Gary Barg, Editor-in-Chief
It was by watching my Mom’s years of dedication to our dad and grandparents when they took ill in the 1990s that I saw what challenges caregivers face on a daily basis.
I remember whenever I walked into Mom’s kitchen while she was caring for my dad, who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1991, it was like walking into a scientist’s laboratory. She was desperately trying to make any sort of nutritional concoctions she could think of to ensure he would eat and keep his weight up. Dad, like so many people living with cancer, had become uninterested in eating. She tracked her culinary progress in shelves filled with yellow legal pads and lots of sticky notes.
Mom also became the center of the world for her father after his dementia diagnosis. She kept Gramps whirlwind of medical appointments on time and on track. All this with just a pocketbook filled with scraps of paper and another mountain of yellow legal pads. Looking back, the 1990’s were like a thousand years ago and many of the challenges that Mom overcame with great courage and difficulty have been eased by technology we have come to take for granted today.
We have medication management apps and GPS apps that can locate a wandering loved one and medical alert apps to allow our loved ones to live safely at home for much longer. We also have apps that serve as our own private secretaries, reminding us of the many various appointments taking up so much of our lives as family caregivers. And all of this can be easily found in the smartphones resting in our pockets or purses.
One thing that these apps all have in common, is that they are now integral to our daily lives as caregivers. This is the reason I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Caregiver.com App Marketplace where caregivers will find the best available caregiving apps.
We invite all the app producers dedicated to helping our lives as family caregivers, to become part of the Caregiver App Marketplace
Thinking about all we do with our apps, maybe, it is in fact, more than one APPle a day!
Share your thoughts on APPs in the comments below.