Kansas Senior Press Service Weekly Newsletters Kansas Senior Press Service Weekly Newsletters By: Submitted by Kansas Attorney General Paul J. Morrison
Kansas consumers are encouraged to protect themselves when hiring outside contractors to make repairs to their homes. If you have questions or concerns, contact the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s Office at 785-296-3751 or 800-432-2310. Browse the Kansas Attorney General Web site at www.ksag.org for further information and consumer-related advice.
Here are some crucial tips:
By: Shirley Carson
Grandparents who have assumed the role of parenting grandchildren tend to focus on the children and their needs. There never seems to be time to think about our own needs as we try to make it through busy days with the kids. Many nights we fall into bed exhausted, wondering how we will have the strength to survive another day. Sleep brings renewal, and we awake refreshed and ready to face another day.
We do this because we love these kids and are committed to giving them a chance in life. But we need to take care of ourselves, as well, so we have the energy to care for the children we love so dearly. We must remember that we aren’t as young as we used to be, and take measures to protect our own health and fitness.
The idea of keeping senior citizens physically fit through exercise is relatively new. We now know that the lack of stimulating physical activity is harmful. If we stay active, we can extend, improve, or reestablish good physical health and promote mental and emotional health and social opportunities. Exercise decreases the chance of disease, promotes good circulation, and just makes sense.
Even though we sometimes don’t feel like performing physical activity, doing so often eliminates weight and health problems. It can also help you look younger, give you a boost of energy, and promote better sleep habits. So, let’s get moving!
A good exercise routine can be as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. Walking remains the number-one fitness routine for seniors. It’s popular because it can be performed without equipment. Just be sure you have a pair of good walking shoes that fit properly.
Water aerobics is recognized as one of the most effective physical fitness programs for seniors and is my own personal favorite. Any exercise performed in the water uses both sides of the muscle, which makes the movement twice as effective as land-based exercise. Water causes us to be weightless, so painful pressure on joints is effectively eliminated in water.
Weight-lifting can be fun and can help reshape muscles. If you are considering lifting weights, you may want to get a trainer. Also, check with your medical insurance to see whether fitness benefits are available to you.
Physical fitness is to the human body what fine-tuning is to an engine. It enables us to perform to our true potential. Fitness allows us to look, feel, and perform to the best of our abilities and allows us to perform daily tasks vigorously and alertly with energy left over for enjoying our grandchildren and even for leisure activities.
A good exercise program improves balance, decreases body fat, and increases or maintains muscle mass. It also brings mental alertness and emotional stability.
Before beginning an exercise program, get a check-up. Your doctor should be informed that you’re changing your routine, because exercise might affect your medication dosages. And if you really want bragging rights, check in with your physician after two or more weeks of exercise. Both of you might be pleasantly surprised by the results of your dedication and hard work. Stay fit and have fun!
Shirley Carson, RN, is a retired nurse and grandmother who was a 25-year Olathe resident. Since raising her three oldest grandchildren, her desire is to encourage others who are parenting their grandchildren.
By: Lynn Anderson
Not enough people take humor seriously.
That is the unhappy truth preached by Bob Jenkins, founder and CEO of Comedy Care, Inc. Jenkins is no clown, but humor is his lifeblood—in an almost literal way.
Comedy Care is a 20-year-old Kansas City nonprofit that advances the use of humor in health care as an adjunct to the medical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of healing. The enterprise has family roots.
When Jenkins was in his 30s, he and his mother were diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within months of each other. In the fashion of their family, they turned to each other and agreed: The only way we’ll get through this is with laughter.
That wasn’t hard for his mom, known as “Frenchie.” During her career as a bank teller, she had cultivated a joke-of-the-day habit that had bank customers forming lines at her window. Humor let her relish her work, and she trained her children to laugh, too.
“She was hospitalized twice before she died,” Jenkins said. “How could we not laugh when she called my siblings and me and told us she’d been ‘incarcerated’ at St. Luke’s?”
During her longest hospital stay, lasting a month, Frenchie laid down the law: Nobody—doctors, nurses, visitors—could enter her room without bearing a source of laughter. It could be a cartoon, a joke, a crazy hat. Her purpose was to turn the inevitable sorrow of the moment into a bearable and life-affirming interaction.
