Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So I put on the shirt because I like the color purple. It is, you know, it's a, it's an Easter purple. So I thought, of course I get this. But I forgot apparently this is an old shirt. Because I'm gonna tell you about one thing about this shirt. I'm sorry. For people who are not, who are hearing on podcast, if you look at this shirt, the thing that you can't unlook, see if I point it out, is there's a huge pocket on this shirt. Just huge. I realize now this is probably one of my dad's shirts where he had. Where you put the pocket protector in. You actually have the thing.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Ah, I see. I was gonna ask you like what you gonna put in there, man?
[00:00:33] Speaker A: What you found in there? A full iPad I think pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So this is probably a 1960 shirt. Probably.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: It's vintage.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Vintage, vintage, vintage. It's come back in style.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: People charge a lot of money for that kind of thing.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, probably like thousands of dollars.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: So what'd you do for Easter? What's going on?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Well, the one thing I did that I didn't think would be possible is I got my father in law and my mother together in one place. They had dinner together.
Yes. And we didn't cook all of that. How did we do that? We went to a restaurant and had a pre made Easter meal. I had to order it 24 hours ahead of time. I will not give them a plug because they need to come on and buy the ads for us. But you know, it's probably one, you.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Know, of Cool, cool.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Maybe a rocking chair in the ad. I'm not. That's all I'm gonna say.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Possibly one on the front porch, I bet.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Probably one on the front porch. But you know, we did four dinners and picked them up, brought them in, set them in front of each other. They had their own to go, cane containers if they wanted them. It came with a pecan pie. That was nice. My dad would have ate two of them if he had been given to him. And you know, it was, it was pretty nice. So my wife and I and my father in law and my mother, we all got together. I took some pictures of it. It was really nice. My sister in law is out of country, but. But yeah, we were together and that we hadn't done that in a while.
So that was, that was really nice. I set up the room to be a little like almost like a restaurant almost. And you sat down and be all together and played a little jazz, you know, that's awesome. That's kind of nice.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Really dug it too, didn't they? They enjoyed themselves.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: They did. And he spent a good time with us, so, you know, she didn't have to go nowhere. That was nice.
That's what I did. What'd you do?
[00:02:36] Speaker B: I think in. In short, I kind of overdid it physically over the weekend. So we. We had spent some time with our grandkids and our kids earlier in the week, so we didn't really do anything on the day of Easter with. With the family, but we had done some stuff earlier this week and kind of. We'd gone to some an. Hunt with our youngest granddaughter. And that was very cool and had a great time. But on Saturday, I went up and helped my dad get started with his. With his garden and this. He. He does a massive garden. He's got. Gosh, I don't even know how. Probably a hundred yards long, close to it, maybe 50 yards wide. He has a little tractor that he tills it up with and all this kind of stuff. And he. He likes to put the. He likes to put an electric fence around it because he's worried about the deer coming in and messing with his. With his crops.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: So I helped him pull up a bunch of fence posts and put back down a bunch of fence posts. And it was. It was like a CrossFit workout. If I gotta tell you, I was pretty beat.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: You know, Barry, you know, you do chores like that for your father that I think, you know, contractors charge thousands of dollars for, because.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: I'm doing stuff like changing a light bulb and moving the chair from here to there. You're pulling up fence posts like, wow.
Yeah, that's.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: That's right. And then, you know. And I was good on. I was good, actually on Saturday I felt pretty good. But then Kate and I did a bunch of yard work on Sunday afternoon. And by that time. By the time I got through doing some of that, I was beat. It was completely.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: I bet you were. You probably worked out better than I did.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Super, super sore. But it was a great weekend. We got a lot done and just enjoyed it all around, so I'm glad.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. This is a. Like I said, this is a sweet spot for this area. You know, despite the pollen, it's still pretty nice outside. You know, we had. I think we had a high in orange burger. 85, which is mild. Usually, you know, an orange burger is much higher than that, so.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah, so it was nice.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Well, that's good. That's good. So looking at our agenda today, looks like you got some stuff on here about virtual medical appointments. We've done some.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So you know, if y'all been following the show, you know, my mom has had her issues and UTI is one of them. And we might have to do a whole podcast on just UTIs, urea tract infection infections, if you haven't heard that term before.
