You Are Not Alone, Part 3 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 Welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio and we are talking to the wonderful, Amazing Daphne Davis from Pinnacle senior placements and we’re talking to family members right now. That reminding each and every one of you that, is hard as the journey can be with taking care of a loved one, you are not alone and Daphne, you’ve given us a lot to think about today. I think about my own journey from you know, it’s over ten years and ago that I lost my mom now, but I still think about, you know, what that process was like for me when I was in my s and had a career and trying to deal with juggle with things. You know, I would love to talk about really what goes on in families during this time. I mean where are we out with that normally? So the emotions. Let’s just start with the emotions. The emotions that I see a lot fall into the categories of guilt. Sometimes we move into a little bit of a martyrdom for some personalities and and that that’s valuable to them. Sometimes it’s a little bit of US Super Person. You know, I can still do this, I can hang on. If you’re a spell zle caregiver, sometimes you feel that responsibility of till death do us part, m that I’m going to take care of my spouse. Sometimes, as a son or daughter, we can have a personality that moves us to going. But but they gave so much to me. I can do this with them, and we lose sight of the beauty and the gift of professional care. We lose sight of how that can be a positive in terms of moving forward in our next chapter of life. Yes, and so I’d like to talk just a little bit about what does it look like when you do invite someone to build relationship and trust with your family and be a part of your team as you’re embarking on this next chapter of wife? What does that feel like and how does it unfold? It’s scary. Some people feel deflated, some people feel like a failure, some some people get angry like why are you even doing this? You know a daughter or a son says mom, Dad, we need to talk about this, and marriages get strayed because, yeah, all of a sudden, do you know the wife is taking care of parents and husband gets neglected or family gets neglected or the wife feels like they’re not being she’s not being supported because she’s going in too many places. You know, I know all. So there’s a just statistically there’s a forty percent job loss with with family caregivers, which is also very, very stressful when you think about not only the financial burden today but over long term care of benefits or social security in the future or all of those other factors that happen. So sometimes you know in looking that sometimes I know that sometimes people feel like there’s a no win situation. They’re they’re they’re trapped in into a corner. Susanna, I just had a conversation today with a young woman. She’s not forty, she’s raising her own children that are two and four, and her dad is seventy three, I believe, and he has Louis Body Dementia and Parkinson’s. And yes, that is a really extreme situation in case, but nonetheless she felt so alone and I had reached out to her her her dad has been in an adult family home now for about thirty days and I just reached out to her and I said, hey, how’s it going? And she’s like, you’re timing is impeccable and there’s just nuances of making a move and wants of how did how did this system get so broken for my dad? She was frustrated with our healthcare system, frustrated with having to be reactive instead of proactive. We can’t be preventive very easily. I mean there’s just a myriad of things that can come up in a story. Not Everybody just gracefully moves from one decade to the next decade to the next chapter of life. Sometimes there’s real life struggles, right, and I encourage everyone. The sooner that you reach out to someone to help you and be a part of a team, the better it is. Right. I mean this story that I just told you, that’s within the last thirty days. I’m helping another family and I’ve been talking to them for two years. Two years I’ve been talking to the wife. This is, you know, another very young story there in their early S, tragic situation of disease coming on board in terms of cognition, challenges and it’s been two years of working with this family and walking through the journey and answering questions and how do we get in home care and is this normal? How do I get the support and where is there somebody else for me to talk to? I mean there’s a myriad of things that pinnacle senior placements can help you with. But now we’re at the point of actually moving her husband. It’s time and what we had done was early on I had the wife decide what are your limits? Where are you comfortable and caring for your husband? And Yeah, identify the things that I can’t do as his wife and we reach that point. And so we had a clear, unemotional way of deciding when is it right to look for outside care and housing. And you know, that helps the entire family understand to get on the right page, because when you can define specifics that really are emotions past it, like say, if debt is incontinent any and you have to deal with this, or if you can’t he can’t get up, you know, and transfer out of bed, or if he’s wandering because he has Alzheimer’s, Louis Body Dementia’s a whole other aspect with Parkinson’s. There’s movement and mobility and all kinds of issues involved in that. It can be overwhelming and and the progression. Given his age’s younger than not older, it’s going to progress faster it