November is National Family Caregiver Month. In a multi-person household, keeping track of everyone’s needs and schedules is rarely easy. When one or more family members have disabilities, things get even more complicated. Besides generating expenses, appointments, and paperwork that…
Thanks to BridgingApps team members, Cathy Foreman (Special Projects) and Marjorie Reichard (Project Manager), for contributing personal perspectives to the following article. Over 9 percent of people in the U.S. have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is a challenge…
You may have heard of “high-functioning alcoholics”—people who work steady jobs and seem immaculate in public, but become cranky and ill at home if they miss a regular dose of wine. If someone hints their drinking is “a bit much,”…
This post is dedicated to October as Fire Prevention Month. Emergency preparation is an essential that too few people are proactive about. One Liberty Mutual survey found that fewer than 3 in 10 families had ever had a home fire…
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, anyone with a disability has the right to “reasonable accommodations“–modifications to public and work environments as required for equal participation in everyday activities. A few examples: employee handbooks in audio form; captions or a…
September is Newborn Screening Awareness Month—but in modern obstetrics, much screening takes place weeks or months before the birth. Pregnancy has always been a time of extensive preparation—and of learning that things never go according to script. Not even when…
Life inevitably includes unwelcome surprises; and for parents, among the most dreaded surprises is hearing that their baby isn’t as physically and mentally “perfect” as hoped. But if this happens to you, don’t let anyone tell you that your child’s…
(This article is partly adapted from “Polypharmacy: What Is It and Are You at Risk?,” a workshop presented by Jay Gupta at the Houston 2022 Abilities Expo.) Polypharmacy: the simultaneous use of multiple drugs by a single patient, for one…
Read Time 5 Minutes “It’s not the ‘challenge’ of having a child with special needs. It’s the privilege of having a kid with special needs.” –Alan Roesch, father of a teenager with neurological disabilities Whether a disability is diagnosed before…
Read Time 5 Minutes If there’s anything worse than having your plans spoiled, it’s having plans spoiled when they include someone who has autism or Down syndrome, who never heard the unspoken “circumstances permitting” behind “we’ll go to the beach…