And she had a follow up. The follow up was virtual. And I haven't done a whole lot of follow ups with her that are virtual. Most of hers are in person. But this was kind of cool and it made me think about, you know, things that you should think about when you are pulling your loved one into that kind of situation, especially when you're also trying to be a part of it. And yes, these, these new virtual calls make accommodations for sons, families to be a part of the call. And there was, it was actually well done, well set up. Again, I'm not going to give anybody a free plug yet, but I know a lot of hospitals are doing this now. And it was all facilitated with a text message. Click on a link. You could, when you got in, there was the ability for you to, to, to add other people to it so you could add your son, your daughter, your caregiver, that kind of thing to the list. And it worked really well. About 20 minutes. So, so I came up with a list of things to do. They're kind of divided into seven areas. Preparation, technology, environment, ease of use during a visit, post appointment, and then privacy and comfort. I just kind of read some things and maybe we talk about them a little bit. How about that?
[00:06:07] Speaker B: I think that sounds like a great idea, in fact.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: And I've got a chart as always and I'll put it into the show notes later or we will.
So the first category is preparation. Very important. A couple things on there. Schedule your appointment, comfortable time of the day, don't do it at the end of the day. I did it early in the morning because that was where it made the most sense for my caregiver. But you, you know, you have to think about that.
So you do it at lunch or you do it at night where people have trouble getting back and forth to places you think about when you do it. I did mine, you know, kind of mid morning when she was up and ready to go.
Make a list of symptoms and questions and medications in advance so that you don't have to fumble when they ask you what medications you're on, what symptoms does she have. So have a talk through that a little bit. Maybe even have a list. You write down some things so you can be prepped for that. And that's a good advice because that question's going to come up.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Tech question. Do they have something like a. Like a chat function where you can, like, paste all that in if you already had it on the computer or something?
[00:07:08] Speaker A: They did. We didn't use it. Yeah. So it was mostly talking because she wanted to hear from mom.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: But yeah, we could have probably have done that. That would have been nice.
The technology shop is important. So the way these are set up is that you can do these on your phone. If you want to do it on a computer, then you need to prep.
They also send you an email where you can actually see what the appointment is and do it on email. But that would, for me, it would have taken more steps. So I say use the phone because it's easy. Click on it. You can show her. You can show him. You know that. And my caregiver was there with her and I wasn't. So I got on my iPad and got on, and the caregiver used her phone and got on, and I made sure she had the link so she could get in.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Nice, nice.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: So have that conversation. This particular one actually wanted to send you the link 30 minutes beforehand. And I think they did that so that you won't lose the link, which kind of expected.
I think it makes a lot of sense.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: So what I would also say is make sure what you do is know the routine of that. So this particular one, that's what the way they set it up. So it would be just 30 minutes and then, you know, know the routine so you know what to do and then. Or use this device that has a big screen in case your loved one wants to see more of the picture, wants to be a part of it. So think about your setup as you go into that.
Gotcha. All right, Makes sense. So the next steps, environment, you know, make sure you're in a quiet place where the phone won't ring. Well lit. And I don't mean. And always make sure the light doesn't come from your back because that makes you look like a silhouette. You want the light to hit your face. So we know that from podcasting. My lights right here, actually. So we can make sure that you're well lit and you can be seen. It is always good to think about ease of use. So my caregiver was with my mom. If she had been by herself, I would have probably rethought the way I did things. So. But what we decided to do is caregiver handled all the tech stuff and she just sat there and looked at the video screen and that could work. So. But think about that as you go through that setup.
