Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to care, tech and tips, the podcast where we explore essential tools, resources, strategies for supporting our aging parents. I'm Bobby.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: And I'm Barry. Over the past year, I've been helping my dad manage finances and providing support from over an hour away after losing my mom. The right technology and planning have made all the difference.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: I'm in a similar situation, having lost my dad a few years ago and supporting my mom at a distance from Appston. Legal advice we've learned how to stay informed.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: This podcast is our way of sharing the journey, offering practical advice, emotional support, and real conversations about the ups and downs of caregiving while navigating technology, legal issues, finance, and home care.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Whether it's balancing healthcare concerns, setting up remote monitoring, planning for the future, we're here to share our experiences, talk with experts, and help you navigate the tech and tips that make caregiving more manageable.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and join us as we explore the tools and resources to care for our loved ones and our okay, I think we're live and you got some stories. This tale of the day I hear.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: A little bit, and I don't want to get too personal because I know these things are still happening now, but my wife and sister in law had the experience of putting my father into my father in law into a rehab center, and it was interesting that the situation they went through to try to determine where to go again. Don't want to give too much personal information, but he recently had a stroke event and so he's on his way to recovery. And I think the thing I've learned from that whole experience is how important it is to have resources and to be familiar with the facilities in your area. Because one of the things I think that we ran into was that we had to research things about where the centers were and how they were rated. And because of that, that took time away from maybe paying attention to some of the other necessary details we had. I would think when you have somebody in their eighties whom you're caring for in some way, that you need to predict what you think might happen. So start talking about where facilities are, what facilities are there.
We were lucky that my wife's in healthcare and she had some resources about her, but I can't imagine what this would be like for someone starting cold, not knowing anything about those facilities and having to do it under pressure.
One of the things that I think our healthcare system in our country does is that it tends to push. It tends to think more about money than outcomes, and it starts to push people toward the places it wants to be just to save the most money. So as soon as my father in law was in a situation where he was in a hospital, they immediately started, once they got him stable, started thinking about what his discharge was. And that's disconcerting if you're not used to it, and it puts a lot of pressure on the family. So my advice to people is, be as proactive as you can. Think about facilities and ask your loved ones what they want to do. I think it really helped that they had talked a lot to him and about what he saw and did, and he said, and my family, especially on my wife's side, has had quite a lot of experience putting family members in that kind of situation. And so they weren't unfamiliar with it. And I think that helped them. You know, my sister and my wife are smart women who know their minds and have experienced this before. And so I think that grounded them to make the right decisions for my father in law now. But, you know, my advice to people who are having elderly parents is you got to think about these things beforehand. You got to prepare some kind of level of ground for yourself, because when you're in the crisis, it does not pay to have to figure out all the things from ground zero to 100.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: It's too hard. It's too hard. Too much pressure. It's too much emotion. And so I. My thoughts would be, do what you can to prep for this.
Have this discussion, talk to your loved one about what they want, what do they want to be? And if you see health concerns out there, certainly take care of them. But, you know, what would you do if you had to go to rehab? What would you do if you had to have an emergency surgery or if you had to have a living well in place or medical power of attorney? You start by thinking about those things.
Preparation is very, very important in this. I can't prepare for everything, but you can have a common ground.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: So can we drill down on some of that a little bit? So, sure. What if you, if you had to make a list for people to include in their documents or their preparation for something that might happen way off in the future? Let's think about what kind of things you might put on that list. Some that come to mind for me and, and tell me if you got extras on this, are, do you have a preferred hospital near. Near you? Some people may only have one choice. Some people may have, you know, in our case, we may have a couple of choices where, where we live and, you know, does is the difference in those things? Does that matter for you?
Is the hospital in the same provider system that your primary doctor is in? If you have a primary doctor? But what are some questions along those lines that that kind of surprised you, maybe, or things that you would, you would recommend people put on their lists?
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Well, we talked about this in one of our earlier podcasts, and I can help you to refer to it is making sure your power attorney and your documents are correct.
