How to Find Boomer and Senior Resources

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Host: Anti-Aging Psychologist Dr. Michael Brickey

Expert Guest:  Sharon Cutler

Broadcast: 3-17-08 on webtalkradio.net where the latest shows are broadcast and posted as podcasts

There is no shortage of information for Boomers and seniors. The problem is wading through the sea of information to find answers and solutions. Often the starting point is figuring out what questions to ask or how to get a good assessment of problems and needs. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a go to person? My go to person is Sharon Cutler, who is Editor of MatureResources.com and Founder of The Positive Aging Network. On today’s show Sharon shares how she goes about finding information.Her website is http://www.matureresources.com/  

TRANSCRIPT ©Michael Brickey–excerpts permitted with attribution MB: This is Dr. Michael Brickey with Ageless Lifestyles Radio, cutting-edge thinking for being youthful at every age. On each show I interview experts on what it takes to live longer, healthier, and happier. Our program takes a holistic approach in addressing anti-aging psychology, medicine, alternative medicine, fitness, nutrition, and wellness. Our emphasis is on innovative thinking and practices that have solid data and results.

Well, there’s no shortage of information; the problem is wading through all the information to find the answers and the solutions. Sometimes the internet can give us information in seconds while we’re still in our pajamas, and sometimes it offers us nothing but ads. It often gives us lists and credentials, but little feel for what the services are really like. For example, if you’re trying to find a new family doctor with Marcus Welby qualities, it’s a daunting task. And we know what a family doctor is and we know what we want in a family doctor. When it comes to services for seniors, the tasks is often more daunting. The starting point is often finding out what questions to ask and how to get a good assessment. And it’s even more daunting when the senior is in another city.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had a go-to person? I do. My go-to person is Sharon Cutler. She’s a long-time advocate for Boomers and seniors and she’s editor of MatureResources.org, a cornucopia of information on seniors and on Boomers. She’s also founder of The Positive Aging Network, and I have the pleasure of being a columnist for MatureResources.org. Sharon, I know you’ve been advocating for seniors and Boomers for many years. What inspired you to start MatureResources.org?

SC: Hi, Dr. Brickey. What happened is that I always was the go-to person for information. People always thought I was smart, quote/unquote, and-

MB: Well, you are!

SC: Yes. But I too have to look for resources. Anyway, when I started my career, it was in childcare, and people would need help, and so I started an agency myself. And in addition to needing like housekeepers and companions for the elderly and things like that, inevitably the family member would say, “I would like to find a good lawyer or a good doctor,” and it set my mind to think that people had difficulty accessing the right resources, and even know the starting point. So I decided to make Mature Resources, which is almost a brand now – we’ve had the name Mature Resources now since about 1987, 1988.

MB: Wow.

SC: Mature Resources really means that anyone over 40 or 50, hopefully through one of the venues that we’ve had – now it’s a website – hopefully we will provide many of the answers, or at least a starting point.

MB: I’m going to really put you to the task. Let’s imagine that – well, first of all, I know you recently moved from Florida to Chicago. Let’s imagine that your parents were in California and you were just starting to get hints that they were having health problems and maybe even some senility. And let’s say that you couldn’t leave home to go to California. How would you go about assessing the problem and getting services for them?

SC: That’s a very good question because many millions of people – I think between seven and ten million estimated people – are children of people who need help, that they need any level of care or they need to have options. So if I was going to have a parent in California, one of the first things would be to use the internet – I certainly encourage people to use the internet – and I would go to the California state government and then the local agencies on aging. You can find them just by putting in “aging agencies” or “senior organizations,” and then picking and choosing the appropriate departments, agencies, community services, and start to make a list and pick what you feel is appropriate to go to the next step, which is finding out what they can do to help you.

MB: Once you have your list of agencies, then what? How do you assess what’s really going on with Mom and Dad?