During the visit, when you join a call, senior's comfortable with it. Take notes, communicate clearly. Make sure you explain things that maybe they're saying. Your loved one saying that your doctor may not know because usually a doctor who's not familiar with them and you know, and also. But do this, let them talk because I think it's important, you know, and take notes when you're doing that visit to make sure you communicate things, especially if you got complicated things. Make sure you write them down to talk with that person later. Post appointment, review what you've written down. Talk about those instructions with your caregiver and your loved one when it makes sense. Set up reminders to follow up when you can. And you know, make sure you do the medication that they're asking about. So for my mom in particular, we were making sure that we knew when the antibiotics would stop. So make sure you, you know those dates so you go through and then remember, make them private, make sure their privacy is held intact and make sure they're comfortable. So you make explain to them what's going on. Make sure they know who's present, respect their preferences. So if they tell you they don't want to be a part of this call, it's not a good idea to do this, then do something else.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: And then, you know, share information and talk to your community. Make sure they all know and share things. So I thought these were really cool steps and I made a nice graphic. Well, I didn't but some mechanism that I won't go unnamed it and you know, it's really cool to be prepped for this kind of stuff. So that went pretty well.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: That's very cool. I was going to ask you too, do a lot of these apps that you do this through, do they offer the option of recording the call for you and giving you a recording later?
[00:11:03] Speaker A: It didn't have a recording feature as part of it, which was, I thought pretty interesting. But maybe that was thought through as something, as a privacy thing that they weren't going to do.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Farewell might be they don't feel like they can control it if they, you know, if they offer it, they're worried it might get out. That makes a lot of sense. But I guess if you had another device, there's no reason you couldn't record it on your End if you had.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: To, but you could, you know, and you and I have talked about what tools are available on the phone to do all that stuff. So I could have done that with my phone, probably, and had the summary of it. So I didn't think to do that. But that's something you should think about is how do you record all of this stuff? And, you know, there's. There's so many good tools out there now. Some of them built into things like iPhone and. And whatnot that work really well.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. Great, man. Well, that. That sounds like it was a pretty successful, successful foray into the technology of virtual appointments.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I was really impressed by the technology. I remember virtual appointments of five years ago when the pandemic first started, and they were kind of clunky. This wasn't clunky. This was actually kind of well done.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: They've had a little while to get them dialed in, haven't they?
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's becoming mainstream right now, you know.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Just like having a phone call or, you know, doing some of the things we take for granted, like driving a car. You know, a hundred years ago, those things were new and complicated. And so it looks like we're getting to that point now with video calls and the way we do things now.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: We don't really think too much about it, that's for sure.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: No, we don't.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: So cool. Well, I think the next thing I wanted to talk to folks about is about assisted living.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: I've.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: I've had a couple of occasions in the last couple of weeks where I've talked to people who are kind of at that point where they're wondering if they can take care of their loved ones, you know, even. Even. Even remotely sometimes. And. And they're thinking, is it time to talk about assisted living? And I know that's a really hard conversation for a lot of people to do, and I thought, you know, it might be a good idea for us to talk about it and just kind of bring it out in the open and say, you know, how do you go about doing that sort of thing? So, you know, it's one of those questions where the answer hits hard, but it's really important.
There's no big single moment where a neon sign's flashing at. You said it's time for assisted living. But there are some patterns and some warning signs.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: A friend of mine, actually a common friend of ours, talked to me about this when I'm actually at a beginning point of this with my loved ones, too. And we put my father in law's in and my mother in law probably is headed that way. And she basically said to me, you, you know, you're the person who knows the situation best. Trust that. Trust that you. That you. And it's not. There are a lot of people who will give you advice if you ask for it. And that's what it is, advice that you can take or leave. Including us.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Because I think in the end, you understanding your situation is probably the best way to go about that. So don't, I think you're. Don't let the guilt overrule you. Don't let the regret hit you. Sometimes this is the best thing to do and sometimes it's not.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: And don't let the fear of how awkward the conversation is or is going to be stop you. Because, you know, we all know this. It's an emotional thing. And honestly, if you, if you delay that, if you avoid that emotional conversation at some point in time, you might get to the point where you've avoided it so long that now it's an emergency and you have to do it in a hurry. Just kind of.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: There is never a time when that emergency situation is better than what you could have done in, in the past. There's never a time that is right.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: That's right. Big time. So again, like you, I made a list and thought we might walk through those things. Sure. So number one, safety is becoming a daily concern.
