hi welcome to only seniors i'm your host tom callahan that only seniors would like to talk about issues pertaining to senior living senior care issues that might come up when trying to find senior living or senior care for years i worked on this so we side and i started my own consulting agency about five years ago when the because people didn't know what to look for when it came to elder care it seems we know what to look for when it comes to child care it's very easy but when it comes to caring for our elders not loved ones we kind of lose it once in a while i started my own firm and made sure that i educated people on what was available to them and what questions to ask my guests tonight is doing pretty much the same thing a started a website called w w advocate for mom and dad dot com it's meant to educate people about what goes on when looking for senior living in elder care that welcomed only seniors thank you tom thank you for asking to be with you today thank you so tell me a little bit about yourself first how did you get into writing a blog for care well it's a personal experience  had the privilege of seeing my dad through congestive heart failure and because i was a consultant and had a little fucks ability i accompanied him to a lot of doctor visits and got to see what it takes to manage a chronic illness  in bed and think where do i start what do i do i just didn't know it was it was overwhelming and you know i was kind of looking for this website saying well ok what can you expect what w you say and so that's really how it and my mom's the one who said to me you know you should you should do something with this you've learned so much you can help people ok mom well i will tell you you're in the same positions as thousands of people throughout the united states as i always say you know we know what to do with kids but we don't know what to do with our elders what was one of the first things that you learned trying to figure this out i think one of the first things i learned was that there are really four things you should need to you can be proactive and think about and get in place the first is do you know what you parents want for end of life and the second is could you pay their bills if you had to and the third is can you legally talk to their doctors given a hippo law and the fourth is what community resources are out there and that last one you can be very proactive about i'll tell you a funny story my dad n talked about me being his durable power of attorney for a long time he was in the hospital we think we're going to lose him i go looking for that paperwork we had never signed it so i you know three days in that hospital visit i have a friend who's a notary come into the hospital we had family members there and we actually he signed it they signed it and we notarized it and then we did the same thing for my mom so as much as we thought we were prepared we weren't but seems to be a common thread throughout her care is you know we were prepared for it and i funny thing is we have our whole lives to prepare for these things mean we don't want to talk about it what was the most surprising thing that you learned  the over whelming choices about care for my mother i think the biggest choice people face right away is do you go the private pay care or you need to go an agency and there are real advantages and disadvantages to both of those things and i'll be honest with you my parents worked very hard but they don't have a lot of money and so finances were a big thing for me you know what do we have what what what do we have how can i make that money stretch what can we do and so there are things we put in place but the private versus versus the agency was incredible again you know we headed down that path and then somebody said to me you know for medicaid there's a five year look back and i'm like ok so what does that mean and when they explained it to me that basically they will look at every check including the check to shoprite to see where your money has gone over the last five years and if you've been doing private pay they have the right to deny you or to hold you off or certainly at the time and i'm like i can't risk that i can't risk that so we wound up going with an agency and that you know the advantages to the agency i'll tell you with the private pay we rehired someone she was going to start saturday friday to get a phone call and she says to me my daughter in poland is pregnant having problems i'm going to poland and i was back to ground zero i'm like ok then i've got  start over again this with an agency with a little bit of time they can bring someone else in you're not you know the the problem of an of an caregiver needing to leave for a little while doesn't go away but you're not to back to ground zero yourself so that whole process the time it took the phone calls the due diligence you have to do was just astonishing to me what was your greatest resource during your research i have to tell you everybody which is part of the reason why i started this blog people were so degeneracy with sharing with me how they had made the decisions what surprised them what they learned what their resources were i mean i'd be stand in and shop right and start  conversation only to head down this path was some poor unsuspecting person but it was enabled me to say ok well well that piece of this worked that piece of this work this piece work this is what will work for our family because there many choices out there so many choices how were your parents in discussing this was or any resistance or were the open to the discussion i have to tell you i am very fortunate and i say that all the time for two reasons both my parents have all their faculties my mom still does to be eighty five in february and she's still sharp as a tack and my dad was much more open than my mother was like really very traditional he made a lot of the choices and decisions and paid the bills but you know the fact that my father said to me i need you to be my durable power of