6 Hot Healthcare Topics You Should Discuss With Aging Loved Ones Over the Holidays

Seems like every day a new study or report comes out reminding us that our aging parents and grandparents are at increasing risk for various health-related issues. We'd be wise to heed the warnings for our own healthcare as well (although if you're caring for aging relatives and your children, something tells me you can't remember the last time you actually thought about yourself.)

Holidays are a Great Time for the Family to Discuss Their Seniors' Health

Whatever situation you're in, this holiday season you will sit around a table or on a couch around a television with grown siblings and elderly relatives. These are precisely the times to take a few moments to talk with each other and your relatives about senior healthcare questions and realities. You and those other caregivers in your family – your siblings, in-laws – have the daunting responsibility of being the key advocate for your aging loved ones when they get sucked into what one doctor calls "Sick Land."

Here are 6 lessons to learn, conversations to have, about how to protect yourself and your aging relatives:

1. Doctor's Tips on How to Survive in 'Sick-Land'

Doctor: Every patient is 'an immigrant' in the doctor's office. Since so many of us are either dealing with medical issues ourselves or are managing the care of our parents, siblings or children, this post shares a model of how some forward-thinking medical professionals are revolutionizing medical care.

 Read: How to Survive in 'Sick-Land'

 2. Healthy Aging: Study says elderly patients get less pain relief in the ER

Holidays can be a time of great family fun and also of not-so-great family stress, depression and accidents. All of us caring for aging parents, grandparents or other relatives have stories of racing to the Emergency Room with a relative during the holidays. It's already a stressful, scary experience. A new study reminds us that it is even more important than ever that we serve as active advocates, as strong voices, for our elderly loved ones. A new study reports our aging loved ones are suffering more pain than they have to.

Read: Are Your Aging Loved Ones in Pain?

3. How to Protect Seniors Who Face the Highest Risk for Hospital Medical Errors

Here's excellent advice to protect ourselves and our loved ones from deadly medical mix-ups. Lean to active participants in our own medical care and in the care of our loved ones. Studies about how vulnerable our elderly relatives are remind us that it's more important than ever that we must be on our best game at the very moment we may feel the most vulnerable.

 Read: Protecting Seniors from Deadly Medical Mistakes

4. Mean Girls: Is Your Mother Being Bullied in Assisted Living?

As I watch my young daughter navigate the minefields of female friendships – the roller coaster ride from BFFs to Bully and back again, all before lunch – a recent article reminded me that the skills we learn on the playground may come in handy as we age. This post reveals a new trend in elder abuse we should worry about for our parents and ourselves identified as "Senior Bullying"

 Read: Is Your Mother Being Bullied in Assisted Living? 

5. Fostering Love: Aging, Ailing Parents of Disabled Daughter Need Care, Too

Dear State of Maryland: Tom and Maryjane spent nearly three decades as loving caregivers for their severely disabled daughter – and dozens of other medically fragile foster children no one else would take. Now they are seniors who need care themselves. Please help them now.

 Read: When Aging Caregivers Need Care, Too

6. A 60th Birthday Bucket List: One Woman's Birthday Gift to Herself

Here's a Great 60th Birthday Present to Yourself

With all this talk of medical issues and doom and gloom, I thought I'd end with an inspiring story of one inspirational woman I know. She just turned the tables on a birthday she was dreading. She figured out how to celebrate it her way. Her goal? "60 new experiences in the year after I turned 60."

Read: Here's a Great 60th Birthday Gift to Yourself

Now THAT's good medicine.