That's certainly number one on my book. And we ran into that a little bit and we were able to have answers for that kind of thing. The other thing is conversations with your loved one about what they want. So we had a choice between how aggressive we wanted to be with recovery and rehab, as opposed to comfort and stability as opposed to cost. What can you afford? So having those conversations out of the crisis area helps, because when you're in crisis, you know, it's very difficult to deal with the emotions that come along with that and make rational decisions about what you do it. You're in the mix of that, and so you want to have as much of that done as possible. And I certainly think that's what. And having the discussion with a provider, your dog, your one you're caring for doctor about what they would offer or expect from the care. So we had those kind of conversations with the VA doctors with his primary care. And so I'm sure my sister and wife had a good idea of what was possible, and they spent a lot of time together having that kind of discussion. That's not always the way you have to go through it. So, you know, you have to have these discussions with loved ones out of the crisis area. And now you were going on a list. So what was the list?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: So for our listeners, I've got a list of things that kind of help clarify the types of documents that you want to have together. No, Bobby was just referring to making sure you have your documents in place, and we refer to this in an earlier podcast. But some feedback I got was that we didn't go into too much detail about what those things are. We have a few examples, but since our last episode, I went out and found it's not a definitive list, but it's a good general list to give you an idea of what you need to have in place. And I'm just going to go over them. I'm going to go walk through here just for a second and list them. And if you think of anything I need to add to that, please let me know.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: All right, so let's go. So starting out first, Wills. Okay. Things that you kind of need to know about for yourself is Wills. You need to understand how they work, who is in charge, and mistakes to avoid, and who gets what. So if you don't know much about Wills, you can get online and read more about that. Trustinwill.com, i think, is a good spot that can tell you more about that. I'm sure Wikipedia can. But the best idea about Wills is to go to a lawyer or go to some online legal sites and get a, get an idea of some examples of that. But what it comes down to is that when you're passed on, you want to say, want to be able to leave instructions for how some things get done. Things like where does your property go? Where do your possessions go? Who's going to handle all of these things once you're gone? So that's a little bit more about wills. So you need to have a will in place. The next one on the list is trusts. Now, trusts are kind of complicated, and the one question that you need to ask yourself is, do I need one? A lot of people do, a lot of people don't. But go and take a little time. Find out online about how trusts work, and specifically in your, in your state or your country, for that matter. There are pros and cons to them. So most of them are around protecting assets. A lot of times it's protecting assets from probate taxation, around probate and that sort of thing. And sometimes it's kind of protecting the, the right of who inherits things and kind of taking care of inheritance before it actually needs to be done in a will.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Wills and trust are two different animals. Absolutely different types of trust, some which survive death and some which don't.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Make sure that you, you have that conversation not only with a lawyer, but if you have a financial advisor who is maybe dealing with trust and deals with maybe your stocks or your income, there are different kinds of trust that can survive death.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Glad you brought that up about, about stocks and income. And, you know, what I think mainly about is real estate, because it's the ones kind of a little bit closest to my heart and some of the situations I'm dealing with. So, yeah, thanks for, thanks for adding that. Next up is living wills or advanced care directives. So this is really just about putting down on paper and having it legally recorded medical care that you do want and that you don't want. If you're unable to speak for yourself, that's it. In a nutshell. And it's, it's very important to both you and to the loved ones around you who are probably trying to help you out in these situations so that the decision is not on them. When get asked questions about your healthcare. And sometimes it may be life or death questions. So if you got a chance, get that out of the way ahead of time, get it down in a legal document, and by all means, have a lawyer to help you with that if you can.
All right. We're looking pretty good so far. Anything to add on living wills?