attorney and this is what it's going to take in the fact that he came to me and said he made my sister in law her health is health care proxy because she's a nurse and you have to know my daddy goes because i know carol will do this when the time comes or she needs to do it like he knew she could make the choices we could so he was incredibly open about that when when we lost my father you know my mom was in a daze and we still had lots of conversations but she was like ok you know i know you're going to do right by me i trust you i'm like no mom i could run off with this money to bahamas because you're not going to so i'm not worried about it so you know if i was very fortunate that they were willing to take a lot of families resist talking about it we're very even have that conversation and so i've been given a lot of thought to how do you break that barrier and what i've learned from some people is sometimes it's easier for your parent to hear it from a peer so if there's a trusted family member or a trusted friend or neighbor that you feel comfortable saying you know we're trying to get mom and dad to think about durable power of attorney in this and that you know if you have that conversation with them chinese see where they are in this make them comfortable with it and sometimes it's a little bit of a back door to get that conversation started it's very true lot of parents won't look at their children for that because no matter what happens you're so your parents daughter yeah absolutely and you know you don't dictate to me i dictate to you but it's true what appear says it to them it's kind of like oh right they're a little more open a little more open to it  you know sometimes you just have to find that right avenue to do it but what some people do is once they get rejected once they stop trying to have that conversation right red you know i always advise people keep trying you know trying different avenues to that conversation and i will tell you to i had somebody i had this conversation with someone about getting them to talk to their parents and their response was oh i've tried to talk about putting everything into trust and how it's like well that is like so far down the line of what you need to talk about i mean that's a real that's that's like it is a conversation don't you don't start there in my mind right putting everything into trust like that's a financial conversation that happens on the line but mom dad you know what if you need to pay your bills right what would you want you know let's talk about a living will what would you want to that happen so i think sometimes where you enter the conversation can be as important as what you want to talk about  w advocate for mom and dad dot com so deborah w w advocate for mom and dad dot com is kind of the website i was hoping for in it's a very personal website i agonize sometimes over the stories that i tell because it really it always starts with how it happened in our family so i'll give you an example i had my mom out on a beautiful saturday and about a month ago and i had her in or out of that car in around her wheelchair three times because there are things we need to do and one was going to lunch which was really fun and i said to our said mom i have water for you and her response was i don't want to drink i want to have to the bathroom and i  k hot day hydration you know and so when i got home i gave her water we sat down we had watermelon together and that article that blog flowed out of me the next day about in th heat waves be aware these are the science of dehydration you know and here's where it gets personal you know even a mention like i've suddenly noticed like my mom will kind of go to the bathroom when she's on her way to somewhere else you know and that's part of just the effort and the mobility issues you know what i'm saying and so and it's a they run a real risk of u t i right hair ablate and that's that's just can really impact their health in a bad way so you know it's always a personal story this is our experience this is what happened and then it always ends with lessons learned and resources i come from an education background so to me it's huge what did we learn and  resources that helped us love you and that's exactly what i try to do and it's you know you're preaching to the choir right here you've got to know what to do and one things that i say every summer to every group i talk to his mom and dad are like houseplants they need water to survive yes they do you don't want to them things happen so yes i know exactly what you're talking about tell me more about the website what else is on there so i kind of  sat down to design this i kind of thought like what were the major categories that i needed to think about through through all that so so one of the major categories are are you legal things like what where's your will do you have a durable power tourney do you have  you know health care proxy you know what are those legal pieces of the puzzle that you should have in place and that gets back to those sometimes hard conversations what about health care right so so for example  have you been an advocate for your parents like walking into the doctor's office what do you what should you do and say like one of the things that drives me crazy as an advocate could be a doctor's office could be your home with us someone who's come in to fix something could be an agency they talk to me they ask questions of me and i always turn to my mother and say mom and she might not have heard it and i may need to repeat it but just because i'm or advocate doesn't mean i'm her voice and having all our faculties means that she has she understands what's going on which may not hear it right away but she understands and so she needs to make that choice and decision might we talk about it afterwards yes so regal health care one of the first blogs i wrote was talking about in a chronic illness just how many medications you and the doctor have to manage and my father would come home from his doctor