The Secret Caregivers

In 2008, Helen Colbert, once the fireball of her family, became weak and incoherent. Parkinson's disease and diabetes had slowly overtaken her. Helen's children brought her to the hospital, where she spent two days before being transferred unexpectedly to a nursing home in the middle of the night. When her son Louis visited her there the following day, Helen, now 86, was traumatized, unfed, and apparently untreated. That's when Louis—an executive at an office on aging in suburban Philadelphia—sprang into action. … Back to Article