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So they're probably the easiest instrument to have done because they are very straightforward. They're, they're very concentrated in what they talk about. So many living wills, although you still want to talk to a lawyer about how they affect your lives, they can be done in a self way. So two people, you can download a form, fill out the options on it, and make sure it's notarized. And that is, in effect, a living will now mean it'd be the best one in the world. But it certainly works. And usually you can get living wills like this or medical power of attorneys done fairly when we talk about medical powers attorneys letter. But you can do that for a very low cost, so that does not take a lot of money out of you.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. Great. Okay. Here's one that did I think a lot of folks have trouble thinking about is it's called death care, really, and funerals and memorials. So, and really, that all has to do with getting down on paper and making sure that you understand what your loved ones want or writing down what your loved ones who may be here after you understand what you want done with your body, where it goes and what happens after you die. What kind? Do you want a service? Do you want to be buried? Do you want to be cremated? All the details around, let's call it your funeral or your celebration of life or your wake or any of those kinds of things, or any of the details that you care about and have those down and laid out so that someone doesn't have to make it up. Let's write down that stuff before it gets lost. I had noticed, I had a relative pass away about a year or so ago. And I remember looking at that obituary, and there's a listing of who the parents were and some of the relatives were, and they were, there were some names misspelled. There were some things that were just completely wrong. And I know it was just that that person was in distress at the time and was writing down everything they could think about and writing just what they knew and what they heard from their loved ones. And, you know, some of it just went right. So it'd be nice just for. Just for completeness sake and correctness, just to have all that stuff down ahead of time.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: I think there is a good way to think of this, that, you know, the word death care is a general term, but it has a really negative connotation. Writing some of this stuff down can be about just, you know, recording your family genealogy, having that conversation with your loved one about what their life was like and who were their models and who the people that influenced them, as well as getting the whole related to who. Right. It can be done as an experience of life, not experience of death. So you should have those conversations before. Again, you're into the stress of a critical moment, like someone passing or getting sick.
Make sure you know how your father's related. How many brothers and sisters they have? Do they have any cousins who would have meaningful uncles and aunts in their lives? You know, those kind of questions can be meaningful to you and give you more connection to your own family. So I think you do that not where they're sick, not when they pass, but you do it while they're alive. What? You get feedback and all kinds of feedback from them as a living testament to their own. To their own life.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: So 100%. And you get the stories, too. If you can get the stories and the, in the end, the data at the same time, then that's good. That's good. All right, on to the next one. Kinship and custody. These are things around. These are the documents that take care of the things around, in your case, if you. If you have children. So if we're talking about yourself or if you have children or you have pets or you have people who, other dependent adults who are dependent on you, what. What do you want to happen? You know, how do you want to provide for how they're taken care of or what kind of directions do you have and in that area? Thoughts?
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Oh, I think this is critically important, and I think the people, the one that people probably don't pay much attention to are the dependent adults in your life. Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, everyone thinks children certainly have. Should have guardianship, and everyone does, you know, don't own pets. But you have to also remember that if you're the, you're a lifeline to adults in your life who need to be thought of as well. So that kind of consideration makes a lot of sense. And you should think about it. And a lot of people don't do think about those things.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. And in fact, I know of a specific detail about this. You know, some friends of the show were talking to me about something they called a payment on death account. And this was an account that they set up at their bank that had essentially kind of beneficiaries. But the idea was, is that there was money in this account. So it was designated to take care of some dependent adults in their life if by chance they were to pass away before those dependent adults did so. And it named specifically who the beneficiaries of that account would be. And not in as it goes directly to their dependent adults, but it goes to third party who has agreed ahead of time to be the person or the people to take care of those dependent adults in the event that these folks passed away ahead of time. So I thought that was a, that was a really, really good example of how you can do that sort of thing. And, you know, they stimulate enough money in their case, they had enough money to put in there to take care of these folks for the rest of their lives. So it's, uh, it was interesting. I'd not heard about that one before till I'd heard about it from them.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: That's a really good idea. And those don't have to be large amounts. Those could be just things that get people by. And so. Yeah, I think that's a really good idea.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. So along those lines, next on the list is money and insurance policies, financial accounts. Who owns those accounts or owes those accounts for which assets. So there's things like that that just need to be laid out. You know, who own, what are the names on, say, if you've got property, if you've got a house and some land, or what are the names on the deeds for those things and how are they specified?
