The Home Stretch- A Family Caregiver's Handbook

About the Book In their twilight years, people increasingly rely on friends and family to get through the day. In Indian homes, it is not unusual to see adult children sandwiched between parenting and care giving obligations, with both young children and elderly parents in the house.

The Home Stretch is an empathetic, handy guide that seeks to simplify care giving and equip readers with the tools and guidance required to build a safer, happier and more comfortable life for the elders around them. From tips on maintaining their health and independence to taking care of the book covers a wide range of topics to meet the progressively complicated needs associated with caring for ageing loved ones.

A product of the author's years of care giving experience and interactions with countless doctors, counselors, senior citizens and other family caregivers, this book has the ability to transform how we look at ageing and the aged.

Foreword This book could be about you or me. It is for you and me.

It is no easy read and yet, it has to be read. It is about several truths, hard truths, written truthfully. I felt like skipping portions of the pre-publication draft while reading it because they were, for one at my stage of life, traumatizing. And I must be truthful about a book that is so true-I did do exactly that. It was like averting one's eyes from a scene of pain. That exercise of skipping disentitled me from writing these words. But I felt Sanjay Dattatri will allow me the liberty when he reads the following sentence: I will read the book, if time and tide permit, from cover to cover, when it is published.

Preface When my mother was seventy-seven years old, she was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy PSP for short. Not much is known about it, and there is no treatment available for it even today. It is a cruel disease, gradually robbing a person of all voluntary motor control while keeping the involuntary muscles, including the diaphragm, going strong, thereby keeping body and soul together interminably.

Over a period of two years, right in front of our eyes, she went from being an active, energetic woman to a completely bedridden patient, incapable of even moving her eyeballs. She remained that way for the next four years until she passed away at home early one morning.

**Contents and Sample Pages**