So are, are they having frequent falls or almost falling? Are they forgetting that the stove's on or forgetting that the doors are unlocked? Getting lost sometimes even in familiar places?
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Are they wandering?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Are they wandering? Yeah, exactly. Are mail and bills piling up and going unpaid? You know, that's early sign of early, early cognitive decline. Really though, on your side, if you're starting to worry every day that something might go wrong, that's kind of a red flag right there. That. Yeah. So to think about that, number two, personal care. Is personal care slipping?
Are you noticing situations where they might be wearing the same clothes for days? Poor hygiene or maybe strong body odor. They're not brushing their teeth, their hair, not washing their hair. Maybe their nails are getting super long. These unexplained bruises or injuries that might show up could be symptoms of falling. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It could be falling or confusion, you know, that they may not even remember doing it, for that matter. So, you know, think about, you know, we've talked about ADL's before, you know, active activities of daily living. If they can't handle two or more of those things reliably. It's probably time to start, start thinking about it and having the conversation.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: By the way, we have something in past episodes that goes through what those, those daily activities of living are. So go back and look at our notes.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: There's some pretty strong ones there to pay attention to. And what about, you know, what about meals? What about eating? Eating, Are they eating right? So are you, do you see, you know, weight loss or expired food piling up in the fridge? Or are they not paying attention to that sort of thing? Do you see indication they're skipping meals? Or maybe they forgot that they ate burn. Or you hear reports of the smoke detector going off at their place, A reliance on convenient foods that they've never used before. This is an interesting one because, you know, it's, it's that they're, they may be forgetting how to cook properly and it's easy enough to just go grab these things just to keep going. So, yeah, paying attention to the meals and nutrition situation. Luckily, none of my loved ones right now are having a problem with this. But medication mismanagement. So can they still handle what they're supposed to take every day and when? And even if, you know, like my dad has one of those pill minders for, you know, two weeks at a time that he fills up and he's able to take all those and just fill them up properly, he's all good. But at some point in time even that might not be capable for some folks. So, you know, pay attention and along those lines, resistance to reminders or help, you know, I've got this, I can do this. Why are you asking me these things? Maybe there's something behind that, that, that hostility when you ask questions like that. So stuff to pay attention to.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, there are things like that. There are symptoms of some, some diseases. Dementia is a broadband of things like that. So some, some types of dementia come with paranoia, come with things that make people push back. We come with aggressive behavior. So talk to your primary care about what that is.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Sure. And you know, it's interesting too, like that medication mismanagement, you know, it can be a matter of life or death.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: If you don't get that right. It can also cause other problems. Like I know of at least one person who, they may not have been managing their medication properly, which caused blood pressure drops, which caused instability, which caused lightheadedness, which caused a fall. So the fall precipitated an emergency situation to get that person into an assisted living situation. And it could have Been. Could have been avoided. Gosh, let's see. Isolation and mood changes. That's a. That's a whole other thing too. When they start wanting to isolate themselves from seeing their friends or engaging in hobbies, withdrawal from social contact, even phone calls.
