your blood pressure.

They make blood cells and vitamin D for your bone health and bodily functions. Your kidneys also filter all of your blood every 30 minutes. 

Acute and chronic kidney disease can be treated if caught early so education is very important.

Your doctor can diagnose kidney disease a few ways:

• Questions about how and changes in urination, followed by a urine check.
• Blood tests
• Ultrasounds and imaging tests to get visuals
• A kidney biopsy to have tissue checked at a lab

You can live without one of your kidneys but it is important to pay attention and notify your medical professional of any issues.

Private Home Health Care is watchful of our patients so that we can address any kidney issues early.  National Kidney Foundations across the country have very good ratings on Charity Navigator.

Daylight Savings Time (DST)

You just had to once again change our clocks back and we are wondering how you feel about that.

The United States started this after World War 1 in an effort to conserve energy to reduce the need for artificial lighting in the evening.

Conserving energy was and continues to be a good cause but does changing the clocks now still help us towards that goal?

Today we have air conditioners, electronics and other things that use energy that were not available in the early 1900’s.

When you change the clocks in the Fall it’s nice to gain an extra hour of sleep.  

If you are like us however you’ve had a few sleepy days and may have gone to bed a bit earlier than usual.

Now, it gets dark earlier so those who drive end up driving in the dark commuting or running errands.  This can be tricky for some.

Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that do not use daylight savings time.  If we lived in either place would we even notice?

The good news is that you and I are resilient and our bodies adapt to many changes.  

The changing seasons with winter and cold and snow is an adjustment for many.  Daylight Savings Time seems like a smaller change to our bodies than this.

Private Home Health Care hopes that everyone has adapted to our new schedule with more light in the morning and dark earlier in the day. 

National Sandwich Day

Today is National Sandwich Day.  Did you pack a sandwich for lunch?

Sandwiches and lunch just go together.  You may say yes, but there are other things to have for lunch and that would be very true.

It’s just that the sandwich has been around for a long time.  It has many childhood memories so the tradition has continued over the years.

Do you have any ideas about how the sandwich came to be?

Some say it started with the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu who in 1762 needed something he could eat with one hand so he could keep gambling. 

Gambling and sandwiches don’t seem to go together now but I guess it did for the Earl of Sandwich.  You can find other theories out there as well.

One tried and true sandwich is peanut butter and jelly!  You must have had one or two of those in your life.

Who created that concoction?  White bread, wheat bread, multigrain bread, they all work.  Peanut butter on one side and jelly on the other.  It’s an easy sandwich and delicious too.

Yes, there are some people that don’t like peanut butter and jelly together but we believe more people like it than don’t.

After all, it’s been a lunch staple since pre-sliced bread became available in 1920!  

When peanut butter was created is another story for another day but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches rule.

Whatever your choice of sandwich is, and whatever you add for fixings, we hope you enjoy one today.

Private Home Health Care is having the urge for a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich for some reason.  Enjoy!