Same with vehicles. In our state, there's a, there's a, there's a difference between two names being on a deed or a title with, and in between them. So in this case, I'm going to say, I don't know, Fred and Wilma versus Fred or Wilma. And in our case, in our state, if it says or it's not considered a joint asset as far as probate's concerned, and it also is not considered, it's not set up in a way that either Wilma or Fred can take action around selling that asset. So in the case of some folks I know who, one of the spouse passed away, the surviving spouse had to wait a good while and have some lawyers involved to change deeds on the property before they could sell it because the property deeds originally said Fred and Wilma, as opposed to Fred or Wilma. So, you know, those are some things you got to think about. Again, I'm not a legal scholar. I am. I'm not a lawyer. And the details there are mostly right. So just make sure that you verify that with your legal professionals and your financial professor professionals. But for the most part, that's the way that works in the state in which we live in. Alright, thoughts on that? You got any examples?
[00:18:58] Speaker A: There are differences between those words and the assets you have. So you talked about land which deals with maybe whether you can sell it, whether you can change it and transform it in some way. Bank accounts have a slightly different item, very much similar in the same way. And an or don't mean the same thing. What you probably want to lean toward is an or if you're doing it for a care one. Because if they're incapacitated, that means you can act in their stead. Making sure you have that conversation with your bank to make sure, you know, conjunction means something is really important. So, and again, we're talking from South Carolina's perspective. We are not lawyers. And it may be differences in other states and depending on where you are, give other jurisdictions.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so that's good. And next on the list is power of attorney. We talked a good bit about power of attorney in the episode before this one. If you haven't heard it, feel free to go back and take a look at that. But the idea of the power of attorney is really, is who can help handle your financial affairs if you cannot, it's a really big deal. It's not very hard to do, though, and it's not very costly to do. It's just sitting down. In this case, I actually believe you really need a lawyer for this. You sit down with a lawyer, you lay it out with the person that you're going to be acting with. The power of attorney for, I think is usually called the principal in this case, if Fred was power of attorney for wilma, the lawyer would write up a document that said what kind of business spread would be able to do in Wilma's stead if Wilma was incapacitated or could not do this for themselves, or if they just, you know, were at a point where they couldn't travel to take care of something. And they asked, they asked Wilma, ask Fred to do this. So there's, there's a real document. It has to be in our case, in our, in our state, it has to be recorded, the county in which the principal lives. And that's a detail that I've just ran into in the last week dealing with a bank account. The bank wanted to make sure that not only did you have the paper copy that was signed and witnessed, but it had been recorded in the county government where the person lived. So that's things to think about. I know you've probably run into some things with power of attorney, too, haven't you?
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So, first of all, keep in mind that power of attorneys don't survive there. So they are not wills. So they only are in effect when that person is in capacity, but alive, or even if they're alive with capacity, that you can act in their stead. But they, if they pass away, the will takes over as a statement of how you, how property and management, other things are managed. So keeping that in mind, realizing that's why you might need a power of attorney and a will to cover both areas. And power of attorney is a much more compulsive document. You can have something that's smaller, that's medical power of attorney, that's very close to living will, but also talks about taking over medical decisions, and the rules can differ for that. It's a simpler version of power of attorney. Again, we're not lawyers, but, you know, just make sure you have that conversation, and they can be done fairly quickly. So if you are in that situation, you don't want to wait until somebody's incapacitated to try to get that done, because it's hard to do if not possible, unless somebody else has a power of attorney that can transfer it to you. But you certainly want to make sure you have these conversations beforehand, before you critical time, and at least have medical power.