When you start depression.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Not going to parties.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: You know, not celebrating life things. So they go down and you have to pay attention that it's not necessarily because they change their mind. Maybe there's something affecting them. And I want to put something in here too, because I did talk about UTIs that are involved in that and in with my mom and several of my family members. UTIs can affect your behavior, which is not something you normally put with those kinds of things. So not only can you get the kinds of, you know, it's an infection that can cause problems, but you can also see changes in behavior that mimics some of the things we're just talking about. So yeah, if you see sudden things like that, sometimes you have to be aware of that and make the right move by taking loved one to the ER and having it treated for sure.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Body chemistry is a very fine balance. And when it gets out of whack, all kinds of things can go. And it's not. Not just physical, but mental as well. So. Yeah. Gosh. So along those lines, you know, talking about, you know, behaviors. There's cognitive changes that can happen too. So like memory lapses beyond normal aging, confusion about time, place, or familiar people repeating themselves often in a single conversation. I have actually seen this happen. You know, not with the folks that I speak about here, but some other folks I've seen this where, you know, they'd mention the same thing four times in the same conversation within, you know, 10 minutes or ask the same question during those times, you know, that, that, that's. That's a big red flag right there. And trouble following basic instructions. This isn't a little forgetful. It's kind of the beginning of something a little bit deeper and something to pay attention to.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And you have to be really careful. Oh, good. You have to be really careful with that. Because the other thing I saw in it that may be added to your. Is that they usually make list and then they lose lists and then they make more lists. There's lots of piling going on. And that can be also be part of. Of some of the things out there. And these are signs to get you to look at it and decide what's the real thing to do here. You know, if you're in a place where you got a Caretaker, that's there most of the time, then maybe you don't need a facility. But if you don't and these signs come up, then you really need to start thinking about, well, what's in the best interest of that person. And yeah, again, making that decision before there's an emergency is always better.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Yep. What's in the best interest of them and what's in the best interest for you as the caregiver? Because number seven in this list is caregiver burnout. So if you or your siblings, your siblings, if you have them, are overwhelmed, you're exhausted or you're fighting, if you're spending more time managing their needs than your own life, and if you're anxious every time the phone rings, that's a huge sign. Sometimes the parents needs haven't changed, but you know, the family's ability to meet them has and that really matters. And a lot of people feel guilty about that. You shouldn't feel guilty about that. I'm a firm believer in the whole airline thing. You gotta put your mask on first before you can help anyone else. If you don't take care of you, you can't help them. So.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: And, and yet their dependency on you means you have to take better care of yourself.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. You start thinking about things in that way a lot more. It, it kind of makes me even more organized too, because I want, because I have to think about what if something actually happened to me before it happened to them? Who else would pick up the reins and go with this? And what I want to make sure I'm not leaving them a mess where I were to get hit by a truck or something. So, you know, it's something to think about.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: I have plenty of things in my immediate family and my extended family where the youngest of the siblings is the one who went first. And so you can't always count that fate will take you in order.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: And so you need to prep and think about what would happen if you weren't around, if your younger sibling wasn't around. And that has actually happened to me. I didn't think I'd be alone doing some of this stuff. And I am. I have my wife and other people, but, you know, at the end, it's the immediate children that seem to come to the rescue in most of these cases.
You know, I see the difference with where my wife and her sister do the things they do for her dad. And you know, they try to help me, but it is me. I'm the guy who's, who's now left. And there's a difference, There's a real difference.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Ultimately responsible. And you are, you know, you are. And that, that's a lot of, that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of weight pressure.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: A lot of weight. And that means you got, you know, the anxiety of that weight can, can change your health status. So yeah, I totally agree. Burnout is a real thing.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And you got, you got to be constantly vigilant about it and, and, and listen to yourself and, and listen to the pros out there about how to kind of help mitigate that. I think that's all you can do. And you know, all of that is before we even get to the thing about trying to figure out whether or not to do assisted living is from all these things we talked about. But there's also the financial piece of it and that's just not easy. It's just not easy. If you're lucky, you plan for it.
A couple of my relatives, they were lucky enough and successful enough to have bought long term care insurance early on in their life and it's come along to help them and that's been great. And there are others who haven't.
