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" I&amp;#039;d like you to picture this scene. Pretend you&amp;#039;re watching a movie. And substitute yourself for me. Every Designated Daughter knows this story.  I am at a gathering. Everyone I love is there, except for Mom who is in the dawning stages of a health crisis. I am standing in the kitchen, in tears, because I need to find someone or somehow to help her. Right away. Right now. Someone I can trust.  Big Issue.  I am standing in the kitchen. There a is window-like opening there, looking into the dining room, where the buffet table is, and all the people. Each one, as they round the scrumptious buffet has some advice, a suggestion for me. Fresh fruit in hand and chicken salad, every person tries to calm me, but I am at my wit&amp;#039;s end.  I tried that! I tried that! I tell each person who passes, I called her! I called him! I cry.  I had no idea, then, just five years ago, that there was such a thing as a professional geriatric care manager. Or a person like Linda Fodrini-Johnson at the other end of a telephone line.  Linda is the president of the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers. There is a Linda in every zip code. Breathe out and let the panic abate. This is an organization of objective\u2013\u2013 caring, of course; compassionate, absolutely certified professionals in the fields of nursing, and gerontology and all the things a Designated Daughter doesn&amp;#039;t know.   If I were standing in that kitchen today, I would not be crying. As my loved ones circled the Panic-Go-Round with their well-meaning suggestions, I would stand on my side of the partition assuring them that my next step would be contacting the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers.  Have you heard about them? I&amp;#039;d ask, as I breathed out the fear and slowly began to breathe in the faith.  D.G. Fulford is the author of Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, written with her mother Phyllis Greene. She is also the co-founder of TheRememberingSite.org. You can find her at DGFulford.com.  Photo credit: Marcia Smilack "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a44336/panic-go-round-2744/>