Senior Finances: The Emotional Roller Coaster, with Daphne Davis

*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.

The following podcast is provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders. Radio and happy wonderful third weekend of July. As we’re talking about financials and Finances and how do we navigate elder care, senior care, through financials, and we have a very, very special guest today that is going to be with us for the entire hour, our own wonderful favorite, Daphne Davis from Pinnacle senior placements. Daphnie, welcome back, thank you, thank you, and hello to everyone. We are here for the entire hour today. So that is a very good thing for our listeners that all love to listen to you and you’re so full of wonderful wisdom. And you know we’re going to start off with. Yes, we’re going to get to the financial piece, but I think there’s a foundational piece that we want to talk about and and that is you know, whenever we’re thinking about making these big steps and senior care, Daphne, there’s a whole emotional roller coaster that happens. Absolutely tell me about a little bit about what your experiences. So with pinnacle we really work at building a relationship with our families and we work at being able to know the heart of what’s going on in a family, and that takes time and it means that we meet with you, it means that we hear your story, it means that you have to have a little bit of vulnerability. But in that process we also see the highs and lows of making logical decisions and then being very emotionally driven totally and that is let let me just hear you, hear for everyone here this. That is normal, totally normal, totally normal. Don’t beat yourself up, don’t think that you’re losing your mind, whether you’re an adult child or a spouse, and there’s disease processes advancing. This is the journey and also the guilt. That’s normal. It is you know how many times make I feel guilty. I feel like you can’t make a rational decision. Many, and this happens a lot with spouses more than adult children, but with spouses. They’ll call me one day and say, okay, deafinitly, I’m ready to do this. In the next morning go nope, we had a really good night and I’m I think I can do another week, but we’re let’s put it off, and that is so normal. I want you all to hear that’s normal. But the piece that I want you also to hear is that someone like myself or anyone on our pinnacle team can help you walk through that. HMM. And, as you all know by now, our services are free to you, the families, and we’re paid when we have an actual placement. But Pinnacle senior placements is more about the journey where, more about sharing our experiences and our information to help you be able to make good decisions for your family. Every family’s decisions are different, right every journey is different. So if you’re embarking on needing to look at some housing, and I want to speak specifically to spouses right now, if you are feeling burned out, you’re not getting good sleep yourself, you may be experiencing maybe not eating as well, maybe you feel a little lightheaded sometimes. Maybe you’re feeling some mushled twinges because you’ve been helping somebody get up out of bed or transferring in a chair or something like that. Please pay attention to those messages that your body and your psyche is giving you. Those are things that say I need help to hmm, very good point. That’s that’s very good it. That’s when you need to kind of have that third party to look into your story. Now, if you have children and your children are saying, you know, mom or dad, please, we need to get someone in the home. Are you know mom or dad needs to move out of the home. I’m worried about you. You you can have broad shoulders in a strong back in your mind, but if your family is seeing it that they only want the best for all of you, for both of you involved in in the journey, they want the very best for you, and so try hard to be objective, almost put yourself in a third party position. That says, if I was talking to a friend of mine and I saw these things that my children are articulating, would I be saying the same thing to my friend? And can I say them to myself now? Can I have an open mind? And that really is asking your emotional self to set aside and your logical self to come up. Now those are in constant conflict when when you are intimately involved with someone and now you have to be their caregiver and have a different level of intimacy in terms of giving of yourself and all the promises that you’ve made to your spouse and it’s it is a roller coaster. Have a third party be able to do that roller coaster with you and you know what you’re saying to is change his heart. And you know, looking at you know all of the different roles as a spouse that you may be taking on. If you’re the wife and all of a sudden the husband always handled the finances and now you’re faced with I don’t even know what bills we own. Are you know? Oh, I don’t even know where. You know how much money is in what bank account? I don’t know if I’m a signer on this or if it’s not got my name on that, or all of these different pieces. Not only is that a logistical challenge, it’s also an emotional like wow, I have to take this on. It’s a huge burden. It drains you m think about, you know, our pot of energy that we have to live and to function and to breathe and to do the stand upright, all those things right. We have a limited amount of energy and now your brain is taking on all of these added responsibilities, or perceived responsibilities, and it it is such a gift to your family, to yourself, to your loved one, to allow someone else, whoever that is a best friend, a daughter, a Daphnee, it doesn’t matter what is, but allow someone to be your confidant in terms of am I thinking through this clearly or it is my logic or my heart overtaking one of