It's a lot. So let's want to talk about that a little bit and kind of break it down.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: This is actually so, so well timed because you know, some of these things you're having just done this with my father in law and, and now thinking about it with my mom, there's a lot of things fresh in my head. As a matter of fact, as recently I've done some, some work on it. So this is right on time.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: So. Okay, so let's go here a little bit so that, let's talk about the average cost breakdown for assisted living. According to my sources, assisted living runs, the average is about hundred dollars a month across the country, across you, across the US you may be different if you're in another country listening to us. And I know several of you are out there and we appreciate the international listenership, but in the US it's about US$4,500 per month on average. And it can range in some places. It's not that expensive. Can range from about $2,500 up to 8,000. It depends on where you are and, and what your state and care needs are. Really pre care units are usually about $1,000 above whatever the standard is wherever you're at. And you know, it's roughly around that difference. And there's extra charges for medication, maintenance, incontinence, care or other kinds of care that are related to those ADL's that we talked about earlier. You know, if you can't do several of those, you need help with those sometimes that it, that incurs bigger costs when it comes right down to it. So you know, that sounds scary, but if you, if you really kind of think about it and do the math, it gets less scary. It may not, you may not answer it, but the thing to do is don't be afraid to do the math about this stuff. So compare what those numbers look like to what a person's current living costs are. So think about do they have a mortgage or do they're paying rent? What do they pay for food every month, utilities, medications, what they're paying for current caregiving. Is it somebody who's coming in and what that's costing? Transportation? If you're having in home care, is that already being paid for? You know, if you start thinking about, if you have someone who comes in who maybe makes 25 bucks an hour, they're there for four hours a day.
Once you do the, once you add that up, that's, there's not a big leap between that and some of the full time assisted living things where those are taken care of.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: I was surprised how fast that cost can come to those kinds of estimates. That really surprised me on how much it is. And, and you have to think, you know, do you need that capability, you need other thing if they go into this, the service, what can you reduce? So look for those kind of options too.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. You know, and you know, some people think about, you know, once that person goes into assisted living, the chances are is they're not going to come back home at that point. So is the, do they have real estate? Is that paid for? Is that something that could be sold? The money taken to go for paying for assisted living if you need it for as long as they're going to need it. You know, you could do some rough math there. You can get some estimates about generally how long someone's going to live and do do a, do about at least a back of the napkin, but preferably a spreadsheet version of how is this going to work out. I know that it sounds, it sounds, what's the word I'm looking for? Very cut and dried. It sounds unemotional and it's not. Don't worry about that. You've done the emotion part already. Just even thinking about this. Don't feel like you're being, I don't know, a robot because you're adding up the numbers on this stuff. Just work with it and take your and go for it. So let's think about this. So if you've, if you've got the money, that's fantastic. If real estate's a possibility, maybe that's helpful. But beyond that, who can help pay for it? So there's, does your loved one have Social Security or a pension income, Any kind of long term care insurance? If they have it, take a look at the policy, ask. They may have it and you may not know it.
That's a thing there. A lot of folks have that sort of thing.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: As a tip, make sure you, you can ask professionals who can check on your loved one status too. So I've been given some information that lets me know how to check on it for something so that if you can't get it from them, you, there are ways for you to find out.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: There's the Veterans Administration aid and there's something called the attendance benefit for veterans and spouses. There's Medicaid, but it's only, that's only in some cases. And it varies by state, state and facility type. So Medicaid's on that list. But your mileage may vary like we said about selling the home or tapping home equity or downsizing that stuff to think about or, you know, and beyond that, just family members pooling funds. If there, if there's a possibility of that, you know, that's, that's a, that's a tough conversation too. And you know, you have to just have that conversation tactfully and see what the options are. But really there's a lot of things that go into the financial pieces of this, but it's not, there's nothing wrong with having those conversations. It may work out, it may not. But have those things. But also don't try to figure it all out by yourself. Go talk to a pro. You know, there are people at assisted living facilities who have done this. This is not their first rodeo and you're not their first patient. So they know the patterns, they know the tricks, they know the tips. Reach out to them. And same thing with attorneys. It's worth a few hundred dollars to go sit with an attorney who knows this in and out, who can give you the, give you the game plan or help you develop your own game plan.
So financial advisors also in that same category. So there's, there's a lot of folks who can help you. Don't hesitate to reach out and get.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Their help if you don't have any of those resources you might have a council on the aging in your area who can give you some referrals to that kind of thing. CPAs know about this, so have that conversation if you can. Especially someone who's doing their taxes and knows their setup. So they may have seen other people in the way they set it up. So you know they're. Barry, you're absolutely right. You got to reach out. This is not something you take on by yourself. Cold. There are plenty of resources out there, and you got to ask.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: It really, really comes down to it. You don't need a million dollars to plan for assisted living. What you need is a clear picture of what's coming and a few uncomfortable conversations now instead of chaos later.