That's probably the smallest one of the list we can have, and it doesn't take much at all.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: There you go. That's great. And then the last thing I have in my list is one that's near and dear to my heart. And I know it's near and dear to your heart is digital accounts and assets. How will someone locate and access all of your online accounts? If you're like me, if you're involved in tech at all, you have hundreds of these. And so you, it's very important that you have a record of these accounts, what they're for, if they cost anything, if they're regular subscription or not, credentials to get into those accounts and making sure that there's someone in your life who knows how to get to all those credentials and all that detail about those things. So what? Got anything to add on that one?
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Oh, so many things. So first of all, you need to talk about, let's talk about ourselves. So, because I think that's a good place to start. What do you want to have survive you yourself after your death? And when I say that, I think about the things like your pictures, your writing, your journaling documents that you may have created that your spouse or loved 1 may want to see.
So access to your computers in some way. Now, there's probably a lot of stuff that I don't care, survives, doesn't survive my death, you know, my search history stuff. Who cares about that? Maybe the little knickknacks I try here and there to keep myself going on tasks, you know, so those tasks don't mean anything anymore. So, but you have to decide where your line is and decide what things you want to do. Of the modern computer systems out there have addressed this need and they have survivability paths for you to take so that you can make sure that the people you care about have access to your accounts. I had this situation happen to me three years ago when my sister passed and very knows that we had the terrible time getting into her accounts just to find out things like, you know, what was she doing the night she passed or what pictures had she taken over the, over her lives. And so we lost some of those things because we didn't have those things in place. And so what I say to you is, know what you want to pass on. There are steps to take for that. If you're on a Mac or you're on a windows machine, you can do lots of things to make sure you save those ads. In a way. If you're not using a password manager, you should consider that kind of thing because that can help you store access to those digital access you might have.
I just think that's worth having the conversation. And for me, it was a dramatic experience with my sister that made me talk about this with my wife and my other loved ones. So I have a plan right now where I can have they get into my machine and get to the things I know they want to get to. I take pictures all the time and I would hate for all of those pictures to be lost, as many of them with my wife and loved ones. And so I have a plan for making sure those pictures abide me. You should think about that too. So absolutely, I can't emphasize password managers are great, especially the ones that allow you to share assets with particular people.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great point. And you made me think, too, about social media. Social media accounts also have the ability to say, you know, who has. Who has rights to maintain my social media presence, a presence after I'm gone or to whether or not to take it down or any of those kinds of things, that that's kind of a big deal. I ran into a situation several years ago where a friend passed away without giving that information to anyone. And I guess it's good in some ways. In some ways, that person's still alive on social media at a notification that it's their birthday every year. But it's also kind of sad, too, when you see people wishing them happy birthday who didn't know that they passed away a couple of years back. You know, it's. It's. It's interesting. No, the list. But it is definitely something to think about. It makes me wonder if there might be something in the future, like a digital power of attorney that might show up at some point for. For these kinds of things and some sort of. Some sort of widely accepted way to record that and be able to enact it whenever you need to.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: I think some companies are starting to think along that way.
They probably are dealing with this more and more. As you know, social media takes more of a presence in our lives that you have to deal with things like death and disappearance and how you handle those kind of things. So I think you're going to see more and more like that. The lawyer in my head is going off and saying, you know, a contract can be made to do anything you want, and so you can certainly have, you know, wills and contracts that point out certain things to it. Of course, it's up to the companies to abide by those things, but I think they're starting to see it, and I think, you know, you're right. You're gonna see more and more instruments come out that will give people those options.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: So, yeah, something to think about, for sure.
So.
