October 28, 2011

GPS Shoes, for Alzheimer's Patients


GPS Shoes, for Alzheimer's Patients

These boots were really made for walking.
The first batch of 3,000 shoes with integrated GPS devices  -- to help track down dementia-suffering seniors who wander off and get lost -- just shipped frommanufacturer  GTX Corp. to the footwear firm Aetrex, two years after plans were announced to develop the product.
The company's first shoes -- dreamed up back in 2002 following the Elizabeth Smart case -- were intended to locate missing children. And safety is the driving force today behind the company's newest GPS-enabled shoe.  The shoes will sell at around $300 a pair and buyers will be able to set up a monitoring service to locate "wandering" seniors suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/27/

October 24, 2011

My Mom said she didn't want us, her four children and husband, to tell her friends that she was on hospice care. She didn't want them worrying or fussing over her. We asked her what she would like us to do for her funeral. She said, "Don't go to any trouble, just bury my ashes under an Aspen tree in the mountains."

My Mom has always complained that she never gets things her way, she has to go along with what everybody else wants. Well, the fact that she was dying didn't change things.

We planned a potluck and invited all of her friends. Some members of the family are talented musicians, so we put the food and the songbooks out. And, then brought my mother into the room. "Surprise!!!!"

Her friends would sit down with her to chat and then move on to the food. All the while she was smiling and appreciating the music by making requests.

The next day, she couldn't stop talking about the party, "I was at my own wake," she laughed heartily. The hospice nurse came that day and heard all about it.

We had my mother's funeral a couple of weeks later. All the same people that were at the party were at the funeral. They all expressed how glad they were that they got to see my Mom while she was still alive.

We asked for donations of Aspen trees. We then planted them on some private property in the mountains and placed a handful of my Mom's ashes under each tree.

Now we go to the mountains and visit the Aspen grove that is planted there in honor of my mother, Ruth Brunskill Greiner.

October 9, 2011

Visiting with Fortune Cookies

My Dad takes fortune cookies with him when he visits his friends in assisted living or at the hospital. They open two or three fortune cookies which gives them something to talk about right then and there. Then he leaves several fortune cookies with the person he's been to visit. He asks them to open one a day and think about the good fortune they've just been given.