Jim Comer has trained executives at many of America’s top companies on how to give powerful, effective speeches. Now, he is using those skills in a practical, entertaining presentation about caring for his elderly parents through strokes, broken hips, and his mother’s Alzheimer’s. He’s speaking to groups all over America on the “The Joys and Jolts of Parenting Your Parents” based on his fourteen years of personal experience. With warmth and wit, he’ll share how he learned to care for his parents, while keeping his sanity and sense of humor.

Jim will talk to your association, church, company or community group and share how he changed his life in order to “show up” for his parents. He will help audience members see how they can take action today that will make future caregiving responsibilities easier for them and for their parents.

Despite the challenge families face in caring for elderly parents, Comer gives useful, practical advice in an entertaining, upbeat, often humorous presentation. His audiences leave armed with important information and know they must make plans now, not after a crisis. For those who are already caregivers, Jim offers tips to make their lives easier and ways to give themselves a break. Best of all, they leave with a feeling of hope.

 

Comer's talk emphasizes these key points:

• Get the conversation going now. Jim’s father was in denial about his wife’s Alzheimer’s and wasn’t willing to talk about it or make plans for the future. When he had a stroke, all the un-discussed issues fell to Jim. He had to start at square one and make scores of decisions in a matter of days. While nothing makes a parental health crisis easy, planning can make it easier.
• Get all the relevant documents completed and stored in a place where they can be easily located. This includes wills, powers of attorney, advance directives, medical records, financial and insurance information, as well as funeral and end of life plans.
• Talk to your siblings and find out who can be counted on to help, who won’t be a part of the caregiving process and what each brother and sister can do when roles reverse.
• Do your homework and check out well-run care facilities. This includes retirement homes, assisted living, and nursing homes. If your parents want to stay in their own home, will that be financially possible? If they will need to move in with a member of the family, who is willing to take that responsibility? These are not discussions to have the day after a stroke, but long before there is a major health problem.
• Realize that caregivers need to be flexible and able to adjust to new problems. You must expect the unexpected and realize that the level of care and responsibility will keep changing. Caregivers need to keep their sense of humor, roll with the punches, and ask for help from family and elder care agencies when they need it.

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      Despite all the challenges, there is great joy in showing up for your parents when they need you and giving back to those who have given you so much. And there is the chance to get to know them in a way you’ve never experienced before. Even though it may be hard to imagine, there will be joyful, humor-filled moments as well as tough ones. 

 

Successful Alzheimer's caregiving: Go into their world
One of the most moving parts of Jim’s talk is his candid admission that he had no idea how take deal with his mother’s Alzheimer’s. He wanted her to remain logical and be the person he’d always known. That wasn’t happening. She asked the same question ten times in thirty minutes and wanted to visit her long-dead sister. Jim went to an Alzheimer’s expert who told him, “Quit trying to drag your mother into your world. She can’t go there any more. You must go into her world.”

As soon as he entered his mother’s world, everything changed for the better. Instead of trying to force her to be the person she no longer was, he joined her in the world she now inhabited. As she lost more and more cognitive abilities, Jim adjusted. He says, “For the last five years, she doesn’t know me, but she likes me. That’s better than the alternative.” Learning to accept his mother’s ever-changing condition has helped Jim provide the support she needs and stay sane in the process.