today i have with me tracy lawrence who's a very special person to help multigenerational families deal with aging parents welcome tracy to the show and thank you very much for making it my pleasure van what i'd love to ask you about is your expertise in dealing with memory issues is it dimension or is it normal aging please tell me about that oh that's a great question many people asked me about it because both of my parents succumb to dementia so i have unfortunately a great deal of first hand experience so you know as as we age we all experience some kind of memory loss when we approach middle age we often find ourselves going into a room and then we forget why we went into that room in the first place and that's a very natural normal thing people will get a little unnerved by it and sometimes the i wonder if something more serious is happening but when people start wondering whether or not they actually have a condition like to mention i often ask them well do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning now if you forgot what you had for breakfast  that's you know that's a small problem but if you forget that you had breakfast all right that's where you where you really do have a problem and that's that's kind of how i frame that question is it to help people not stress so much about the idea of have possibly having dementia and when they can't answer you and tell me start rambling you know the answer right then and there well yes but then again when my mom has had dementia and she would forget that she'd had breakfast her tummy might rumble anyway so that's not always better so what is the difference so many people wonder is that all farmers is a dimension is it normal well there are people get confused because the alzheimer's association does a really magnificent marketing job so many people are aware of alzheimer's and they think that all all alzheimer's is dementia but it's the other way around dementia is an all in compas ing term that refers to cognitive decline so alzheimer's disease is one type of dementia that a lot of people know about because of their their great marketing and they do really great outreach also there are great organization but there are lobes shrink and very often the afflicted person acting appropriately and they say lou things when they never did before and then there's vascular dementia which is actually pretty common first it's short term memory loss that's the big the big tip off ask you the same question three four times in the same conversation and that's how you can kind of see that someone is getting to that realm  little body disease is different in that usually the people who are afflicted have they have they can have tremors they can present with what they call a mask a math what is it that you mean by that well they they  they don't show any emotion they just kind of you know don't kind of be out of it but not really responsive whereas people with other forms of dementia may be more emotional because a lot of the times we don't realize how unsettling it is to not be able to remember how you got into a particular place or a particular room where you're constantly losing your memories and it can be very anxiety provoking let me ask you this a lot of other typical signs  aging include of course hearing loss yes so how does hearing loss perhaps get can used with a type of defense or you mentioned this to me previously and i thought i was found fantastically interesting how someone can have a hearing loss yet be mistaken for dimension yes it is not playing together that's a great question very often people who have hearing loss are in denial about it or they try to mas hearing to a disability they don't understand what you say and if they're older then their their lack of appropriate response may be misinterpreted as dementia and many people with respond appropriately in america the melting pot especially in new jersey where we're so close to new york to kind of the melting spots the spills over is there anything that the temple sign for someone who's multi lingual bilingual they came to this country maybe many years ago since we're talking about senior citizens do they forget perhaps american english because they go back to their mother tongue or do they switch in appropriately to they mix their languages what do you see in this film oh yes well that's a great question and we recently were both really well you know my of my first exposure to this was my grandmother my grandmother spoke english all her life but she came from romania and i got her first language was yet ish oh wow that's english yes and when she was the last time i saw her when she was she was in her late seventy's and moved to florida she kept forgetting how to speak english and that's that's a condition  aphasia is that related to dementia yes and it can happen to people who have any kind of brain syndrome were injury so that could be exasperated by the brain injury yes he's they've had a car accident and you're not necessarily older age that can happen as well but of course is it pro primary limb primarily primarily so does it is that primarily affecting older people with their or is it also because absolutely absolutely in fact my friend renee marie who has a foundation called language of love she is a stroke survivor and she has a wonderful organization called language of love where she raises awareness about strokes problem so i know that you have grand family planning which is a very unique company so quickly tell us about that because our time is running out ok so the idea behind grand family planning is that we help to take the stress out of planning for extended health care crises by helping families to figure out what they need to do before someone gets sick so we work as a team to provide legal financial organisational many other kinds of services that families need when they realize that they need to approach and deal with these kinds of situations