Twenty-Four Seven: A Podcast About Caregiving

Texas Public Radio
  • 4.9 (103)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS
Twenty-Four Seven: A Podcast About Caregiving Podcast

What happens when you become your parent's parent? That's what longtime NPR journalist Kitty Eisele had to figure out when she became a full-time caregiver for her beloved dad. After moving back to her childhood home, she finds herself bewildered by the medical, legal, and emotional challenges of elder-care, to say nothing of the time her dad headed off on a 300-mile road trip without telling her. Kitty's dad was experiencing cognitive decline, but she felt like the one losing her mind. Twenty-Four Seven explores how we help our loved ones live—and die—and what they mean to us. Support for this podcast comes from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and its Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

  1. 12/24/2022

    Investigating An Alzheimer's Hotspot

    In two Texas counties along the border with Mexico, 20 to 25 percent of seniors have Alzheimer's or related dementias. Those rates are among the highest in the US and represent a mostly Latino population. But Latinos are underrepresented in Alzheimer's clinical trials. Physician and neurologist Dr. Gladys Maestre is changing that at her NIH-funded Alzheimer's research center in the Rio Grande Valley, the first of its kind in Texas. She's using a "place-based" approach to dementia care, bringing her Latina identity and cultural knowledge to investigate the social, environmental, and biological factors that influence brain health.

    39 min

  2. 11/25/2022

    Autumn of a Patriarch

    “Memory is my tool and my raw material,” author Gabriel García Márquez once said to his son. “I cannot work without it.” As the great writer’s memory began to fail him late in life, his family circled around. Rodrigo García relays those days of caring and loss in his poignant memoir of his parents’ final years, “A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes.”

    36 min

  3. 11/11/2022

    A Comedian Walks Into A Dementia Unit

    Arlieta Hall was a full-time caregiver for her dad with dementia when she started going to open-mic nights around Chicago for some relief. Then one night a manager suggested that she tell stories about her dad on stage. Now, Arlieta is making her name as a comedian and dementia educator. She’s a fellow at Chicago’s famed Second City comedy club, finishing a film about care and comedy, and trains families and caregivers to use the tools of improv to communicate better with people with dementia.

    22 min

  4. 10/28/2022

    Raising Money for Caregivers, One Joke At A Time

    What do Michael Che, Sarah Silverman and Kermit the Frog have in common? They're just a few of the celebrities who've helped Hilarity for Charity give direct aid to families caring for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia. HFC, as it's known, is the brainchild of actor Lauren Miller Rogen, who cared for her mom with Alzheimer's at a young age. Lauren enlisted her husband, comedian Seth Rogen, along with her family and friends to put on comedy shows to fundraise and lift spirits. On this episode, Lauren and her dad Scott Miller talk about their experience caregiving and how they're trying to lighten the burden for other caregivers today.

    30 min

  5. 10/14/2022

    The Memory Detective

    Novelist Walter Mosley has written dozens of popular mystery and crime novels, but none quite like The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, in which a man with Alzheimer's must solve a mystery buried deep in his own fading memory. In this episode, Mosley tells Kitty how caring for his parents with dementia exposed him to the drama of caregiving and later informed his writing. His novel, recently adapted into an Apple TV series starring Samuel L. Jackson, stands out as a rare portrayal in media of the experience of Alzheimer's disease, while still delivering a thrilling crime story.

    23 min

  6. 09/30/2022

    What Caring Looks Like When There Is No Cure

    Investigative journalist Esme Deprez was sitting in a diner in New York when she got a text from her dad, asking her to help him die. Less than a month later, she drove to a pharmacy in Maine to pick up the medicine that would allow him to end his life, using Maine’s new “Aid in Dying” law. Esme tells Kitty about what she learned caring for her dad, epidemiologist Ron Deprez. His experience with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, gave Esme an education into the choices we can, and cannot make, for ourselves and our loved ones at the end of our lives.

    34 min

  7. 05/06/2022

    Taking Care of Tasha: A Son Remembers

    On this Mother's Day bonus episode, writer Brian Morton tells Kitty about the difficulties and delights of caring for his mother, a beloved teacher with a fiery personality who remained stubborn and independent even as her health declined. Brian's memoir, Tasha, is both a portrait of his mother and an account of the complexities of dementia care.

    34 min

  8. 04/15/2022

    Who decides what kind of care grandma gets?

    It was 1996 when journalist Howard Gleckman got "the call" — about emergency care for his mother-in-law. Soon he was managing care for three older family members, and found the system impenetrable. He’s since made a career of explaining how long-term care works in the U.S., and how Wall Street investors are helping decide the kind of care your grandmother gets.

    25 min
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4.9
out of 5
103 Ratings

About

What happens when you become your parent's parent? That's what longtime NPR journalist Kitty Eisele had to figure out when she became a full-time caregiver for her beloved dad. After moving back to her childhood home, she finds herself bewildered by the medical, legal, and emotional challenges of elder-care, to say nothing of the time her dad headed off on a 300-mile road trip without telling her. Kitty's dad was experiencing cognitive decline, but she felt like the one losing her mind. Twenty-Four Seven explores how we help our loved ones live—and die—and what they mean to us. Support for this podcast comes from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and its Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

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