“People honored her wish, and soon the room was filled with the stuff of humor, and silly things were taped all over the walls,” Jenkins said. “The hospital personnel loved it, so there was always somebody in her room. I don’t think she ever needed to use the call button!”
After Frenchie’s death, St. Luke’s staff called Jenkins to praise the way the family handled her illness. “What do you call this thing you did?” they asked.
It didn’t surprise Jenkins that humor was so foreign to the hospital environment.
“There are all kinds of stigmas associated with humor and illness,” he said. “Everyone buys into the concept of humor, but getting people there is a challenge.”
That may be linked to a striking research finding: most children laugh about 400 times a day; adults laugh perhaps 15 times a day.
Who they serve, what they do
After Frenchie’s death, Jenkins and his siblings formed Comedy Care, Inc., which focuses on those diagnosed with life-threatening or chronic illnesses and the friends, family, and caregivers who provide support. Comedy Care’s direct services, all provided for free (honoraria are accepted), come in several packages:
Humor therapy presentations. These are provided for groups of people with chronic and life-threatening illnesses. Jenkins has worked with the KU Medical Center’s Cancer Center, the R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation, and countless other health care facilities.
Patients are supported and guided through all the stages of death and dying until eventually they reach acceptance. Comedy Care teaches clients that their responsibilities include self-care, and that cultivating laughter and light-heartedness is an important component of self-care.
“People have a tendency to hide behind their illnesses and to shrink from human contact and lightness,” Jenkins said, “especially if they believe in any way that the illness is their own fault. Self-blame is a reality for people living with AIDS and for those who feel that their diabetes, liver disease, or heart disease is a result of unwise life choices.”
In response, Comedy Care strives to draw clients out, into the world and a strong support network.
Comedy Care also teaches that patients need to surround themselves with positive energy because of its dramatic ability to boost the immune system.
A Comedy Care Curriculum for individual humor therapy. The curriculum is a seven-day program that gives patients the tools of humor. It motivates, educates, and inspires them to use humor to prolong and improve their quality of life—regardless of how much or little time remains.
The curriculum, which can be repeated week after week, actually schedules humor into a patient’s day, in sync with the administration of drugs.
“Laughter causes medicine to be worked into your system more quickly,” said Jenkins.
The curriculum also includes greeting cards. Patients are instructed to send at least one card to a friend each day, rebuilding long-lost contacts and maintaining current ones.
“The cards have remarkable results,” Jenkins said. “The people who receive them usually contact the patient and ask how they can help. That helps the patients build and sustain their support network, which is essential to long-term survival.”
But he quickly added that Comedy Care nudges clients in the direction of thriving, not just surviving. And it’s not difficult, because, as he puts it, “Humor is a behavior, and it can be developed.”
Presentations, workshops, and in-service training for caregivers, whether family, friends, or professionals. Jenkins provided training to the Missouri League of Nursing annual conference, for example. He makes the rounds, forming relationships with hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices throughout the metro area. He encourages these facilities to offer his presentations to their health care staff, make comedy channels available on patient televisions, and encourage families to join support groups that will bring humor into their stressful lives.
Building on what’s proven
At Rutgers University, psychology professor Maurice Elias, PhD, who has led humor workshops for budding clinicians, thinks more of his colleagues are looking to mirth because the study of humor has “tapped into something old, something psychology has gotten away from in our efforts to be more cognitive and behavioral and more scientific.” “We’ve lost sight,” he said, “of the fact that we are emotional human beings.”
Jenkins has visited, and assimilated research findings from, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer research centers, and national AIDS organizations. All agree that the benefits of humor are profound and measurable. The use of humor has been proven to provide benefits on many levels, including these:
Physical
Emotional
Psychological
If you’d like to invite more humor into your own life—maybe as a preventive form of “medicine,” Comedy Care suggests a wealth of resources and techniques to try:
Comedy Care Services & Needs
Comedy Care staff are available to give programs, presentations, and trainings to patients and caregivers.
Comedy Care has a passionate board of directors, but it would move toward “thriving” with the help of:
To learn more, to schedule a training or presentation, or to explore opportunities to contribute to Comedy Care’s important work in the local community, contact Jenkins.
Comedy Care, Inc.
Bob Jenkins
5828 N. Bristol
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Kansas City, MO 64119
816-326-7305 (o) or 816-813-1430 (cell)
rbjinx@yahoo.com