SC: Well, there’s various things. And I think the world of senior care is quite, quite confusing. Most of the – it truly is. Most of the occupational titles that narrows this did not exist 20-25 years ago, for even some people like senior move managers, daily money managers, who are helping this, but most people in fact have not heard of them. Well, there has to be a starting point. You need somebody there to assess the situation. One of the people that I might call is a community outreach for seniors. Sometimes they send somebody out. I’d see if that was available in that particular town or county. And then there’s also geriatric care managers who are fee for service professionals, usually social workers, who send out a nurse or a social worker. They do an assessment and they help you to determine how Mom or Dad is and what Mom or Dad needs in the future, and then they follow up for as long as your contract with them is.

MB: Before you retain these, what kind of questions would you ask to find out if they were the right people for the job?

SC: I would look up their information online, first of all. I would find out if they were licensed, what their backgrounds are, if they have insurance – you know, especially like a homecare agency, because you want to make sure that theirs is the proper licensure. I would ask them how many years in business. I would probably ask for a few references, and be careful when you call up that they’re not their best friend. Often I think longevity helps. And also if you could find somebody out there who perhaps knows an agency that has worked with them. Sometimes you can even call a library and you’ll find out – or call a doctor’s office. It’s often hit and miss. But when people come to me with a background of many, many years, actually meeting with different kinds of professionals and locating things for my own website and for my own – I just created the 50-Plus Expo in New York. I always wanted to bring people and products and services together. So it’s a – it’s not a treasure hunt, but it is a mission that you have to have tenacity, you have to have patience, and you have to be resilient and know that it’s going to take time.

MB: It sounds like Columbo to me. I picture him going into the library, “Excuse me, ma’am, I’ve got one more question to ask you.” Just nagging a lot of agencies and organizations until you get the answers you need.

SC: Right. You would be very, very lucky if, on the first shot, at the end of the first phone call, you got the answers. I was reading this article that was in Kiplinger’s and it told a story about a couple who wanted to have dream retirement, and they were very logical and knew that they had to both plan for themselves and plan for how long they’ve be caring for her mother. Anyway, when they finished writing their list, it had 4,000 items on it. So I couldn’t fathom what 4,000 things to do would be. A lot of those had to do with their financial situation, stocks and bonds and insurance and stuff, consolidating, picking where they would live and what they would do after retirement, which sometimes in retirement, it’s recreated and goes back to a different kind of career. But 4,000 items – think of that. When most of us, if we have a couple of things to do, it’s overwhelming.

MB: Well, you just knew that was probably 4,000 things right there.

SC: Right.

MB: So you get your care manager lined up – you pick somebody that you trust – and they say, “Well, we need to get some medical exams.” Do you just trust who they refer you to, or do you do more homework then?

SC: There’s always homework to be done, whoever you go to, whether it’s a geriatric care manager, whether you feel that a person needs homecare – whoever you call is going to tell you that “I’m the right solution.” You know, “My company is the right solution. We’ve been in business this long and…” But you might find that someone needs adult daycare, which is a relatively new whole category of care, where people go to a center for the day and they have all kinds of activities, and then they return in the evening, you know, by bus or car, and that might be a solution for someone who needs some care for the person in the daytime. So there’s all kinds of ways that you can approach it. One thing that I tell people is Rome didn’t happen in a day, and you really have to look at all the choices. And you probably still won’t know the choices, all the choices.

MB: Using adult daycare as an example, I’ve seen some that are just marvelous programs and very stimulating, and some that are just kind of adult babysitting. Long-distance, how would you tell the difference?

SC: Well, if you have telltale signs that something is amiss with your parents, I certainly would take a flight there and see. As a matter of fact, this often during the holidays that Mom or Dad says, you know, “Everything is okay, I’m terrific,” and you happen to go there for the holiday, you know, just check in and have some fun, and all of the sudden you realize that Mom has had the stove on all day and that she’s not remembering certain things, and you realize that things have changed and they’re not admitting to it because they’re scared, and that’s happened to many people that I know. So I think that seeing it directly and then, of course, if you’re in that community, it makes it that much easier to look things up. But you know, you can do it on the internet. I just think that you need some kind of personal intervention.

