prag-m&-tik

pragmatic: (adj)

Practical; concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.

Way to go, Wiktionary. Nailed it.

I'm Eric, one of the two Pragmatic Caregivers. We're two guys, with absolutely no academic or professional qualifications whatsoever, who have been thrust into the role of caregiver for an 84-year-old parent, who will go by the pseudonym Cal. (But I swear, we really are Eric and Jon.)

Four years ago, Cal had a bad surgical outcome - he went from being an independent 80 year old with orthopaedic problems and the various frailties of aging to someone who was no longer able to live safely and comfortably in an independent manner. Quite literally overnight we had to go from being concerned adult children to active managers of virtually every aspect of his life. We knew *nothing*, but we both take a very practical, results-driven approach to every other aspect of our lives, and thus, we learned on the job.

Here, we will present some of our random musings - things that work, things that have not worked, things that we're working on. We don't make any money from anything related to caregiving - our business is geeky in the best possible way and we're really proud of what we do, but the commentary here is absolutely 100% free of crass commerce - and if we mention a specific product or service, we'll explain our relationship to the organization, which will probably range somewhere on the scale from "totally satisfied customer" to "preparing pitchforks and burning torches to storm the headquarters".

We'll periodically exercise our editorial prerogative and comment on emerging science, various clinical innovations, bad science in media and whatever we think might be useful.

Eric