All right, so that kind of buttons up that list. I'll make sure that when this goes to the stream, that that list is in the show notes, or at least there's a link to it somewhere in there. And for the audience, if you've got any more things to add to that list that you know of, we would love to hear it. And if you have questions or things that you'd like us to cover in the future and in future episodes, do let us know by the time this goes to the stream, we'll have an email address and I will make sure it gets mentioned in the intro and I'll make sure it is listed in the show notes. So just email us any questions or any suggestions that you have and we'll be sure to, to take a look at them. All right. We've talked a little bit about legal things today, and we've talked about having conversations and the emotions around that kind of stuff and we're leaning in on that. But I want to take a minute to talk about tech a little more in a different way. I know we talk a lot about technology in the keeping our data safe or making sure that folks have access to our data when they need to have access to it. And, you know, just technology that makes it easier to help care for our loved ones. Well, this is a, this is a tech story that just kind of blew my mind. A friend of the show gave me a call after hearing our first episode and told me this story. And I'm going to try to get all the details right, but I'm not going to tell any details about, you know, their names or where they are or any of that kind of stuff.
So here's the deals. This person, I'm going to call her Ellen. Ellen has a parent who is in, in care nearby in an assisted living facility not too far from where Ellen lives. And so Ellen's mom, years ago, I think it's like 15 years ago, had knee surgery. After knee surgery, she still had a lot of pain. She had a lot of nerve pain. And to combat that nerve pain, they did something pretty unique at the time. Again, 15 years ago, she had an implant, a spinal stimulator implant put into her back. It's a thing that's under the skin. It's actually implanted and it kind of disrupts some of the nerve impulses that carry the pain signals from, from, from the knee in this particular case. Alright, so 15 years ago, that's done. It's been working like a charm for years. And the idea about this thing, the way that it works is that it hasn't a battery and you have to recharge that battery every once in a while. And to do that, there's a couple of, couple of things. There's a battery pack. You charge up this battery through the battery pack and you take that battery and you put it on a specific spot on the person's skin where the receiver is. So you put that battery pack against it and it works just like an iPhone does for charging with magsafe these days or the way. Some of the. The induction chargers work on Android phones. The battery is nearby to the charging spot, and it charges up the implant, and it lasts for days. You know, it may. I think it lasts about a week, or at least it did when it was. When it was new. So. All right, so that's cool. So you charge up this implant. It sends all these little nerve impulses. It disrupts pain. It's a beautiful thing. So it's been working like a term for years. All of a sudden, in the last few weeks, Ellen's mom has started having a lot of painful episodes wherever I. She's getting a lot of knee pain. She's getting some. She's getting some interesting feelings in her legs that. That are just not right. You know, there's a lot of pain. And the doctors didn't know what to do. Ellen didn't know what to do. So she talked to the doctors about it, and the doctors started looking into her. Mom said, well, you know, this is, you know, this happens sometimes. You get nerve pain as you get older. What we usually do is we subscribe, you know, drugs like gabapentin and some of those sorts of things to kind of combat the nerve problems and the nerve pain. And, you know, none of that worked. There was other kinds of medicine that they tried. None of that did anything for her. And, in fact, that, you know, the pain was starting to get debilitating after a couple of weeks. And it was constant. It was constant. And even got to the point where Ellen said, you know, maybe there's something wrong with this implant. And they called the company that manufactured it, and the company actually sent out a representative to come see Ellen's mom. And person got there and took a look, and first she said, wow, this thing, this is old. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that still has one that's this old. It's one of the first gen boxes. So it's interesting. So the first thing that happened is with old technology, as we both know, a lot of times you have trouble finding connectors. So the company rep had to go cobble together some cables and connectors to be able to actually hook her laptop up to this implant and read data about what was going on with it. And she was able to look at it, and she said, this doesn't seem right. I don't understand. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. All right, so cut to the chase. What had happened was this. Ellen's mom's implant, for some reason, was. Was sending all kinds of intense impulses to her spine and to her nerves, which resulted in a ton of pain that was kind of unexplainable. Ellen's mom didn't really have a great way to explain it and was having trouble getting the point across about what was. What was what it felt like to her. The company rep was able to see it and say, oh, my gosh, this is not right. It shouldn't be doing this. And was able to kind of reset it, reprogram it, to bring it back down to its normal levels for what it was supposed to do. The more they looked into it, what they found was that there is a remote that goes with the implant. The remote lets you see what the battery level is and decide when it's time to charge the implant. And there was some other things that the remote could do also that no one had a real reason to do anything with because it was set to the level that she needed, and it stayed there. Well, the remote was in her mom's room.
