Happy Fourth of July with Suzanne

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Hello everyone, and for here in the Pacific Northwest, in sea at all. It is fourth of July weekend, our Independence Day, and, believe it or not, here in Washington state we are actually open and it I have to say this Wednesday night I was out in an event out it novelty hill, Janet winery and Windville, and it was we sat outside in this beautiful, wonderful patio after an enormous heat wave that we’ve had here in the Pacific northwest, and it was so nice to see people relaxed, calm and there’s not a single person out in the patio wearing a mask, which was kind of a weird thing for you, and I don’t know how many of you out there, are trying to think about life again, which is very interesting. We’re like actually making summer plans and going places and doing things, and I hope you and your family are doing the same this week. Just talking to all of you. We have been through quite a year, haven’t we? With covid nineteen and all of the things that have happened. All of us have had to change the way we do things and so many of us are have been working from home, we have been isolating we haven’t seen so many of the people that we love for a very, very long time and we’ve been in a situation so often that we have had to rethink how we do things, and that has not changed. One of the things that I wanted to let all of you know is answers for elders has not been sleeping behind the scenes. I made the decision to use this time as an opportunity for us to do some really amazing things, and so you may have heard on our radio ads or different things like that, that we are now on all the major podcast platforms. That’s right, every single one of our relevant content that we’ve had in over four years now, that since we have been on the air here in the Pacific northwest. We have content, and just to go if any of you have not been to our website, I’m just going to kind of take you down a little bit of a path and the fact that we know that elder care is interconnected. For example, if you need housing for a senior, you’re going to be dealing with financial issues, you’re going to be dealing with health care issues and a care plan. Understanding a little bit about about how and what the best fit would be for a senior loved one. You’re going to be dealing with legal issues as far as a power of attorney, guardianship papers, potentially different types of things, financial, all of the different aspects of senior care that happen, and so it is our hope that we bring forward content that help you navigate, and really our whole goal is to empower families is they are navigating the daunting journey of senior care and as a result, we have a feature on our website called the decision guide and for you, those of you that may not know what the decision guide is, it is actually a a guide where each of our sixty four categories of expertise are fully defined. Industry information is there terms that you may not understand. We explain them to you and we help you find the best type of provider based upon you know, how to find the good ones out there for you know, for your loved ones, and so that’s a really big thing. So we encourage you to go on to answers for elderscom, if you’re in either a preplanning mode or in the middle of it, to go check out our content because it’s a hundred percent free. You can get information that is in history standards, different types of information that you may not know about. If you’re touring a new facility, you’re going to learn about what are the questions that I need to ask? What are the things that I need to know? And we really want you to know, each and every one of you, you that are listening, that you guys all have the power within you to do this. So we’re very, very excited. We’re also, of course, on all the major podcast platforms. That means right now we’re on apple, we’re on Google, we’re on spotify, we’re on Stitcher, we’re on deezer and I can’t even remember all of the different ones because we are on just pretty much all of the major platforms. And what that really means to you, guys, is no matter where you are in the world and if you want to look up information, all of our segments are there so you can find information on you know, whether it’s legal issues, whether it’s healthcare issue, whether you want to learn about Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or heart disease or wellness formulas or anything like that. We have had experts that are at the top of their field and you can grasp content that that might be relevant to your specific search. We’re excited about this because we’ve really expanded our horizones now from not only a western Washington type of a platform to now integrating into a whole new world where we’re going to be bringing in some of the top experts nationwide. And in the next hour, just so you know, we are going to have one of those experts, Mr Jim Taylor, who is an elder law attorney. He will be actually our guest for the last three segments of this hour and I wanted to kind of talk to you a little bit about why we expanded and what this really means. This is the first evolution of answer for elders where we are going out in all these platforms. But second of all, we’re going to be featuring what’s called channels, and channels are going to be a platform where as we will allow in, or have feature independently run stations where people can go in and we’ll have experts on specific areas of elder care that you can listen to. That’s outside of just our standard format. So we hope that you will follow our journey and we hope that you will, you know, give us are your feedback, you know, write us and let us know what you think of our programs. But I really want to take the rest of this time, this first segments, to talk about reintegration. I think you know we’re talking about getting things geared up with our new podcast Porto, with the new information, things like that. But you know, we have been through, all of us together as a community, as together, we’ve been through a very, very difficult, in many cases maybe the most difficult times of our lives. So many of us have loft jobs, they’ve lost loved ones due to the pandemic. We have lost so many, you know, opportunities have gone by. I know that there’s so many things that have caused stress and families, different things like that, and so you know, we have been really mindful, obviously, of our older adults who I believe have been through it even more so than the average person. So I wanted to share first and foremost, some statistics that I learned not too long ago. As we all know, and I’m going to first reiderate statistics that we brought out in the show before, but I really want to talk about that. Sixty percent of seniors are what they call are without regular visitors and those are the seniors that we can document. For example, ample it might be a senior that lives in a senior living community that people know that they sit alone day after day, but we really don’t know how many seniors who are still living in their homes that may not be easily driving and they might not have as much contact with the outside world. Is even somebody in a senior living community if they’re lonely or have depression, we know that that will escalate symptoms of dementia, dementia and Alzheimer’s. That is scientifically proven. So a lot of you that may have a loved one that was at home. They you know, likely have gone through periods of loneliness, of depression, of fear, anxiety and you know, it’s very unbelievable when we think about all of the overwhelming things that they’ve had to deal with where and in you know, through this last year, through the pandemic and then finally just with the pandemic. This will this blew me away. Older adults. In most cases, they have been quarantine since mid March of two thousand and twenty. That means over fifteen months, sixty weeks and well over for hundred and sixty days, four hundred and sixty days, and in some cases they have sat alone and they’ve watched a world in Turmail on the TV. That has compounded with fear and anxiety, and so we have to understand that the mindset from many of our seniors, as they’ve been at isolated, has totally taken our its toll. It means could be decline or neglect in their health or their activities of their daily living. Maybe they’re not taking care of themselves as well. How are they managing their medications? You know, in many cases they don’t care, they forget, but even more so because they didn’t want to go out to a pharmacy because they were afraid of the pandemic, they just didn’t refill a prescription. Those are things that we all take a look at. People are different in their community when you really look at when you’re walking out there, all of a sudden the same people that they always knew at the store, now that things are opened up, they’re not there anymore. They’ve lost jobs or they’ve moved on. So those are different and that’s a new adjustment for someone, especially if they’re dealing with these underlying situations of anxiety, depression or loneliness. They want connections. Business is that they used to frequent may have closed their doors and community resources may not that easily to be found. Our favorite community members may have been, you know, gone, you don’t necessarily know, or, even worse, they might have lost a loved one who have succumbed to the disease. So I want each and every one of you, is you’re thinking about this, think about those seniors that you may know. You may even have one in your neighborhood that you may not know very well, but it may be important for you to absolutely knock on the door and say, you know what, we just want to let you know we care and that we’re here for you. We had answer for elders and would totally want to encourage each and every one of you to step out and see what you can do for a senior. And coming up in this next segment, we’re very, very excited because we’re going to feature one of our national experts and this is a gentleman that I have known for a very long time. So please stay with just through the hour and welcome back Washington state, as we are back in business and you will get to meet Mr Jim Taylor, attorney at law. 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