illness in this country is a family affair and we want to families to be ready to help their loved ones i myself have gone through this crisis as well and i have been for quite some time with my father and i know that what you do is invaluable and if people don't know it yet unfortunately they probably will thank you very much tracy you've been a wealth of knowledge today thank you so much for having thanks for having i do have elderly parents and i really have been going through a tough time recently and i know there's millions of other new jersey residents doing the same much less throughout the country we've got to asked today and cover power of attorney documentation and how is it different in obtaining guardianship so lets us dig right into this because this is a critical topic please tell me what's the difference well adorable powers of attorney is a legal document in w to designate a trusted person called an agent to act in your behalf to make legal and financial decisions and implement those decisions when you're incapacitated what's the difference are there different types of power of attorney well yes there's several types one big difference is a health power of attorney usually referred to as advance health care directive or a living will and there's the financial durable power of attorney which strictly governs legal and financial matters there's also two other subsets of powers of attorney one is the springing power of attorney which only goes into effect if a person becomes incapacitated and the second type is an immediate durable power of attorney which goes into effect immediately even before the person becomes incapacitated why would somebody  out if the person is not yet incapacitated why do it because that of the trouble of and the time and effort of proving someone is incapacitated when the time comes to use it well let me ask you this if i'm perfectly in my right mind and hopefully a good body why would someone do this measure that takes place immediately because you usually designate a trusted person like a parent or child or spouse and again it would voids the trouble and difficulty of later on proving a capacity when you use the other type or spring type of power attorney so w stroke you can have a terrible car accident and be rendered incapacity in a matter of moments you should always have one in effect immediately while you're competent and you have the ability to comprehend what it is because legally speaking you can't enter into a power of attorney unless you understand what you're signing of course of then how is a different kind of guardianship a guardianship is a judicial proceedings  where someone is declared incapacitated or incompetent and a guardian is placed by the court and the court makes a decision who the guardian is going to be most you can automatically have your spouse  if someone's elderly and something happened to them let's say they went and became all timers or they have some serious illness can their healthy spouse not automatically become their guardian it's not automatic the court will point  attorney for the alleged incapacitated person and interview all family members and friends to determine who is the most appropriate guardian and it's and it's possible that it's not the spouse  issues herself and she may not be physically or mentally up to the task in the responsibility of being someone's legal guardian so then let me ask you if the court's making this decision who do they know to pull this decision for so for example what if there's two adult children and there's a spouse and they decide that they should not choose the special what happens if they choose a child who would really it doesn't have an interest in being the guardian well there's a whole  procedure as a procedural mechanism to protect the incapacitated person the court will appoint an attorney to whose sole function or his or her sole function is to represent the incapacitated person and make recommendations that are in the best interests for that person so then when should the family have an attorney because now you're saying the court appointed attorney so does that mean there's two attorneys involved yes that's why there's a divorce there's two attorneys involved there exactly because it's an expensive procedure the family has to hire an attorney to represent them to initiate the guardianship once the petition for guardianship is filed then the court under new jersey law will appoint a second attorney or a court appointed attorney to represent the alleged incapacitated person who pays the c paid out of the estate or assets of the alleged incapacitated person what if they don't have assets then the family has to pay out of their own pocket for out and there's no way that medicaid or medicare helps with that expense no absolutely not it's not covered by any form of insurance so this is good to now so i really appreciate this information we need to have you back for many of the low elder caught elder law issues that one can encounter thank you much thank my fire are a great asset for anyone in my position to have to bring more inspiration in jersey residents because elder law is important for everyone to know we all have people we love that are affected by it thank you thank you as it is chemicals could you be exposed at work employers are today i have dan calling welcome dan dan is amazing he has been a detective for twenty eight years and is the founder of burglaries solutions and best again consulting firm  over twenty years as a county detective and as a commander and founder of the morris county burglary task force which conducts complex investigation targeting organized burglary crews dan thank you so much for joining us today and i know we are here to specifically counter the concerns people have about their aging parents who might still be living alone tell us a little bit about how criminals target the elderly population please there are some significant