When a family member or friend is diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness, there are a lot of questions that run through your head. This biggest one is probably, “What can I do to help?” Being a caregiver for an ill loved one doesn’t have to be as hard as you think. Yes, there will be challenges that you will face, but with the right tips and tricks, you can face these challenges head on and become the best caregiver you can be for your loved one.

It can be challenging helping an aging parent manage their health, even when they are open to receiving your assistance. But what about the additional challenges you face when they resist your help?

Whether that resistance is due to pride, denial, or the desire to not be a burden, here are a few things to remember and some tips that may encourage mom or dad to accept the help they need.

There's no way to sugarcoat it. Being a caregiver is exhausting. That's why it's so important for you to remember to include some down time as part of your required caregiver duties. This is especially true if you're already experiencing symptoms of caregiver burnout, such as anxiety, exhaustion, difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, or feeling resentful toward the person you’re helping.

When she lost someone she loved, she didn't even want to leave the house anymore. Luckily, she had someone who cared.

Alzheimer’s Disease, the most common cause of dementia, is not a normal part of aging. This unforgiving disease destroys an individual’s mental functions and can create significant emotional stress for the individuals who have it and the people who care about them.

If you’ve been hearing a lot about chronic care management, coordinated care, or even your doctor wanting to prescribe one of these for you, there is good reason. Medicare is changing the way they pay doctors, giving them more reasons to focus on quality of service, and paying for health benefits like coordinated care to improve patient health.

This is all really great news for you! Here’s why.

Need to get healthy? Maybe your doctor has told you to improve your physical fitness in order to prevent or even delay heart disease, diabetes, or certain cancers. Maybe you want to lose weight or have more energy. No matter what your reason or even your age, getting started may be easier than you think.

Whenever folks get together to talk about innovations in health and wellness, you can count on CareSync to be there.  We hope you'll be up front at the Miami Beach Convention Center from May 14 through May 16, asking questions and introducing yourselves as we demonstrate our care coordination and medical records products and apps for doctors, other clinicians, medical practices and hospitals, patients, caregivers and families.

For 17 years, Betsy Walling Furler and her husband, Eric, have been frantically gathering paperwork. They don't have OCD and they do have jobs.

But this paper chase isn't optional: ever since their oldest son, Henry, was a baby, the Furlers have been on a life-or-death mission to make sure the medical records they have on Henry, who has several serious congenital diseases, are absolutely accurate and up-to-date.

"He was three weeks old," recalls Betsy, "when a doctor nearly killed him [because of misinformation on Henry's health]. That's when I realized that we needed to be captain of the ship."

Thus began a life of escalating stacks of papers and DVDs, and enormous binders to try to organize it all (but how do you organize it? by disease? by date? both? does it need an index? having done that, will any doctor really look at it all and find the right bits of information?). And constant anxiety: was there something they missed? A fact doctors ought to know, but might not?

"Collecting medical records over the years has been extremely frustrating and extremely overwhelming," says Betsy. "I'm a healthcare professional - a speech pathologist - and I still wasn't able to get complete medical records on Henry."

So it was a relief, and an accident, this March when the Furlers found CareSync and finally acquired a first mate on their ship of medical records. Betsy, who works with BridgingApps.org on apps to help disabled and non-verbal children and adults communicate, was working on a new project focused on frequently hospitalized individuals when a co-worker suggested they try CareSync for the new venture.

"I know the CEO," said the co-worker, offering to connect Betsy with CareSync's Travis Bond to learn more about CareSync's medical records retrieval and care coordination app and services.

Betsy didn't wait for the introduction and went straight to CareSync.com, where she signed up for CareSync Plus, the service where the customer supplies the name of the doctors, hospitals and labs - all of them, at least 27 in Henry's case - and CareSync does the rest, generating a digital record and summary accessible 24/7 via web or any mobile device, ready to share with any doctor or anyone else the patient designates.

A few weeks later, Betsy and Travis wound up unexpectedly face-to-face in a White House executive office meeting room with other apps developers in D.C. to discuss issues including patent law reform, data security, privacy, and safety for children online.

"I'm a CareSync user, and I love it," proclaimed Betsy, surprising Travis and White House officials as she pulled out her iPhone and demonstrated how she had all of her family's medical records literally in the palm of her hand, including Henry's, ready to use and share.

That's especially valuable when on the road, because Henry's multiple conditions have him in the hospital about twice a month, and medical decisions could be imminent at any time. Meanwhile Henry - an ambitious teen looking forward to college and more - has no intention of allowing biology to hold him back from the future he's planning. He's using the app to prepare to manage his health when living on his own.

Henry's challenges include medically intractable epilepsy - that is, epilepsy that is very difficult to treat: so far 20 drugs have failed, but an implanted device has brought some relief, shortening seizure duration from about six minutes to a minute and a half.

He's on a special diet to help rein in the epilepsy, and a mistake on that, Betsy notes, cannot be allowed to happen. "If he were given an IV with dextrose," she explains, "he could go into status epilepticus [clusters of seizures or continuous seizure]."

Henry also copes with two other chronic conditions, a neuro-metabolic disorder and dysautonomia, which can cause problems including tachycardia, when the heart beats too fast.

Then there are the allergies: at least 13 that are vital for doctors and others to be aware of. Many of these, Betsy notes, surfaced when Henry was very young, so his parents remember, but he doesn't. But even though he's a frequent patient at the hospital, every time they check in they get the same old questions, including: What are the allergies? What happens if he's exposed to any of those substances? What medications is he taking?

"Now," says Betsy, "I just show them my iPad, everything is spelled correctly, it's got the exact dosages - they love it."

The Furlers also give high marks to another CareSync feature: the summary we create describing the patient's overall situation at a glance (also very popular with the doctors, medical practices, patients and caregivers served by our Chronic Care Management program).

"I love the summary," says Betsy, who like many patients and caregivers has written a few of her own in the past. The difference with CareSync, she notes, is the objectivity. "When you're looking at things through your own lens, you can forget to mention things that are familiar to you but might be important for others to know."

We all know that massage has been proven to reduce stress and help make us feel better. When it's applied to people with certain medical conditions, the benefits open up a vast world of possibilities. While the medical community still bickers over the real benefits, there isn't any greater aspect to massage than when it can reduce pain in patients who have cancer.