Best that we can figure is someone may have picked up the remote, hit the wrong button at some point in time, and essentially put this. This implant into overdrive. And the way it was explained to me was, if you've ever used a tens unit, you know, it's one of those things that if you've got some muscle pain, sometimes you can put these electrodes on your skin, and it'll cause. It'll cause electrical impulses to go across and stimulate the muscles and that sort of thing. This implant is like having an embedded tens unit. And it was like having an embedded tens unit turned up on max, which I know can be a painful thing because I've done that for some muscle pain for me before so long. And the short of it is, there's a lot of cautionary tales here. Old technology, keeping the right connectors to be able to take care of this stuff, making sure that everyone involved knows what all the functions are and how the things work. And if your loved one is maybe getting to an age where they don't have as good a memory as they used to, or they may be some dementia involved, you might want to secure the remotes for that stuff. Or even if that's not the case, you still want to secure remotes for that sort of stuff because, you know, somebody may pick it up thinking it's a tv remote, you know, it's hard to say and cause problems that. That are hard to figure out. That was one of the most bizarre tech stories I have heard in a while. And I cautionary tale to say the least.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Of course, you and I have been in many situations that have nothing to do with the medical body that, that also put people in this kind of situation where, you know, a server goes awry, somebody doesn't know a piece of technology. You know, my first thought in my head was, oh, my God, is this implant running Windows 3.1?
Yeah, you really do. And I think the real story in that is making sure you know where these implants are and what, and how long have they been in the system, because sometimes the medical records that you might have may fail you in that way, so.
And then don't be surprised. Medical implants have lifetime.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Yep. Yep.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: And that goes for knees and hips and all kinds of things that actually don't have any technology and they wear out. And so having a plan for that and considering that when you're putting them in, I think we've done some, some pretty good technology improvements over the years that knees and hips have longer lifetimes than they used to, but it used to be as little as five years before you have to deal with it. So.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Yeah, especially things that run off of batteries. You know, bad batteries are great and I know they're rechargeable, but they do have a finite lifetime. They have a lifetime and their use is going to get shorter over the years. I mean, that applies to any kind of implant, really. Like even pacemakers and things like that.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Even pacemakers, yeah.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Stuff to look out for. But, yeah, I thought that was bizarre and, yeah, it's just stuff. Need to, need to pay attention to. Gosh, yeah.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: That is a strange story.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: That is a strange story. But I was like you, I think I've seen all kinds of problems in tech where no one really knows how things work under the covers. And there are cases where that one little, that one little detail could have helped the whole situation. So it's, yeah, it's tough to keep an eye on things to think about. There are really, if your implant has a remote, make sure it's secured in a way that people just can't pick it up. If you, when, if you had the opportunity, when an implant is, is placed, is to make sure you get as much detail as about, you can even paperwork or instructions make sure that's secured. And also, you know, that's another one of those things for the list we were talking about earlier, especially not only guardianship in custody, but digital accounts and assets. You know, if you're, you may be putting the money, doing money aside to help take care of an elderly loved one. In case you pass, make sure that the details about that person's implants or any of their medical devices are secured somewhere that somebody else can get to them besides you.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: I think conversation does look worth reminding about, making sure you have current medical information about your loved ones as well, and you can do that electronically. We talked a little bit about mad chart in one of the previous podcasts, but making sure you have access to that, what their medications are, what their recent surgeries are, if they have a pacemaker, if they have an implant, those things are important.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: And thank you to Ellen for her story. Yes, Ellen's the listener, and she knows who she is. So we appreciate that. And I hope other listeners kind of get some interest in hearing and maybe it'll help some other folks bring their stories forward and we can, we can talk to them, talk about them. All right. Well, I think that's it for my list today, and we've been going for just about long enough to call this an episode, so I think we will and we'll go from there. So. All right.