MB: So let’s say you do go to their home. You’re Columbo, again, and you’re gathering this information. Are you writing it all down? And do you have some kind of checklist that you know what to look for?

SC: One of the processes that I have, we have a long checklist. I couldn’t find it for you now because I’ve moved and I everything in boxes right now. But yes, you should be taking notes about the person, about what’s going on mentally, what you see physically, what you get the feeling of emotionally – because many times older people get depressed – and write it down and go from there. And I think that being a questioner, being a sleuth, as you said, enables you to a position of power where you ask the questions, and if you don’t get the right answers from somebody who you think might be able to help, then you go to the next step. For instance, in Florida, there’s 211, which is a crisis and information and resource hotline. Here it’s 311 in Chicago. And 911 we know is for emergency and 411 is for information, so they all end in ones. You have to get to know what’s available in that community. And oftentimes it means bringing Mom or Dad back closer to you at home – they’re at home or in a senior living environment.

MB: The checklist you use, is that something that’s proprietary or that other people might access? Or are there other good checklists?

SC: There are checklists all over. There are articles. If you look up “caregiving” on the internet or “caregivers,” I’m sure you’ll get over a million – as a matter of fact, I’m sitting here and I’m going to look it up right while we speak, because I just saw 16,600,000 Google entries for research and information, how to find research and information, just basically. And then I did it for “elder care” and I got over a million entries. It’s a process. And unfortunately, as we get older, most of us haven’t planned for it and sometimes it’s an emergency, and decisions have to be made very, very quickly – all of the sudden Mom or Dad needs hospitalization or needs some kind of care. So either you have to go out there and start doing the investigating, or you hire someone – and it should be a social worker, geriatric care manager, or call the local government agencies and find out who they would recommend. So when it’s immediate, that’s when it’s the worst.

MB: So let’s say Mom has to go to the hospital. Do you just, again, go with what the doctor recommends, or do you research the hospital?

SC: I don’t know how extreme you can get. If Mom or Dad has to go to the hospital, it’s probably pretty serious. It’s enough to keep them under observation and testing and things like that. And then, of course, with the new rules on Medicaid and Medicare and the insurance issues, Mom or Dad can be in the hospital for one day and their insurance only pays for that one day, and they really need to be there and under supervision for several days. So it’s a tough. I had a situation a couple of years ago. I never thought I would be a caregiver, and my husband was checked for something during an ordinary examination and it was only through a very astute urologist that took a CAT scan of him. He didn’t seem to have any problems that were detectable, but the doctor was more cautious, and he found out that my husband had non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Oh, actually he didn’t, and even the surgeon who took out the tumor didn’t know. He said, “You have some kind of lymphoma and I don’t know the first thing about it.” So the surgeon sent us no place. I mean, he just like stopped dead in his tracks. And if we didn’t have a local organization – in Florida, at the time – that worked with the Sylvester Cancer Center, and they do a lot of clinical trials. My husband probably would’ve been one of those people who all the sudden you hear, you know, “My husband has terminal cancer,” and they just detect it at the end. So I think half of it is luck. But I believe in planning ahead if you can.

MB: Plan your luck.

SC: I believe in putting your ducks in order. And in answer to the question about checklists, we have different forms and different adder-on questions, depending on – we give a free consultation through the Positive Aging Network. We give a ten-minute free conversation so you feel comfortable with us. And then if we want to proceed, we tell you how we work. And then what’s different about what we do is that we will research and we just won’t say, you know, “You need a homecare agency” or “You need assisted living.” We’ll do different options based on what you say or if you send us doctor’s notes and stuff, and we’ll give several choices based on not having relationships with those people, but on research that we do, checking up people through the government, the licensing departments, different ways.

MB: So a number of organizations have favorite providers that maybe even get referral fees or something, and you’re very independent and research-oriented.

SC: Right, right. There are companies – and I’m trying to remember the name of the type of thing they are. Some of them are very, very good. They’re professionals who can get you or someone you love into the best assisted living facility, let’s say, or the best nursing home. And they work on contract with many, many, many of those facilities or types of communities. So while it’s free to you, which is great, they have a vested interested in a placement in one of their contractual places. That’s not to say that they don’t do a good job, because many of them are quite successful and have very good reputations. But they’re not neutral, they’re not unbiased. And the thing that I was always told, even when I had a homecare agency, is that the government always gives out three choices. Let’s say they work with homecare agencies, they have a list and they’ll give you three, perhaps based on – there’s a list, whatever. And that’s what we do. But I think we’re the first people to call ourselves senior information professionals, because we do research – and as a matter of fact, somebody wanted some information and – well, out of it was things that you wouldn’t even think about. This woman wanted to help her mother with things to do during the day, and she wanted to know how she could get to bridge and where were bridge lessons or sessions and stuff like that. So it can be anything from pleasure, you know, things that you want to do, and things that you need to do.

MB: Bridge lessons or a bridge group may sound like a minor thing, but to a senior who that’s the most exciting thing in their social life, that’s real important and can really keep somebody cognitively sharp.

SC: Right. Absolutely, absolutely. Because one of the one worse things to make someone depressed is aloneness, loneliness, and not having anyone to share thoughts with. I recently went to one of a chain of adult daycare centers and I was so impressed with it because they had more activities – it was like a country club. You know, sometimes when I go into an assisted living facility – and a lot of them are really gorgeous – I say, “Wouldn’t this be nice?” But I don’t want to be in it yet, but yet I see all the activity and I see they’re designing the menus and I see how they stimulate you mentally, and the swimming pool and this and that, and it gives you a nice feeling. But oftentimes the assisted living and continuing care communities are quite expensive monthly, so finances will always come into play, as well.

MB: Yeah, I recently had to find assisted living for my mother, and so my brother and sister and I visited quite a few facilities, and we wanted to taste the food – because I think that’s one of the most important things, since it’s the highlight of the day three times a day – and really get a feel for the atmosphere there and how friendly the staff were. And there’s no substitute for actually going there and experiencing it.

SC: Absolutely. And looking over things very, very carefully. I saw the same thing – well, rehabilitation centers are quite different because they’re shorter term and, you know, you’re there to get well. And the whole atmosphere and everything about it – it’s amazing, people don’t have a clue. When I first started in 1985 with my companion and nanny service, they were building the first assisted living facility on Long Island. And we all looked around and we actually went to a meeting at this place – it was locally, one of my friends was admission. And I said, “I don’t know.” And the common thought among those of us who were seeing it as professionals, “I don’t know if these things are going to really work out, assisted living.” And it’s every place. It’s every place, you don’t really have a choice. And there’s all these guidebooks you have.

MB: What do you mean by guidebooks?

SC: For instance, I moved to Chicago so I picked up in one of the drugstore chains, a senior resource guide-

MB: Oh, okay.

SC: Yeah, they can be helpful and they can be very confusing, because there’s all these different areas. There’s help at home, health services, health and wellness, professional services, elder law, life insurance, moving consultants. So it’s a start. I think one of the best things is to have a team, like you did with you mom – to have several people in the family all involved, so that the stress level isn’t just on one person. A lot of people are living long, long lives. And I know you’re very aware of it. I think it’s about 78 years old or something that’s the average lifespan. And people 85 and up are the fastest-growing population. I just heard about someone who is 101 and is a painter, paints pictures and lives by themselves. How great that is.