burglary crews that travel around the country that target seniors in the elderly these crews quite often what they'll do is they will drive around neighborhoods and they'll look for homes that they feel are occupied strictly by senior couple of senior individual so they're going to look for things like maybe the yards a little on kamte maybe there's a vehicle in the driveway that's a little older with a handicap plate and they're going to then try and get into the house if they can how what is the easiest way to tell if the house is most vulnerable by who lives there what they'll usually do is they'll have teams of men and women that will knock on the door and talk about maybe doing some home repair or asked to use the bathroom and then they'll try and subtly intimidate the senior to get into the house and so that they allow them in the house usually one will go generally want to harm the person because that elevates the degree of crime and they're aware of that they're aware of that so it goes from a property crime to an assault or a home invasion so they try to avoid that but that doesn't minimize the impact on the senior that this happens to of course the one question as you just mentioned how it elevates what would be the legal difference if someone's going into your home to steal from you isn't that a home invasion isabelle's a burglary i mean they're going to invade your home to steal from you what is the legal difference technically it's a home invasion if somebody is in the house but what really elevates it if they assault a homeowner a simple plan so that when their door rings when somebody's doorbell rings when somebody comes to their door that they have something that they do rather than just open the door and by then it's too late such as give us an example please so such as now today with cell phones the senior can have a cell phone they can call a loved one a neighbor a family member as soon as the doorbell rings have them on the phone when they answer the door so that if it is a bad situation than the person on the other end of the line can call the police and have them respond to the how is there anything else they can do that's easy you know here that it's a great deterrent to have a dog is that still recommended for seniors it is anything that's going to make them believe that that person isn't a good target or a good victim or is going to get them caught or get them hurt is a good thing so it could be a dog it could be somebody else in the house they can pretend to be talking to somebody upstairs who is you know grandchild or another family member or anything that can get them to not want to go into that how they're saying the person is not really on that does that help it does help you know when somebody comes the door well let me get my daughter my son my grandson he's upstairs let me have him come down let me get my rather muscular thirty year old grandson his other strapping  o help me with this what can the adult children or the grandchildren do to help having cameras in the house that sometimes children will put cameras in their elderly parents house to see to make sure if they fall into see if there's a problem to see if they've left the stove on anything like that and those people may not even be aware that the cameras are there but at least it allows the senior the opportunity to live alone and the children to make sure that their loved ones are safe this is really great and helpful i appreciate it very much and hopefully get out some more information and come back another time thank you so much dan thank you do you need to blow the whistle on unsafe conditions at work you may be protected by new jersey law and by the federal agency called osha for information go to n j web dot org or osha dot gov this message brought to you by the new jersey work environment coun welcome back to stop my crisis i have here with me now donna price don is an author speaker and business marketing strategist that has taken inspiring story that she has from taking a wild idea and turning it into an actionable items she takes it and makes it happen donna is also just launched her third book last month congratulations tell me what do you do to make this happen what is the story behind this amazing new book well thanks for having me here i'm glad to be here the book actually started in two thousand and six and it's based on my story of deciding to bike across the country back in one thousand nine hundred six wow where did you but from where to where from portland maine to the coast of oregon so the book started off as a tell some an hour and then became a book and now it's in its third edition and it really is about how you take that idea that daydream that you have and you've been imagining it and take it off the shelf and make it part of your life instead of just a daydream when did the stream start phew when did it start butting up into your brain well it really just started right around that time in one nine hundred ninety five and i had done some bicycle touring when i was a teenager and started riding a bike again and loved it and just started telling people i'm going to bike across the country next year and you just did it you your decision did you do it alone or with someone or how did that come to fruition well actually what i found is that when you start telling people about a dream that doors opened that you didn't really know existed and so i started talking about it i joined a bike club people in the bike club said you got to come out on the ride and they started training me how to ride a bicycle long distance and then i went to a bike leader training in pennsylvania and they said you know our organization sponsors rides and you should talk to your local chapter maybe the sponsor the ride for you so an international organization that sponsored the ride and it was called the peace tour we did ten service projects across the country and small group that did