Winner of a Gold Medal, 2017 Living Now Book Award in the Caregiving category

Shortlisted for the 2016 Sarton Women's Book Awards in the Memoir category presented by the Story Circle Network

For millions of Americans caregiving is the "new normal." For Laura Katz Olson, a respected researcher of long-term care for the agingElder Care Journey chronicles the disruption of her world and how it is upended by the ever-increasing long-distance needs of her own mother.

A healthy, Senior Olympics medal winner, Olson's mother is slowly and steadily incapacitated by Parkinson's disease and a gradual loss of vision. Thrust into a long-distance caregiving role, Olson finds her previous academic notions about assisting a frail parent increasingly at odds with the reality of the lived experience. In a narrative full of "ah-ha!" moments, tears, sighs, and outrage that will be familiar to many, Olson opens a window into the nursing home and home care industries that consume much in the way of taxpayer dollars, but often fail to deliver quality care. Olson's personal story vividly demonstrates not only the overwhelming bureaucratic barriers faced by care-dependent seniors but also their beleaguered adult children's attempts to ensure their parents' health, safety, and well-being.

Acknowledgments
Prologue

1. The Precarious Situation of the 1950s Woman

2. Athlete to Cane: The Elusive Search for a Disease

3. The Reluctant Long-Distance Caregiver

4. Coping with Blindness

5. From Crisis to Crisis

6. The Bottom Falls Out

7. From Bad to Worse: Rehabilitation to Debilitation

8. Through the Looking Glass

9. A Place in Pennsylvania

10. Navigating Our Way Home

11. Reports of Her Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

12. A Good Enough Place

13. A Nursing Home Daughter

14. Peeling the Onion: A Glimpse into Long-Term CareProvider Ownership

15. Conclusion: The Future of Long-Term Care

Notes
Bibliography