MB: You’re listening to Ageless Lifestyles Radio on Webtalkradio.net, and we’re talking with the information concierge of aging, Sharon Cutler. She’s the editor of MatureResources.org – make sure you type “.org” – a site that’s full of columns and resources for Boomers and seniors. She’s also founder of the Positive Aging Network that she was talking about, a concierge-style services organization for just about everything legal related to seniors. Information on the Positive Aging Network is on the MatureResources.org website. Information on anti-aging psychology and my books Defy Aging and 52 Baby Steps to Grow Young, and my free Defy Aging Newsletters are at NotAging.com. Sharon, you’re gathering so much information, how do you keep it all organized?

SC: Well, they’re in boxes right now.

MB: How did you get them organized?

SC: Well, I have different topics, because I also write, I write what I preach. As a matter of fact, I’m a columnist also for another website called http://www.longisland.com/. Infuriates my better half, my husband, because I do have so many files on care giving, on healthcare, on recommended websites – it’s overwhelming the amount of information. And of course, I can just go – I’m pretty well aware of where to go on the internet when I need further information. But I have plenty of files, plenty of paper.

MB: I’m going to take you back to California-

SC: Okay.

MB: And you realize, oh my goodness, I don’t have any power of attorney or do not resuscitate, or any of these documents. Is that something you would do yourself, or would you get an attorney?

SC: I would use an attorney, call the local law association and get a list, or if the community has an elder law attorney association. And I’m just looking here in Chicago. A lot of things to do is the state planning, asset protection, wills and trust, power of attorney, guardianship issues – it goes on and on.

MB: How would a person do their homework before they go to the attorney so they know what to ask for?

SC: Basically, they have to start the research, or call someone like myself, or call a geriatric care manager – except that they would want to come in and see Mom or Dad – which is a great idea, because they can also tell you what is needed. If you know specifically that you need an advance directive or wills and trust, I would certainly care the local bar association, the elder care division, and then go on the individual websites that they will recommend. And I think that if they lost their license or something happened to them as a lawyer, they would be removed from that list.

MB: Say Mom had to go to the hospital. How you handle Medicare can make a big difference in how big the bill is. Any tips on how to make sure that you’re handling Medicare right?

SC: Well, a lot of times there are social workers in the hospital who actually work with the patients and the family. My husband’s going through that now with Medicare – just turned 65 – and he spent quite a few hours trying to figure out Medicare and Medicare supplements, who should I use, what’s missing, especially since he has a prior existing condition now. And you just hope after all your investigations that you did the right thing, but I certainly would go on to Medicare.gov or SocialSecurity.gov, or just type “Medicare,” type in on your computer “Social Security.” I’m doing the same thing with everything now – you know, it’s not elder care related, but it’s living related – to find out about how I get a new license plate. Everything has to be done. And it’s not easy. I have a lot of books on simplifying your life. And I have to read them, of course. It would be sweet if everything was perfect. I love people when you say, “How are you?” and they say, “Oh, I’m terrific!” And no one knows what really exists. And we all have our good times and we have our times when we need assistance. You know, help is just a phone call, or many phone calls. It’s getting on to the Yellow Pages. It’s calling up professional associations. It really requires a lot of time.

MB: With things like Medicare, there are rules, for example, that if you’re there, I think it’s four days or longer, and you step down to a nursing home, then Medicare covers the nursing home for, I think, 100 days. But if you’re there for three days, too bad – you would have to pay for nursing home completely out of pocket. And if you disagree with the decision the hospital has made, you can appeal it, and that often results in you staying there long enough to qualify for the nursing home step-down.

SC: Right, right. But most people don’t know, you know, initially, especially when you go into the hospital and it’s not planned for. You know a lot – I mean, you’re an expert in this field also and I’m sure you help a lot of people.

MB: Yeah. So let’s say that your mother or your husband was in the hospital and it was one of those situations where the staff just wasn’t doing its job and talking to them didn’t seem to work. How would you go about advocating to get it done right?