visits and as sick as he was going his office an update his medical chart who's the doctor who's the pill what pill when do i take it what did the doctor say and we carried that everywhere i can't tell you the amount of times that we walked into a doctor's office and we had updated for them that is huge it's huge and so what i did in this is an honor of my father so underneath that tips for medication managing medication is an excel spreadsheet that's my father spreadsheet and a word document that people can just download and use because you don't understand the level of effort it takes that is worth the price of admission to that website thank you that is that is huge i can't tell people that how important that is because when you go to the doctor you know they're going to ask you know what are you taking how long have you been taking if there's a medical emergency they're going to ask that question and you also want to make sure that you're talking to your pharmacist about that because unfortunate what happens with a lot of our elders is they get put on all these different medications and if one doctor prescribe something they're not necessarily checking with the other doctor to prescribe something so there could be some drug interaction absolutely so having a list like that is vitally important is actually especially when filling a new prescription to a form yeah and again w w w advocate for mom and dad dot com has that a form right there ready for you now excuses anymore for not having that i just download it and use it so legal health care safety and care i write about the fact that my parents did some really smart things in their house in terms of taking the tub out as a walk in shower that their handlebars everywhere that they don't put up a higher vanity so it's easier to stand at the vanity for them write a lot about caregiving and how to be an advocate for that in i deconstruct like home care versus home health are two very different things and are paid for differently and we went with the home care so i just define that and then kind of deconstruct it and say look when they command for the interview these are the things you can expect them to do and when the home care agent walks in they're not going to get on the ladder because they can't they're not going to do outside yard work you should have gloves in the house for them because they're going to want to use those and oh by the way they're not a medical person so i have to put mom's pills in the boxes and do her shots and then they just oversee it so understanding that  resources is another one like what are the resources in the community and then the final one kind of the hard one is family dynamics that is huge what are the dynamics between you and your parents were the dynamics between you and your siblings your siblings and your parents again i'm so fortunate my brother and i are on the same page he doesn't live anywhere near us he can't help out physically he and his wife help out in other ways and we're good with that you know we talk about stuff all the time and  and so i'm so fortunate there's not a sibling living far away who doesn't understand and us trying to change the dynamics or change the things you know the thing i wrote about was i'm still angry you know my life has changed you know it's stupid to be mad at mad a dead man but you know that's part of what you're feeling there's going to be feelings of great love and great anger great guilt and great joy ok that's ok that's perfectly normal so those are the broad categories that either i write or i have will have other people write for me i've got some folks who are kind of yes contributors i have one woman nancy so one who writes about how you manage your money and she wrote a great article about medical identity theft that she let me post you know how when it happens what are the consequences how do you recover from it working with someone right now about  dynamics and grief like they're such there's joy but there's also grief in that caregiving process because you realize you needing to start to let go and it comes and goes in waves and that's again how do you deal with that  yeah it's just it's just kind of i and the crazy part is family wise i've only written about so far when my dad was ill you know the next phase is kind of ok once you pass what are all the things i have to do for my mom do you know this is a funny story you think you have all your your your documents in place my dad's died i need their marriage certificate for everything for social security for disability benefits in order to get the p s e and g name and her bill in her name so i can use it for identity it has the wrong date not crazy right turns out like fifteen years ago my parents realize that had the wrong date they went back to their hometown they paid to have a change and the registrar at that point sent them the certificate with the wrong data again days later after bury my father in a snowstorm i'm in their hotel town getting the corrected copy because it was right in the book she had just written the wrong name down but time that's my only piece of advice just make sure i know when we were doing care for my mom we had to get her marriage certificate my parents were married in the catholic church so we went we got the catholic church to fit so it's like no things you know there's you know just like you said you think you have all your documentation however yeah not always that you know and i and i look at that and i think there are some of us who was a lesson and so maybe the lesson learned is you want to start have a conversation with your mom and dad and say i never see your marriage certificate where is that let's look at it and start the conversation there about tell me about the day was it hot was a cold and while you're looking at it i said oh i see you were married here this date this time and it kind of is a way of opening the door it's a way of spending and being with them but a way of opening the door to having some of those conversations that's