the ride but i learned a lot about myself about organizing something like that and accomplishing something you know what did you learn about yourself well i came up with a few values that i kind of carry with me all the time you know one of them is that you have to be willing to risk that you don't make wild ideas happen if you don't take a risk to do it the second is you have to be committed fully committed to what you're doing it's an all in you know not a wishy washy maybe i'll do this you really have to like put yourself all in so commitment and then perseverance you have to keep working at it to really make it happen i think of the rocky mountains like it's my perseverance metaphor of biking uphill for thirty miles you have to just keep pedaling one pedal after another and that's kind of how other things in your life are too that you have to just keep taking that step forward did you have situations do you just mentioned it's more likely to happen something big and wild and crazy and wonderful and fun or maybe not fun just challenging that you want to make happen into an actual reality when you start talking about this did some of the people you mention it to were not supportive or was everyone very supportive of the site yeah that's a great question because people that's one of the things that happens when you have a wild idea whether it's biking across the country starting your own business you know or whatever it is you have naysayers or people that say oh you can't do that you're never going to do that why would you want to do that you're going to quit your job and get people to people what other things well it's interesting because people do it and then we do it to ourselves as well it's good for your soul to have a dream because if you have some good looking forward to because i can't imagine it in march you say let's do this cross country bike race and it's done in april so they took planning right to get build up to it definitely and that's one of the things that i discovered also i had a small advisory team that came to my house every month i cooked them dinner and then they helped me create the whole plan and bike ride and without them we would have been in trouble a couple of times because they had knowledge that i didn't have how long did that planning taken your situation about ten months wow so that is a lot of commitment planning you have to keep saying i'm going to get this done in that preparation period naysayers in your life and what did you do with that there there were people that were naysayers definitely you know but i just kept moving it forward and saying this is what i'm doing you know and so you can choose to keep those people and talk with them and keep them in your life or you can kind of inch them out of as much involvement in your life what happens and your opinion if you have someone else has a big dream and they really want to accomplish so let's say for example someone and start their own business because you deal with a lot of business owners and perspective business owners but someone close in their lives it's a it's a parent or spouse that says that's not a good idea it's cost you too much money it's not going to be reliable income what do you do with those types of naysayers well i talk with the perspective business owner about you know what their dream is for that business you know part of it is that we have this perception that a job is safe and secure i don't think any longer very corporate america people don't have pensions any longer they don't have the golden parachute situation so i don't think any longer right and even if you have a job at sun to guarantee that you're going to have that job till you retire you know so a business can be a better option for some people and so it's again having that confidence to really stand up for yourself and stand up for what you want and what you're trying to accomplish but it is their parent that's stopping supportive do you suggest that they just redirect the conversation when it comes up what do you do with someone who's not supporting you in your dream and you can't get rid of them in your life well it's definitely hard when it's a parent you know i talk about having real conversations with people and talking about how you're feeling you know what your goals are why you're doing what you're doing you know you don't want to eliminate a parent from your life you know hope some i write that most of us you know want to do have but i know that my dad when i decided to go into business said you know you're going to quit your job to do this you're going to give up all of that you know so i think it's scary for people and so you have to recognize kind of where they're coming from like their fears and their anxieties around it and trying to alleviate those as much as you can well i work with people on their business strategy and on their marketing strategy so mostly it's focused on how to grow their business most effectively how to make marketing work for them instead of throwing money at marketing and not have it working for them well that's a great idea and time does fly and i know that if you give our viewers to see one solid take away what is the best benefit that you found from accomplishing this amazing feat in your life what happened for you how did that benefit you great question huge question but i think it's just that you feel that feeling of satisfaction that you've accomplished something that you had set out to accomplish you know in the build your self confidence for years to come that it really happened that way i think it really did you know it gives you the it empowers you to do other things that is the best place where i think one large accomplishment helps power you and push you forward to do even better and bigger things in the future and lives you more courage to face hard times in the future right definitely i think that's a great way thank you very much don appreciate it thank