Gail Sheehy's Caregiving Passage

Gail Sheehy published Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life in 1976 and it stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for three years. That book and Gail's more recent work have helped Americans of all ages realize that they are not alone as they go through life's challenging and often painful transitions.

Now Gail has turned her attention to a new passage - family caregiving in later life. Gail has been on her own journey of caregiving her husband, noted editor Clay Felker, founder of New York Magazine.

"Our lives were turned upside down in our 50's and 60's," said Sheehy at the Aging in America conference in Washington, D.C. this week. "Clay suffered four life-threatening cancer assaults over 12 years. We found ourselves on a roller coaster ride with no beginning, middle or end."

Gail became a full-time care partner with her husband but quickly learned that if she did nothing but care for him, she would burn out. She realized that she was running a marathon, not just a sprint around the block. On this long, long road race, you need to take time for yourself.

"As a caregiver, you really need to get help. If you can afford it, hire a care manager. It's also not a good idea to leave your job for years at this life stage, as you could find yourself with no financial security," said Sheehy.

Still, Sheehy spent hours and hours as an advocate for her husband, bringing her tape recorder to meetings with doctors and taking notes about treatments they were facing. When her husband needed radical surgery, Sheehy was forced to confront her own age bias. The surgeon was 81 years old. When the doctor realized that Sheehy and her husband were nervous about his age, he held out his hands for a long time to show them how steady they were.

"He asked one thing from us - that we would tell him just before the operation that we knew he would do a good job," said Sheehy. "By showing both confidence and humility, he helped us get through it."

Gail and her husband included mind/body techniques on their cancer journey. They learned self-hypnosis and studied bio-feedback. A yoga teacher taught them to do deep, meditative breathing together, in rhythm, with their bodies touching.

"That was a transformative experience for us," said Sheehy. "We became connected as a couple on a much deeper level. We moved to a 'new normal.'"

Two years after his first bout with cancer, Felker was diagnosed with lymphoma and was told there was no treatment. The doctor suggested he "go out and live your life by taking a risk. Do something you might not have done if you hadn't gotten sick."

So Sheehy and her husband gave up their life in the publishing world in New York City and moved to California, where Felker taught at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. The couple lived in faculty housing and their new life together worked its magic.

"We were young and in love all over again," said Sheehy.

Years later, Felker suffered a recurrance of his old cancer and had surgery that left him unable to eat without a feeding tube. Still, that didn't stop Sheehy from travelling to Paris with him, packing a blender so that they could still share the French food that they loved.

"I went into a lovely restaurant near our hotel a few hours before dinnertime," said Sheehy. "I explained our situation to the chef and asked if he would mind blenderizing the food so that my husband could enjoy it. He was touched and didn't hesitate to help. That evening, we sat at a lovely table and the staff set up a screen to give us some privacy. Clay's food arrived in silver pitchers. After that, I became fearless about eating out together. No chef has ever refused to help us."

Sheehy's own story and those of other caregivers - as well as the larger story of America's caregiving crisis - will be told in Gail's upcoming book. The Caring Passage will be out in 2009.

Caregiving - Hot Topic, Hot Boomer Business Trend

"There are only four kinds of people in the world - those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers." Rosalynn Carter, 1997

Caregiving is one of the hottest topics of conversation at Boomer social gatherings these days, often surpassing chat about financing college tuitions and downsizing to a condo. According to Mary Furlong, founder of the Boomer Business Summit which met in Washington, D.C. this week, caregiving is a hot business opportunity as well.

Furlong says Boomers face a new kind of juggling act now that grown children are more independent or on their own. Today a growing number of midlifers are caring for aging parents or for spouses who are ill or infirm. And yet caregivers still need to keep a day job, save for retirment and run a home.

Caregivers need help! Demand is high - and growing - for products and services catering to caregivers' needs, including advice from trusted advisors, in-home support services, stress management skills and long term care financing.

According to the MetLife Mature Market Institute, 44% of Americans over 60 have at least one living parent, up from just 13% in 1940. There are 44.3 million family caregivers in the U.S. who, at an average age of 46, are spending about 34 million hours on the caregiving "job." They are giving more than their time.

Caregiving takes a big toll - in lost days of paid work, in out-of-pocket costs to cover things like medical co-pays and travel expenses (an average of more than $5,500 a year) and in caregivers' own health risks due to stress related illness.

Business needs to pay attention. Sandra Timmerman of MetLife says that the cost of caregiving to U.S. employers has been estimated at between $ 17 and 33 billion per year. As the Boomers age and have more of their own health issues, this number is sure to increase.

We have an acute caregiver shortage today but it's nothing to what we might be facing in 15 or 20 years. By 2030, MetLife says we'll need almost 6 million caregivers in this country. We'll have to begin to look at this as a community issue, not a personal family crisis. We need more workplace eldercare programs, more geriatric care managers, more technology that supports caregivers and more concierge services that allow caregivers to balance work, life and caregiving.

One of the most moving caregiver stories at the Aging in America Conference this week was told by author Gail Sheehy. Her upcoming book, The Caring Passage, examines the crisis in family caregiving. Gail has been on her own journey, becoming a care partner for her husband as he has battled serious cancer over the past several years. We'll share more of her story here tomorrow.

Business is Waking Up to Boomer Market

We're blogging this week from Washington, D.C., site of the Fifth Annual Boomer Business Summit, which is a pre-conference for the 2008 Aging in America Conference. The energy here is positive and enthusiasm for the Boomer market is very high. Yahoo, Verizon, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, American Express, Southwest Airlines...these are some of the big names who are here as sponsors. There are even more not-so-big companies who are serious about serving the Boomer market. It's great to see, since it hasn't always been this way.

A few years ago, Boomer Media Properties struggled to find companies who would sponsor our TV series aimed at viewers over age 49. We attended the 2005 Boomer Business Summit, where true believers and thought leaders were still trying to convince business that a Boomer market actually existed. Now it seems that marketers realize that people over 50 are online, buy cell phones, travel and need career, wellness and financial advice. In three short years, awareness has been raised and sponsors are after Boomers in a big way.

Several workshops here have focused on new media marketing and social networking. Since Boomers represent about 40% of Internet users, businesses are going online to reach them. Founders of BlogHer reported on a recent survey of U.S. women online. 90% reported that they read blogs and find them a reliable source of information. The reason Boomer women read blogs and post their thoughts? To "express myself, have fun and find people like me." Those are the same reasons people in their 20's and 30's get involved with online communities...no big surprise.

But if Boomers are spending more time reading Blogs and joining social networks like Eons, TeeBeeDee and Facebook, what are they not doing? Online community-building takes time away from other media...according to BlogHer, these Boomers spend less time with the newspaper and watch less television. As with relationships in the real world, building a "virtual" community takes time and effort.