Did someone you love serve in Vietnam? If so, you’ll want to keep reading, especially if your loved one was among the estimated 90,000 veterans who served on ships off the coast of Vietnam.

It took 50 years for Blue Water Navy veterans to receive disability compensation for diseases related to Agent Orange exposure. The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019 gave these service men and women the compensation they deserved, extending disability benefits covering medical conditions associated with Agent Orange exposure to those who served on ships off the coast of Vietnam.

Physically unwell but mentally sound seniors have been refusing to accept guidance from younger family members for millennia. What happens when the younger family caregiver happens to be an attorney in a Life Care Planning Law Firm? We posed this question to Julia Price, a VA accredited attorney at Elder Law of East Tennessee, a Life Care Planning Law Firm with offices in Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee.

For attorney Rachel Truhlsen, law is second nature.

Rachel, founder of Truhlsen Elder Care Law of Nebraska, a Life Care Planning Law Firm in Blair, Nebraska, has been in and around law since she was a teenager. “I grew up in Omaha in a neighborhood with four attorneys living on the same block,” she remembered. “When I turned 16, one of them invited me to do some clerical work and that's when I first became exposed to the practice of law.”

If you’re providing care on a regular basis for elderly loved ones, are you doing it on autopilot?

Many of us are.

Chances are good that you have an unconscious program running in the deepest recesses of your brain that’s telling you what to think, feel, and do as a caregiver.

When you choose a facility for an elderly loved one, you will inevitably be offered a contract to sign. What should you do?

It has been more than a year since COVID burst onto the world stage. Now that we have a vaccine, things should be getting better, right? Elderly loved ones are safe, right? We can all relax now, right?

It’s not easy being a caregiver. I know this from personal experience.

Caregivers need support. They need someone to turn to. Most don’t have anyone.

As an elder care coordinator in a Life Care Planning Law Firm, I specialize in supporting family caregivers. It’s one of the most important parts of my job.

If you’re caring for an older relative, you’ve probably experienced it. You ask your loved one to do something. It could be anything: get dressed, take medicine on time, anything. Your loved one refuses.

Why does this happen? There are as many reasons as there are people. Fear of death, worries about being forced into a nursing home (if they’re not already there), dementia, frustration at the losses that come with advanced age, and depression over those losses are a few examples.