the other. So we are talking again to Daphne Davis, who is the CEO of pinnacles senior placements and, just to ground everybody back, you’re that third party. Tell us a little bit about what you do to help families through this process. Well, this is the part that I love about my job. It’s helping families understand what are their highest values. How does your life look? What things do we want to maintain? And so we meet with people. You know, I hate to face to face in people’s homes, in the Rehab Center, in the hospital room, wherever it is, you know, starbucks if it’s not ready to disclose everything. But we meet with you and try and figure out what what are the elements of someone’s life, in your life, that need to be maintained to have quality of life? What are the things that need to be added in terms of helping support someone through physical changes in their body or emotional changes or cognitive changes. Those are the things that we want to find out facetoface. So after that’s done, then we very gently help walk through the journey and when we find out your highest values, we ask permission. You know, I’d say, Suzanne, can can I remind you of our highest values as we go through this, because sometimes the head or the heart gets in the way and very forget what the highest values are. Very tend that’s the process of being able to make an informed decision well, and I think the other piece of that is, when you’re talking about that, is that you guys know what to ask, you know what to look for, you understand the dynamic and the care plan from a professional level. You know, when I was a daughter, I certainly remember thinking that I knew what my mother would want, but I didn’t necessarily understand the process, nor did I understand the resources. It’s right, and and so there in lies the challenge of you want to do it all as the daughter. You want to you want to take that on, but you don’t have the tools necessarily to be able to do that, and I think that’s one of the things. Again, you know, that emotional piece that we’re going back to. I remember having to make life changing decisions on behalf of my mother without feeling like I had all of the facts, because I was kind of in the dark about all of these new things to navigate, and I would I would like lay awake in the middle of the night thinking, I hope it did the right thing and had I known about a Daphne back then, my life would have been so much he’s here. Well, what am my clients just called me this morning on the way into Seattle here. Called me this morning and said, definitely, is there a way of getting I on our checks in home? You know, my motherin law does not want to take the little bus over to the clinic. She feels, you know whatever, it’s a high value for her to appear to be independent, and so we talked about how do we do I in our checks? Pro Time, Coomin and war friend type things. What blood check? How can I do that without interrupting the quality and the dignity of my motherinlaw’s life? That was a conversation we had this morning. Right. That’s the kind of thing that exact a pinnacle person can do for you and that’s the beauty of this whole process of making sure that you do have a cheerleader and a coach and somebody that can help you navigate these difficult times. And you know, I always look at you know, if we knew what to prepare for it the next cross roads when something happens, we would, but we never know what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen. So it’s living on the edge that it’s that feeling of what’s going to happen next. It’s always at the back of your mind when you’re taking care of a loved one. Having a third party there can help prepare for that next right. So the scariness of change isn’t as scary exactly when you have a relationship with someone and you have built some trust, and I think it also helps the loved one. So, for example, I would have been able to say, you know, mom, this is what the plan is, because these are the oup you know, likely things that could happen in the future, and even have you help coach the families on how to talk to how to have those conversations, rather than putting them right on there, you know, on them like that. But I’m smiling from ear to ear, nodding my head and like yes, you’re right here, right here, right, because it is saying it the right way, right so that someone doesn’t feel less than, pushed into a corner, doesn’t have options. You’re telling me what to do. I don’t want to do that. You know, there’s I don’t want to be kept in the dark. Don’t don’t. You know, don’t keep things from me. My mom used to say don’t keep things from me, because I think that’s in its was ultimately her life. And that’s getting back to what’s the most important thing, which is the highest value for mom or dad or, you know, a spouse, husband or wife. What are those values and how do we honor those in the most highest seam and bust way? And I think that’s something that you can really help guide families on in that process. It is so important because the natural role for a spouse or an adult child is not to say, Hey, Dad, remember the highest value that we decided on? Right that? That’s not how language works, but a third party language works. How’s George? We talked about this and I asked your permission and this was a highest value. Has that change? Note? That’s still really important to me, Daphne. I want to have my independence. So families, we are here, Daphne is here. She would love to hear from you and Daphne wanted to give us the way. The way. They can contact you two ways. One is the phone number eight hundred and fifty five, seven thirty four, one thousand five hundred, and then you can also go through our website, which is Pinnacle Senior Placementscom. Awesome and Daphne would be right back right after this. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom