"Life, Death & Tech: Navigating Tough Conversations with Loved Ones"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, it's Barry. Welcome to the inaugural episode of Care, tech, and Tips. Today, Bobby and I are diving into the world of caregiving for aging parents. We'll chat about sharing family stories, getting those key legal docs in place, and how tech can make things easier, and maybe even convincing your folks to give it a try. Plus, we've got some great tips for keeping everyone healthy and connected. Let's jump in. [00:00:33] Speaker B: So one of the things I think it's important to do when you have your loved ones in a place where they can give you information and be sensible is have conversations with them about life, about death. And I ran across this that reemphasized this to me, Barry, when I wrote a letter to my. After I talked to my father a year before he died of. This is in 2016, and I just asked him a bunch of questions, and. And I think there's. There's probably a good set of questions we can come up with that you really should ask. Like, what were your parents like? Like, how'd you make. How'd you meet my mom? What do you remember about the day you were born? Oh, stuff like that. [00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:16] Speaker B: And I was smart enough to do this. I don't know why I was. I did it this particular time. It was a year before he died, and I. And I just asked him these questions, and I wrote it down in a journal, and I ran across it the other day. Oh, just read it. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:01:29] Speaker B: And I gotta tell you. So it's one of those things when I was really detailed about it, I'll have to share it with you and what it says, but, you know, it talked about, like, that he. My dad was born with a mitt from a midwife. He didn't go to a hospital. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Really? Wow. I don't think I've ever met anybody who's been. Who was born. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Talk to me about his days of being in the coast guard. He never talked about that before. And then having that conversation with him, we made promises to each other about what we would do for each other. And I was able to follow through on some of his policies before he passed away. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Oh, man. [00:01:59] Speaker B: So make sure he went to the last family reunion and a couple other things that are out there. And I remember that kind of conversation is something you cannot get back once they moved on. So I think it's really important, as a caregiver, to make sure you create those kind of memories and you record them in a way that makes sense. I wish I had just turned on a video and recorded him talking to it. To me, I think that would have been really cool. Now, you know, this, this thing, the iPhone, you know, when you take pictures, it says live shots. And sometimes I got annoyed by that because I'm like, I just want a picture on it. But now I look at those things and I can get that three second snippet and it makes all the world difference. So, you know, that's one of the things I think we have to get across to caregivers is don't just live the moment and let it pass by. Sometimes recording it, sometimes asking those questions is important. [00:02:53] Speaker A: That's a really good point. You know, the fact that they call them live shots is kind of interesting in a way. It does bring them back to life. I remember doing something similar with, I didn't do it formally, but I did something very similar with my grandmother before she passed away. I was just really getting into the iPhone and liking having a camera in my pocket all the time and tried to do it surreptitiously, so nobody got really annoyed about it. But I was at a Thanksgiving dinner and just turned it on and set it up so it would record and see my grandma's face. And I can remember asking some questions and getting her to kind of expound on some of that stuff, thinking, you know, I'm going to really appreciate this one of these days. And I don't, you know, honestly, I don't think I've ever gone back and look at it, looked at it, but I think I will now. And I believe that's a really, really good point. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that, you know, not only for me, you know, Jennifer can read that and see my feelings about how I felt about that. You know, I don't have kids, but if I had kids, that would be an interesting way for them to see and learn about their grandfather, if that existed. So, you know, that kind of stuff, I think it's really important to do. And I'm sitting here seven years from now, later, reading that and getting emotional about the fact that I wrote as much detail as I did, and I'm like, there's no way I would have gotten that. That's cool in any other way. [00:04:10] Speaker A: So did you keep the list of questions? [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:14] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:04:15] Speaker B: And I know that there's some. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Put them in show notes or something for that. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I know that there's some places out there that you can do this kind of storyboarding. I think PBS that did storyboard or storyline or something like that. Yeah, we should find that and may have that ready for this kind of talk? But, you know, that's. Yeah, it's. Those games are important. [00:04:37] Speaker A: It is. [00:04:38] Speaker B: Even journaling every week about what happened. [00:04:42] Speaker A: I remember doing that. About what? After my mom passed, I sat down for a few minutes and just, well, more than a few minutes, really. About an hour one morning, and just tried to dump on paper all the big memories that I could. That I could think of things that were very distinctive about her. And it took a little while, and it would. Like you said, it's emotional, but it was good to have it. And every once in a while, I go back and take a look at that, and it does kind of. Kind of hit. Hit you in the heartstrings, doesn't it? [00:05:12] Speaker B: It does, because I think it was on his birthday, which happens to be juneteenth, and it was also his parents 50 year anniversary, so it was like a big deal. Wow. So anyway, I read this morning, I thought, this is something I need to talk to Barry about. You know, this is important. Yeah, this kind of stuff is important. [00:05:34] Speaker A: And I guess it's not just, you know, it fits into caregiving. It's really caregiving for you after. Afterwards more than anything. [00:05:41] Speaker B: Number one rule, right? Caregivers. Take care of yourself. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. Put your mask on before helping others. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I remember something that came up on the one. My search is, uh. It's having the talk. Um. It's, um. You remember. [00:06:02] Speaker A: I remember us having to talk about having to talk. [00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we have the talk about talking about finances, wills, medical needs, final wishes. Doesn't have to be hard. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:15] Speaker B: There are a couple of links that we put together in this. I think it's from you. One of them is get your shit together. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Yep. That's one of my favorite sites, actually. It helped me a lot in trying to figure out all the things that I needed to know when my mom passed away. You know, like you said, talk doesn't have to be scary. It doesn't have to be emotional. But, you know, some folks don't seem to want to have that, because I think they worry that their parent is going to think, oh, my God, they think I'm about to die. I'm about to get out of here. Why is that? It doesn't have to be that way. [00:06:50] Speaker B: No, it doesn't have to be that way. And it's so necessary. I'm just telling you, my father just had a stroke event a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, I wish we had had this conversation three weeks ago to have some clarity. About it. No, he's not. He's clear enough to have conversations now about it, but it scares you to a point where, wait, this could have been worse. He could have been unable to communicate and we wouldn't know some of these things. You had some really good links in there, too, like trust and will calm and a couple of ones on trust and will review planning. Yeah, there was a one link in there. We have to share some of that stuff in show notes or whatnot. Yeah, for sure. [00:07:31] Speaker A: For sure. [00:07:32] Speaker B: There's. There's a really good conversation that needs to be had like that. And I know I recently did some cleanup on my end. And, you know, I have copies of my medical power of attorney for my mother. You know, knowing where that is, not only having it, knowing where it is, because they're going to ask you for it, is really important. [00:07:50] Speaker A: So it helps to have electronic copies, too. I ran into a situation with my aunt. Well, actually, for my. [00:07:55] Speaker B: I tell you, Barry, they want physical copies in some hospitals. They would not take my electronic copies when I. When I had them. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Well, yeah. I wonder, like, what. What's up with that? [00:08:06] Speaker B: It makes no sense to me. None at all. [00:08:09] Speaker A: I could go to Lee doctor. [00:08:11] Speaker B: You wouldn't know any different. But no, they wanted me to have a physical copy and file it with them when they had an incident. [00:08:21] Speaker A: The hospital I was dealing with didn't care about the physical part, but they did want one on file, and it was nice to be able to email it to them and then have them attach it to my uncle's file so that they knew. Power of attorney. Their DNR, do not resuscitate or medical. What? There's. There's another word for it to find. Find the actual word for that. [00:08:42] Speaker B: There's power of attorney, and then there's medical power attorney. [00:08:45] Speaker A: And that's to make, like, medical power. [00:08:46] Speaker B: Decisions that you can be the primary decider. [00:08:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:08:51] Speaker B: On their medical care. [00:08:53] Speaker A: Living will, I think, is the thing I was thinking about. [00:08:55] Speaker B: Living will might be there another one? [00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Living will. It was the thing to say, you know, he stated when he was of sound mind that he didn't want to have heroic efforts made to maintain his life if there was no chance of recovery or if there was slim chance of recovery. And that was a great thing to have, and it was great thing to have to know that he wanted that. That was his wishes. Because I had to answer the question, do you want to have a feeding tube? Do you want to have him resuscitated? If it's if it comes to that. And now there's some words that I think we should all remember. I want to respect his or her wishes. And saying it that way is a couple of twofold, at least. It's, one, it's. It's the way it should be said because that's what they wanted. And two, it helps you from going through the emotional rollercoaster of thinking that I just potentially just cause their death. And, you know, it's not that you. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Have to get out of that mindset, because. Absolutely, you know, it's bigger than you. It's bigger than you. It's not about you. You're helping them guide through this, this particular item, and you have to be prepared for the idea that you're not gonna feel just one emotion, you're gonna feel many emotions, and they're all gonna tug at you at different ways. And the way that, to maintain that is just what you said. You're respecting their wishes, you're doing what they asked you to do, and that's a sacred trust, and you should think of it that way. And I think it makes it a lot easier. It's not going to be easy. Easier is the word that you're going to be using, because obviously these are people that mean a lot in their lives. So if it didn't mean anything, there would be something wrong. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Excellent point. Excellent point. So, yeah, I think we could put some links in the show notes to some places where you can develop those documents on your own. There's some requirements that are different in every state about what makes that thing legal. But, you know, it's up to you. [00:11:05] Speaker B: And we should say this already, we are not lawyers. [00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we are not lawyers. We are not legal experts at all. [00:11:11] Speaker B: But we play them on a podcast and not very well. So what we're hoping to do with you is to spur your conversation to your curiosity. Go find your lawyer. Go get a lawyer who can answer some complicated questions about your own situation. Most people can do simple things. It doesn't take much to do. A medical power of attorney, a living will. There are templates all over the place. And so be careful, too, that this should not cost you lots and lots of money. [00:11:38] Speaker A: Right? So, we're in South Carolina, and I don't know what the end in a fairly small town, but it's not close to a big metropolitan area, but it's still pretty good size. But the cost. I'll give you an example of a one we just had done for my dad. I think, all told, it was around for having wills, medical power of attorney, durable power of attorney, and the living will. I think it was around $500, maybe 500, 550 somewhere in that area. [00:12:14] Speaker B: Total package for all of them. [00:12:16] Speaker A: That was total for all of them. Yep. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's something like. So if you do them individually, I think, you know, there's a minimum charge, lawyers charge. It's probably something around $100 an hour. It takes about an hour to do this. Not much more than that. So you might get one that could be 100 or $90, and that's. And that's pretty standard. But I think the combinations are way more economical. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah. More cost effective. [00:12:42] Speaker B: Because a lot of the stuff we're doing with this is information that is necessary for the next thing. So they don't have, it doesn't take them an hour apiece to do these, but it might take them two or three, and you get a discount for that. So. Yeah. Salty lord. [00:12:58] Speaker A: And to. They're going to give you copies of these things. And like we were talking about earlier, you want to keep a copy of the power of attorney, but you really, really want to know where all the originals are, especially in the case that your loved one passes away. Because when it's time for probate, when it's time for other legal things, you need to have the originals because a lot of times they won't accept copies of the those things. [00:13:22] Speaker B: So you need something that's inked, which might mean you need to make many originals, which is a full copy where you've signed it in ink. And that's an original. And that's an original. You should mark it on those as that way. So, you know, two of this is one of three, something like that at the bottom of the page. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Good advice. [00:13:41] Speaker B: Make sure your initial pages. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Yep. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Don't just do the last page. Initial the pages so that they have some continuity to them. I learned that lesson in another way, but that's another story for another podcast. [00:13:55] Speaker A: And it varies probably from state to state, but I know with power of attorneys, especially durable power of attorneys, they have to be registered. [00:14:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:03] Speaker A: So the lawyer actually does that. They send it off. I don't remember if it's to the state capitol or to the county courthouse is one of the two. [00:14:11] Speaker B: But they registered in some places it might be the secretary of state and others. [00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, pay attention to that. If you're doing one on your own, it might not work for you unless it's registered. [00:14:24] Speaker B: So think about that, and it may, notarization may or may not satisfy that requirement. [00:14:29] Speaker A: So. Good point. Very good point. Yeah. [00:14:34] Speaker B: Like I said, we can play lawyer. We're not real. [00:14:37] Speaker A: We're not lawyers. That's right. All right, so let's go down our little list here. We talked a little bit about, about just remembering your loved ones and taking the time to ask some questions and get some details and find out things about them that you might not, never have known and recording them in some way. So writing them down either. Recording them with. On video, on audio. But just. Just do it. [00:15:04] Speaker B: Even. Just journaling yourself. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, just journaling yourself. Exactly. And we've talked a little bit about some legal documents. Again, we're not lawyers, but we have been experienced with this stuff for a little while and we know that, that these are necessary. So let's see here. But. All right, we've been talking a little bit about care. We've been talking about legal advice. Let's talk about some tech. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Sure. [00:15:27] Speaker A: All right. So I know that you have been going through a thing with your mom where she lives a little ways away, and you kind of have to keep an eye on her. And you do that with cameras in the house. You do that with iPhones. [00:15:41] Speaker B: So we have a security system, I'm not going to say which one. And it comes with a particular brand, so we're not recommending a brand right now. Maybe we could do that later sometime, too. But you can always check with your security. I know many of them have camera systems in place. But what I want to talk about a little bit is the strategy in which you use cameras. And so because that was difficult for me, this is my mom. I still want to give her some element of privacy. I also want them to be useful in case something happens. We had, we had a long discussion about where the cameras would go, who had access to the cameras. There are abilities and for the cameras, for me to turn things off by default, and I've done that in some cases, sometimes at the doorbell or the front door, it makes a lot of sense to recognize people. And so you may actually, depending on what state you are, if you're doing that, you may have to put up a notice that says, hey, we record and we are recognizing your face. So in South Carolina, I don't think there's a requirement for that. We have actually thought about it, doing about it anyway, just to let people know. But I think in some states you're required to do that. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is, you can overdo cameras. You can have too many. You want essential, yeah, the doors, the cars, you know, stuff like that. Maybe a common living area that we've agreed this is okay. You don't come out here and properly dress because this camera is there. And even if we do, making sure that there's limitations of that. Picking a reputable company that has good security is really important. And you can ease into this. You can do one camera and then see how it goes and then add another one later. It's okay. [00:17:25] Speaker A: But has it got you all of. [00:17:27] Speaker B: It at one time? [00:17:28] Speaker A: You run into situations where it's got you out of a fix already. [00:17:31] Speaker B: It has. So my mother has fallen a couple of times and I was able to tell, go back and see a recording of when she fell and see what really happened. And so those kind of things make it easy for me to say things like what happened. The doctor asked what happened. I can say, I have a video. She hit her head on this side, you know, that kind of thing. And so sometimes that's really helpful. Even reassurance times. My mother comes out and she has a bit of problem with memory. If I see that in the way she walks or gait, sometimes in the way she's looking, I can go on and go, you know. Are you okay, mom? [00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:09] Speaker B: Sometimes I worry that she's going to think it's the God voice from coming down from Heather. But I try to do that a little bit to get her used to it. And then sometimes it's been really helpful to reassure her. Okay. He does see me. I'm okay. You know, little things like, hey, is someone at the door? No, mom, no, it's not the door. I can tell. There's. And I can tell, you know, it's only that I can record and see who was there for the last 2 hours. Oh, wow, nice. So that gives her some reassurance and comfort and, you know, some confidence that. That something is happening, that something is not happening that she thinks is. So, yeah, I really recommend it. Now, not everybody's ready for cameras. If your loved one is at all hesitant and you need to have this ease in this conversation and you can do doors without going inside, but you want to talk to your loved one while they're coherent and give them and get their advice they need. So, yeah, I find it essential to what I do now. [00:19:09] Speaker A: That's great. [00:19:10] Speaker B: The brand I have of cameras actually lets me put it on my phone. It lets me look at it from an iPad, it lets me look at it from lots of places. And I can do things like tell when the caregiver we're hiring comes in and out where the time she shows up, you know, those kind of things. So it gives me some reassurance, too. [00:19:28] Speaker A: That's great. I suspect, too, there's probably a full range of different budgets of this kind of stuff. I mean, you could. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. You could do tied into one system. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Yep. [00:19:39] Speaker B: To, to separate cameras you can buy just for that purpose. So there's a wide variety. One of the tips that I think is really important, if your loved one is using a computer, finding a way to share their screen so that you can see what they're doing instead of them having to describe what they're doing over the phone. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yes, lord. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Let the choir say amen. There are lots of good technology out there that does that, depending on what platform you're on. Even Chromebooks can have technology that lets you look at things like this. And my suggestion is figuring that out, doing a test, while it's not important, so when it is important, you can rely on it. And there's some good product out there. Macs have a lot of built in screen share options. You can buy some great products for windows that do this. There are even some free products that, if you're doing this personally, one in particular I'll name because it's just that good, is Teamviewer. So there are lots of good ways to share screens, and you need to figure that out in a secure way. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Don't just put what we're talking about here. VNC without security is not. Not going to help you. You need to figure out a good secure way. So. And it's worth the money 100%. [00:21:09] Speaker A: The one of the ones that I use again, because it's free and it works really well, is the Chrome remote desktop that's built into the Chrome browser. And it's built into Chromebooks, too. My father has a chromebook and that it took just a little bit to get him over the hump of knowing how to get to a particular place and generating a code so that I could log into his Chromebook securely. But honestly, after he's done that once or twice, it's not that. Not that big a deal. And we did exactly what you said. We did it a few times when it wasn't critical and it wasn't a real, real issue, and we practiced to make sure we keep it going. Now, another one of my relatives, I use another product that I pay for. I'm not going to say the