Yeah, all right, well, that's most of my list. But I did tease earlier and said that I had a WI fi thing that I wanted to talk about. We were. We were having some technical difficulties earlier, and WI fi was bouncing up and down for. For. For Bobby setup. And it reminded me that I may have mentioned on the podcast a while back that I've been having trouble with one of my phones. I've got an iPhone 16 Pro. And the gist of it, this problem is so strange. It's the.
The call quality over regular cell. Over the regular phone calls.
Horrendous. And it's even worse when I'm on speakerphone. And I have noticed lately that it seems to be something to do with my house. If I'm outside the house, it's okay. It's fine. Sometimes it can be bad in my house, and I can walk outside and it gets better. And this is a brand new phone, and I've been researching this. I've been trying to figure out what's going on, and I'm on to something now. I think that's going to fix this problem. So.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Okay, you got me all ears. What? How did you figure this out?
[00:31:42] Speaker B: All right, well, I'm gonna tell you how I figured it out. And again, I'm in test mode right now to see if it actually is the problem, but it seems to be pointing in this direction. But of course, you know me. I talked to Chad GPT and had a. Had a deep conversation with Chat GPT about this, explained the whole situation, and it came back to me, says, oh, yeah, I know what's going on. Okay, What? Said it's. You're ping ponging. I'm like, okay, what's that mean? So turns out I have a very strong cell signal because there's a cell tower across the road from My house, I have pretty good WI fi, right? So I've got both of those. But, you know, by default, I usually turn on, when I have a cell phone iPhone, I turn on WI fi calling. What if you guys out there who don't know what that means? That means that your phone will pay attention to the cell signal, and when it doesn't see a good one, it sees. It sees a particularly bad one. If there's WI fi available, it will route your phone calls over the WI fi, over the WI fi out to the Internet to get to it. That's really handy if you're in a cell dead zone somewhere and you can just connect to it. And that's great. And it's one of those things I've done forever whenever I've had iPhones. Well, what ChatGPT surmises, and I'm apt to believe our AI overlord there is that the newer iPhones have gotten software upgrades to manage that stuff a little bit more to manage it. I'm not going to say manage it better, but managing different.
So apparently what's happening is because I'm in my house with a great cell signal and a great WI fi signal, it can't decide which one to talk to and sometimes bounces back and forth between the two.
And it does it so fast that you don't even notice it because the newer phones are built to like, really pay attention to that and go for the best signal every time. So if the signals are a little wavery, then it switches back. So apparently the other thing too is I have, I have AT&T. I'm going to go ahead and say their name, say the name that shouldn't be said, but I'm going to say it at and T5G Internet in my house. So it actually, my, my Internet actually goes over the same cell signals that my phone calls to. It's just one of those things. And it gives great speed. I mean, I'll. I'll have hundreds of megabytes down and, you know, tens of megabytes up. And it's perfect for what I do. It works really well when we're doing even recording in Riverside. But what I found out is those are notorious for having a lot of what's called jitter. And I'm not going to explain what jitter means, but I think it has to do with the stability of the connection when you're streaming. You don't see any problem with it when you're talking over a protocol like Zoom or like FaceTime or things like that they're made to deal with unstable connections and it works out great. Phone calls are not and they will wig out over an unstable connection. So the combination of that unstable connection and A and the two powerful signals in the phone bouncing back before between the two seems to be causing my problem. So the answer is to turn off WI fi calling when I'm at home. And so far today I have noticed that the call quality is better. So I don't know, we might have this solved. We'll see. So if anybody else is having that trouble with a new phone, that might have something to do with it. Your mileage may vary, but I'll report back next week about how, how well that fix is going. I'm, I'm hoping I've got it whipped because it's been bothering me for a while.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: Interesting days. Interesting.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Yeah. You know.