because, yeah, so that’s the challenge with that, and certainly to understand a little bit about it from a professional perspective like you have it. All of a sudden it makes it more clear. Of Well, you know, this is not going to be like it’s is today for much longer. You know we have to start planning for the future. And then there’s also other considerations like financial power of attorney and different things like that that, while there’s still cognition these things can be taken are of, where certain situations, if they’re not taken care of in there isn’t sound mine, then you deal with the whole other issue. That’s correct. That’s where it is. Reach out to somebody when you know there are changes coming. Right, please, try hard not to feel embarrassment. Try hard not to feel like, well, I should know this already. Know. You shouldn’t. You’ve never you’ve never gone down this path before and fortunately in two thousand and twenty one we have knowledge that says we can make this journey a little bit easier. You don’t have to recreate quote, the wheel right hand. Learned from other people and have the courage, have the courage, have the love of yourself and your loved one to allow someone to help you. Yeah, I I know that I’m sound a little bit like a broken record for all of our tried and true listeners throughout the years, but sooner is better than later. It is all sooner we keep in contact with our people. I don’t want anyone to feel alone. I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re frustrated because they don’t know where to turn and you don’t want to push anybody into something that they don’t want to do. This is and you’re not going to put recommend a community if that individual is not ready yet to do that. Maybe there’s some things that can happen in the home to start and take the time. And you know, Daphne, I remember specifically I referred you to somebody that you drove all the way up to edmonds because there was an issue with adult family home where their mother was living and they had raised her rent and there was this all overwhelm of how in the world she’s on a fixed income. This isn’t going to happen, and so it was like, okay, I have to move my mom and my eye and I don’t know what to do and I was going like, well, you need to call dafty. And, bless your heart, you drove all the way from Kent, all the way up to North Edmonds and you actually met with this family and met with the mother and then met with the adult family home and got the rent lowered. Yes, and there was no there was no win in it financially for you, but you did the right thing by the family and that’s the thing that so I mean, how could the family have, I think about this every day. How could that family have been able to keep their mother in the place that they knew that she was going to be okay? And she’s like ninety years old and and you know that, when I look at that gift that you gave that family, it’s it’s priceless. It’s priceless. Yeah, and you know, I know I’ve thanked you before, but I keep I keep hearing these stories of things that you do for families. But you do the right thing and I think that’s really an important way and why I feel so just honored to be working with you so often, because I know that our families, when we’re contacted answers for elders is contacted, which we get several emails in. You know, when it’s the right time, you know right situation. I am have no hesitation of referring to you because I think you really have your heart in this, in the right thank you. Thank you so much, because that that is really what we live up to. I mean, remember my highest values that people don’t move again, and so that, I mean, I had nothing to do with that family, but the right thing was to figure. I mean, she lived there three years. Yeah, how do you take some long time? Yeah, that’s a long time. And she had cognition challenges, and so how do you make that that change midstream? You just don’t. I had a film called just yesterday of a placement that I probably did about nine months ago, and mom’s diseases have progressed and she’s got some challenges in terms of keeping her heart and our lungs and everything working. Her body’s just tired, and so the daughter was really afraid that her mom wasn’t going to be able to stay at the adult family home. I was able to assure her, no, no, no, we will. Let’s find a solution of how to do this and through conversation, through gathering more information, we were able to dissern and to help the family get there, that it might be the time for mom to be looking at some hospice care and to learn what that meant. This family didn’t know what this meant. How, how do we even embark on getting hospice care? Really, my mom has a choice of not going to the hospital every time her ankle swell up and her breathing goes down and her heart rate is all messed up. I said, Oh, yes, she doesn’t have to keep doing that. That’s a family choice. Yes, with hospice care. So there’s a situation where, nine months later, the daughter reaches out to me and says, Daphne, I don’t know where to turn, and I’m like, you turn to the right place because we’re going to figure this out. So we work through, we have a plan. The the doctors are all on board, the family’s on board, the adult family homes on board and mom gets to stay where she is and she can have peace and we are talking again. You are not alone and we’re we’re here about your family reaching that piece. And Daphne will be right back for our last segment, 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