a great i often talk about that is how to start that conversation you know you don't have to start right out with your mom what you want to do if you're stuff like that is majorly important you don't realize how important this paperwork is and to you need it and then you have to go find exactly exactly you know if you've had any for lack of better word will say disaster if you've had a fire in the house or if there's been a flood or something getting copies of that documentation be very difficult it takes a long time it does yeah and i dad was great my dad left me with a piece of paper that this is this is the retirement this is this with names and phone number so i had that to work off of which was fabulous what took me by surprise was the amount of time like the back and forth e mails and back and forth phone calls to actually settled whatever the issue is don't underestimate the amount of time it's going to take you to do this stuff and so you know that's really when dealing with the government yes and that's where you know as a family if there's other people local who can help you can maybe portion that off will you do me  did this down you do me a favor and you run this down when things i learned is when you call social security and it says there's a twenty minute wait leave your phone number we'll call you back they really do call you back they do they really  know you mentioned you have guess contributors to your i log how would somebody be able to become a guest contributor or how would they be able to write in or share one of their stories so the best way would be to that my e mail is deb at advocate for mom and dad dot com so that would be one way of getting ahold of me you can also leave a comment or contact me through the website in fact i'm in the i'm always doing things the website and right now i'm in the process of putting up like under the resources page how you can contact me so by the time this airs that will be there so you can go right to the website and you can just click on resources and then you can get to how to contact dab and i am i mean i'm looking for for example like a social worker to talk about what happens in the hospital and contribute that way i've met someone who does like grieve and bereavement counselling and counseling of elders that we're going to work with some of the fine family dynamics stuff so you know anything and legal or health care or safety is absolutely a topic for the blo what else is on that website you mentioned resources were types of resources due to so i point to community resource will community local and then other resources so we went after and attendant benefits and let me just say to everybody if one of your parents served in an act of war for one day they are eligible for aid and attendant benefits and it could be and i mother has it as the spouse and so someone turned us on to our going to zation called patriot angelos which is a nonprofit which guided us through the paperwork so they're out there  which is a wonderful tool where you can put kind of almost a picture frame in your mom and dad's house that you can send pictures and videos to paula mueller associate abby as out there just things that nancy's out there things i've run across along the way that i think is fabulous so and local resources as well different organizations that i run into i also do a review of books and videos i  reviewed being mortal but autobahn there and actually i'm giving it away this month because i reviewed it last month on the website if you sign up for the newsletter one person is going to win that book and i'm going to send it to him because personally i think everybody who has an aging parent and for yourself should read it it's easy to read he does a wonderful job of talking about everything and then videos as well that i run across around the way along the way one of the things i'm so excited about this one of the things that i started as a series on gratitude and so i've kind of run into some wonderful things in people's own organizations lately we don't always think about the people who work in a skilled nursing facility and what they do for their patients are always think about volunteer organizations so i spent an afternoon with adopt a senior they just want a national award for the volunteer of the year award program they go into nursing homes in manhattan in jackson new jersey and once a month give birthday gifts to people who have a birthday that month and at the holidays actually give a holiday gift based on what the senior wants we walk that facility with silly hats and kazoos handing out gifts tears their eyes i haven't opened a gift ages you know my birthday is next month will you be back and the gentleman who we said to him so what happens after the birth the cake he goes a girl jumps out well i don't know but we'll play happy birthday on the cause there for you and then a true senior living in princeton just did a night for three residents where they brought opera in and they had their families come in and they had a night of opera and the dinner was fabulous i mean one of the women in memory care one of the songs that was sung was if i loved you from rodgers and hammerstein and she just i mean she just perked up and was so intent because music is such a thing from it for people with alzheimer's she was so intent and i found out later that she and her mom used to sing show tunes all the time all the time so they are just different organizations second wind dream foundation habitat for humanity will come in and help you fix up a home  you know so somebody can age in place just good things happening well it sounds like there's a lot to be seen on this website and the name of the website again is w w w advocate for mom and dad dot com great well deb i think you're doing a fantastic job thank you i'll definitely be signing up for the newsletter and hopefully i'm going to try to contribute to your blog i would love that it's a great resource if you don't know what to do reach out google is always great thing