name of it right now. It's relatively expensive, but it lets me as long as her computer is on, I can attach to it and share screens with her. And it requires no intervention on her part. And I think that's a thing too, is that if you, if you're in a situation where the person on the other end can't really help you with it at all, it's, it. You may want to go with something like that. Even though it's a little more expensive. It is well worth it. Not have to drive 3 hours to do that. Exactly. Well worth the money. Yeah. There's a, there's another podcaster I really like, Merlin Mann. He, he likes to talk about the difference between cost and expense. And, you know, it may be expensive, but it might not be expensive. And costly are two different things. [00:22:38] Speaker B: Put it that way, because I know that you and I can both relate to this. When someone calls and we don't have these things in place and they're describing what they see or not describing what they see and how long a call that can be over, what it could be if you were just looking at the screen, we're talking, you know, minutes to hours. Yeah. [00:22:59] Speaker A: And I've never. If you've ever been through a case where you've had your, your parent or your loved one with, with a phone in front of their hands doing video call with you and trying to get them to switch the camera so it can see the screen, and then you're basically seeing their face the entire time while you're trying to diagnose their computer problem. Yeah. Yeah. You'd never wanted to go through that. Go ahead and spend the money if you got it. If not, figure out the. Figure out some of the least expensive options to do it too. Just try something. [00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's something I wish someone had said to me ten years ago. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Oh, you know, you brought up something that, um, when you were, you were saying testing things when it's not an emergency. And this is something my wife and I talked about the other day that we really ought to do. And I recommend that anybody do this once, I don't know, once a year maybe, if you've got a. All your paperwork together or if you have a list of things like all your accounts and passwords and user ids and automatically charged subscriptions and bills that are paid automatically. I think it's worth. Well, one, I think it's worth making a big list of those things and putting them in a safe place, knowing and letting your loved ones know where that thing is. So that in the case of, like we used to say at work, if you got hit by a bus, somebody would know how to maintain your systems. And so in this case, it's really your own personal systems, but it's worth doing a, what we used to call in the tech industry, a disaster recovery drill every so often to make sure that your preparations for the disaster are actually any good. So I really, really give an illustration. [00:24:37] Speaker B: Of what that could be, as simple as that could be. Gather your wife, gather your loved ones in a place. Take but 20 or 30 minutes and say, okay, I'm not here anymore. What would you do? What would I do? Do you know how to get to my phone? Do you know how to get to my things? Is that important to you? Because it may not be important to you. So I said the other day to my wife, I've got 40,000 pictures in my thing. And she says, I don't have access to that. And I thought, hmm, I need to make sure she has access to that. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:11] Speaker B: So having that kind of conversation, not just once every three years, but regularly, a cadence that can mean something. Right. Is really important. You know, I'm at a point now in my life where my wife can look at almost anything I have look at, and I worry about it. So do I care if she knows my password? Probably not. [00:25:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:34] Speaker B: So have a conversation. And I know there's some security people going. Having both. Both of us have been through situations where we love lost loved ones, some. Some young, some old, and not having access to some of their resources can be very. Can be devastating. So you have to weigh that. I'm not going to tell you that you, you should trust everybody in your life that way, but I I do. So having that conversation with them about what they need and making some preparation to that is really big. If you wait too late, it can be harder to have that conversation. So I agree. [00:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, big time. That's, um. I think that is increasingly important to have those conversations and to. And to think about that possibility when you're not here. The, um, you said something earlier that really sparked me as, like, what would you do? So I think it's, if you really want to prepare for that with the what, what, what if you're not here, what would you do? Is think about how you would try to come about that and answer that question for someone else, or for them, for that matter. You know, where. Where do you start and think, if you can possibly do it, make it as simple as possible. Like, here's the starting point. All of you should know this is the starting point in our family. There's a big. There's a big folder somewhere. There's a big. A big notebook. And in the beginning of that notebook, it kind of gives you the. The directions to start on the path and where things are at. But there's only a few people know where that notebook is, and I like that. And, you know, that's a level of security by obscurity, I guess. But, you know, you can only be so secure. And if anybody's curious why we're so worried about security, both Bobby and I have been in the it industry for a combined about 75 years, so we worry about that a lot. [00:27:32] Speaker B: But it's probably getting close to 80. You know that, right? Yeah. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Oh, my God. You're right. You know, no joke. But it's one of those things that we worry a lot about because we've had to worry a lot about it. But sometimes that can be a detriment. You know, we worry too much about some of it, but that may or may not happen in a personal. [00:27:50] Speaker B: The only. The only way that I think that it's too much worry is if it paralyzes you from action. There you go from actually doing something, then you're worrying about it too much. But honestly, you should think about who has access to things. You should think about how you want your information distributed. Those are good conversations to have. If anybody's over 40, it's time to have that conversation. And honestly, there's really no age limit. Unfortunately, we have lots of people who leave us at very young ages. So having these conversations, even about parents or have, you know, when I'm talking to my parents, I'm sharing my own thoughts and experiences, too with my family. So that, you know, this can be sort of, you know, a cathartic kind of thing. You know, just give you some. Some way to make yourself feel and release some tension, because, you know, there's a lot of hidden tension on some of this stuff. [00:28:44] Speaker A: I think if you. If you think of really, if you really think about it, if anybody relies on you for anything, then you want them to know the answers to these. [00:28:53] Speaker B: Questions, including being a caregiver to aging parents. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:57] Speaker B: So you have become not just the important part of your life, but also for two other lives. So it's even more important for you to do it again. First, care giving rules. Take care of yourself. So that brings me to a question I really need you to bring up is that you had a challenge one day with one of your relatives about getting them to use technology so that you could help them with things that they wanted to do. And can you talk a little bit about what it took then, the strategy it took to get them there? [00:29:28] Speaker A: Okay. Well, there's a couple of aspects to this. The thing with my father was around phones, so to start out with there, and I'm going to just go ahead and. Go ahead and call out that there was. He used an Android phone for a long time. He and my mother both did. And my immediate family, me, my wife, my kids, we are. We've been using iPhones forever. And that is a. That was a hard thing for me to support. When my mom was there, she was actually a lot more technically savvy than my dad, and she was able to support him whenever he'd have a problem with his phone or he would do something to it by accident that maybe rearranged the icons on the. On the. On the launcher, all that kind of stuff. So. But when my mom passed, he. His local support wasn't there anymore. And at this point in time, my brother, who is kind of the second level support on technology, he had moved over from an Android phone to an iPhone a couple of years back, and so his whole family were on iPhones. So that left us in the situation where I live about an hour away from my dad. My whole family was iPhone centric. My brother lives about an hour on the other side of my dad, and his whole family was iPhone centric. But my dad was there with his lone piece of Android technology. No, no shade on any particular side of that. You know, if you're all Android, you got one iPhone hanging out there. I can understand how that'd be a problem. But in this case, I had a tough time supporting him on his phone because he was. There was always something that he wanted me to take a look at. I've got this problem with my phone, and I found myself in a situation where I did not have one in front of me. I didn't have any way to have a reference. So before I got him to move over to an iPhone and I'll talk about why, I actually went out and had to buy a used Android phone, the same model as his. I set it up so that it looked exactly like his, so that when he would call me with questions about it, I was able to put this thing in my hand and move around and kind of give him. Give him advice about how to do it. And that lasted for a while, and eventually it got to be where that was more trouble. It was worth, especially the updates would kind of, kind of flummox him and things would change. And I eventually sat down, had to talk with him, say, listen, I have to get you a new phone. Well, I don't need a new phone. This is fine. Yeah, it is fine, and it does great, but have a hard time supporting you on it when you have questions because that's not what I use every day. It would be simpler for me to get you a phone like ours. Well, I don't need any. I don't need those. Those are very expensive. No, no, they're really not. It costs me more to in aggravation and emotional time and research to help you on your phone than it would be for me to buy you another phone. So I got him another phone. I got him, added him to my phone plan, and I also switched his sim over and got it working. So the phone number came across. I was able to transfer all of his contacts and that sort of thing, his photos, and it worked out. It worked out really well. And, you know, it took him a while. It took him, you know, it took him a good month to get where he was being able to use it. And he still has some trouble with it from time to time. But it's a whole lot easier for me to kind of tell him from afar. Here's where you need to go to kind of to fix that problem. Or, you know, click on this and it may tell you the answer to what you're looking for. So, you know, it's an adventure, but being able to have that kind of common set of technology between you and the people you're trying to help helps a lot. So just something to think about. [00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the thing that's really important to understand is that the conversation you had with him early on was about what the problem was and how to solve it, right? [00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:33:24] Speaker B: So, you know, we're not telling you, oh, go change the iPhone. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is you need to have a conversation that talks about what expenses and what cost is. And sometimes spending more money upfront is better overall. You will help yourself with little things like that. And, you know, it doesn't always have to be all expensive. It doesn't have to be a brand new phone. And, you know, you can buy lots of phones and lots of places that are cheaper than the new ones out. You know, we're not talking about buying an iPhone. 15 or 16, sometimes eleven. It's just fine. [00:33:59] Speaker A: So actually, we ended up buying an iPhone twelve for him from Gazelle. I got it really inexpensively, and it's been working great. So, you know, like you said, they're out there. [00:34:10] Speaker B: They're out there. [00:34:12] Speaker A: And he doesn't need the features of a brand new phone. [00:34:15] Speaker B: He doesn't care. [00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah, he doesn't care. We're tech people. We get into that. He just wants it to work as a phone, be able to send some text and be able to occasionally take a photo with it. That's really what he wants it for. I know you have stretched out to the weather. [00:34:28] Speaker B: Talked to my mom about her technology. She don't care about anything but getting on the web, reading an email and playing solitaire. That's it. [00:34:36] Speaker A: There you go. [00:34:38] Speaker B: She could be on a chromebook, a Mac windows machine, it wouldn't matter. And printing. Good Lord. Printing. [00:34:45] Speaker A: Yes, printing. Oh, my gosh. A lot of printing goes on at some of my relatives houses. And I don't know why. I really don't know why. [00:34:52] Speaker B: Defining our generation. Baby boomers have to see it in print, and I don't care. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Yep. For real? For real. So, yeah, here's one for you. So I know told me a while back that you were with your. With your mom. You were kind of having a challenge about getting her to eat right and what that. How that affects things. Can you tell me about that? [00:35:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm not going to get too personal about mom. I don't want to do that to our national podcast. But. But basically, one of the things that I've seen happen with many of my relatives is they go one of two ways. They weigh too much and you have to pull them back or they way too little. You can. You're doing anything you can to get them to eat. So my conversations with my mom usually devolve into three questions. Have you eaten already? Will you be eating soon? And what's your plan for dinner? [00:35:48] Speaker A: You know, those are really kind of universal, you know? [00:35:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:51] Speaker A: And my wife and I have that conversation every day. [00:35:55] Speaker B: Yes. She knows it's coming. Now you're going to ask me about dinner. Yes, I know. You always talking about food. Well, mom, it's not really about me. It's more about what you do. But yeah. So I have gotten into a con. You know, the nice thing about that is that there's always a conversation that leads to planning and thinking through, and my mom is not. It's got some memory deficiency. So these things reinforce what she needs to do. And she's diabetic, so one of the things that is important for us is that not only that you eat, but you eat regularly. Yeah. So she has also some other challenges that make it, make me want to make sure she has things like protein in her diet and leafy green vegetables every once in a while. And so we talk about what she eats and then I try to get into other things that sort of distract her from, from that conversation being always the predominant one. But yeah, it's, I think, and you have to talk to your doctor about what your health conditions, what their health conditions are and what a good, healthy diet is. So one of the things that I hyped her is that, you know, most people need 1100 calories a day to survive. That's minimum very minimal. And because I've been on a, the kind of diet where I know what things, what calorie to intake they are, me talking to her about what she eats is also me adding up in my head, how many calories is that? So our crackers and tomato soup and one banana for a whole day is not anywhere near 1100 calories. So I say that because you should be familiar with that too, you know, and there are lots of ways to do that. There's a traditional calorie and calorie things that you need to worry about on some of those ends, but also just making sure you have that conversation with her doctor about what things she needs to eat or he needs to eat. So that means you have to have conversation with the doctor, which caregivers you deeply need to have. They need to know who you are and what you do and what you're trying to prevent. So, and they need to reinforce that when they go to doctor's offices and things like that. So I know your son is concerned about your food. Here's what we're having a conversation about. I know the doctor is concerned about your intake. You know, you want to make sure that you come from a common messaging point of view with that. So that helped do things I still struggle with sometimes with her, with her. But in the end, I think those kind of conversations and, you know, practices that give healthy outcomes are really important. You know, that's a not just treating symptoms like she's hungry all the time, she's got a memory confusion all the time. Go back to trying to solve the problems. And that means asking some experts for some advice, too. [00:38:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. So that brings up another question for me talking about engaging her healthcare experts. If you're at a distance, how do you do that? Like, if you're, if you're a ways away, you can't maybe can't go to the doctor's appointment with her or, you know, a local hired caregiver has to take her there. How do you. How do you engage with that doctor? [00:39:08] Speaker B: I think you need to establish a relationship that. That can be a medical power of attorney being registered with the doctor, which you need to talk to them about. If you're in the normal line of kin, then there are some protections depending on the state you're in. But if you're not, you want to make sure that you. So the example in my head is if your boyfriend and girlfriend a living situation, there is nothing in most states laws that says that you are next to Ken. You might want to think about that. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:40] Speaker B: Especially if something happens to that person. And also just making sure you have an initial conversation with a doctor that says, hey, this is where my role is. This is what I'm doing here is the caregiver that I've hired, and this is what her role is and what I'm doing. And then you can also take advantage of. Many of the new hospitals have lots of ways for them to communicate medical information to parent, to loved ones, and many of them have options for sharing that option. So you can get on my chart with your mother, and there are ways for her to share information with you, for him to share information with you. You should investigate that. So there's lots of things that you can do to help yourself with that, and you should prepare for those in times of instance where there's not an emergency. So you want to do that in sort of your conversation of, okay, how do I know how many medications you have? How many. I know what it is. And most of the time, they may not know that, but you having a conversation with their doctor tell you things like, oh, yeah, we have that all listed in my chart. So you may need to find a way to log into my chart and look at the items that those are the kind of things you want. [00:40:56] Speaker A: And it'll point out to you if you're. If you're listening and you're at a place, you don't know what Mychart is, in our part of the world, there, a lot of the hospitals have a kind of a common online system where patients can log in and do things like find out all their medicines. They can get reports from their doctor after visits or after blood work. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Billing information. [00:41:16] Speaker A: Is there billing information? Medical history in general? There's a lot of that. [00:41:22] Speaker B: You can write a note to a doctor and ask a question. [00:41:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So being able to have access to that. If you're. Whether you're not, whether your parents give you access to that directly or there's some sort of sharing that goes on, is very important to help them stay healthy, for sure. One other little small tech tip is I've been in this case, too, where when I went to some of the doctor's appointments with my mom. It's a lot of information coming at you in a hurry, and I understand, you know, my mom would get a little confused about some of that, and honestly, so would I if I was just there. So I took my phone with me, I took an iPad with me, and I asked them and said, it's okay if I record this, and I've never been turned down, so was able to record it and then go back later and listen to it again and then kind of make a summary of what was going on. I mean, you'll get a summary, a lot of times of visits out of my chart, but it's in medical language, and it may not be the thing that really helps you understand. So it's good for you, it's good for whoever you're doing care for to be able to have a summary of that and know what's going on. So try to take recordings like that. [00:42:26] Speaker B: We live in a world now where there are processes that can take that recording and turn it into summaries. It's amazing what you can do with some of that. Now, some of those things have some trade offs with data loss that you need to be concerned about. But for most things, if you're not that, if you're careful about it, you can get yourself something useful that will help you look at things years later and go, oh, that's when he told us this was going to happen. So I really agree. Bringing it in and just recording it, or as a start, can be very helpful. [00:42:59] Speaker A: I haven't tried this with one of my dad's doctors yet, but I'm wondering if, how medical folks would be receptive to, say, a FaceTime call from a distance or video, or any kind of video call from a distance to be part of the conversation. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Healthcare, and there are lots of cool technology that's out there that lets you do that, and I think doctors are becoming more comfortable with that. So part of what I think is really important is having that conversation with your provider to see what they're interested in, what they would be willing to do. So. [00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah, and also using that in the non medical field, too. So my, one of my, one of my loved ones was having a question about a life insurance bill, and they wanted to have a real conversation with the agent in the office, and they wanted me involved with this thing, and I just couldn't make it. I couldn't make the scheduling work, but to get to that, you know, that city this little way, a little ways away from where I live. So, you know, I said, you know, we've got these phones. They're amazing. Just call me when you get there and put me on speakerphone. And I was able to listen, walk through what was going on, and I understood it a little better than they did, and it really cut out a long drive, and nobody really minds that these days. I think it's just something, it's out of their context, so it's hard for them to get it to come around to it. [00:44:29] Speaker B: All right, so, Barry, I've just got a couple alerts about mom for my system, and she's calling once. All right, so let me see what I can do about fixing that. [00:44:40] Speaker A: I think that sounds like a good idea, and I think it's a good place to stop. All right, cool, man. All right. Enjoyed it. Thank you. [00:44:47] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us at Care Tech and tips. Join Barry and I as next time we talk about upgrading tech, when to hold on, and when to update, and what do you do when life happens to your caretaking arrangements and more, all on care tech and tips.