SC: I would probably call up the local age *26:29. Yeah, they have *26:32 to check on different places. And if they’re doing the proper thing, then they’re going to want to release them anyway. Yeah, it’s a very sticky situation. I think you have to find professional help or speak to a social worker there, who’s supposed to be nonbiased, and just explain the situation and see what they would suggest. It is a real concern. But hopefully a lot of the people just need minor tune-ups in terms of getting their financial planning done, getting their retirement or their money issues, insurance. I have friends who are consumed with their parents, both on a local and a long-distance basis.

MB: Oh, yes.

SC: One of my best friends, her mother just demands that she come over at least once a week and she writes the – checks her checkbooks and the checks and balances and pays her bills and takes her to the doctor. And fortunately, she has a good employer – that’s not always the case – and she makes up her hours, but certainly she’s away from her office a lot of the time.

MB: Yeah, it can be a difficult balance. For people who need them, there are support groups that can do a lot of good.

SC: Right.

MB: Back in the hospital and nursing home visits, I’m a big believer that you not only want to go there to visit and to hopefully cheer the person up and see what they need, and often since the food is so atrocious, bring them some fresh food-

SC: Back to food.

MB: Some palatable food. But it’s a good time to check everything to check and see if they’re getting the right medications and they’re developing bedsores or pressure points and things like that, because most of the nurses and staff are overworked and often things get by.

SC: Right. And those are the things that you eventually read in the newspaper. I don’t know how you would check for certain things, you know, if the doctor – because there are usually on-call doctors associated with the nursing home. I guess you could call in your own physician to do a second opinion and to just check. But basically, it’s whoever they provide.

MB: Well, a lot of times you have to do that through the nurses, get permission from your parent or whoever it is to ask for a copy of the medication list, and then make sure that you know what each medication is supposed to do and whether it makes to you.

SC: That’s right, because different medications – and even food – you shouldn’t eat certain foods with certain medications and-

MB: Oh, it’s absolutely amazing. I see people in nursing homes who have severe diabetes and I see things on their tray that are just horrible for diabetes. And I ask, “Well, aren’t you on a diabetic diet?” And they say, “Well, I don’t know.” So I ask the nutrition staff and they say, “Our instructions our just to give them smaller portions. We don’t do special diabetic diets anymore.” And then they cited HIPAA privacy regulations, that other patients would know that somebody was diabetic.

SC: Right.

MB: I mean, it’s far more important that people get the right food than whether their roommate figures out they have diabetes, you know?

SC: Oh, gosh. Yeah, again, with your professional expertise, you really see it firsthand all the time. I, on the other hand, have knowledge and resource and research. I try to find out as much information, but that’s when experts like yourself are called in.

MB: The network that you’re developing and I love your website. What other things do you think are going to be happening for services for Boomers and seniors?

SC: I kind of like products that isn’t the ordinary products, and I think that’s where we’re going to go. For instance, on your phone, let’s say you have a cell phone. I couldn’t read one of the phone numbers just now and it really got me frustrated because the numbers are so small. There are phones that have larger numbers. There are doorknobs and stuff that are easier to use. I believe that the wave of the future is going to be making things easier from young to old. Of course, in young children, you have to lock things up. But as we grow, as we age, different things happen at different times. You know, at 40, your eyes suddenly seem to be changing. It happened on my birthday. So I believe in getting as much as *30:54 and making things as simple as possible. And probably a lot of things haven’t been invented yet, and emergency systems that you can have in your home or in the assisted living, you know, which gives you some peace of mind. But again, those are choices. And any age can use it, and I just think that we’re coming up with more and more services that people should be aware of. I just used – when we moved, I must’ve been in la-la land because I thought we were all packed up, and I had someone from – my friend at the senior move management company come over. And she said, “You have about three days’ worth of work, with anywhere from three to five packers, and you’re leaving in four days.” I said, “What?” I had no conception. Your mind is dealing with a lot of different issues, and moving, of course, is extremely stressful, right up there with death, divorce, taxes, those things. But a few years ago, Senior Move Managers, people use their movers. I had things double and triple-wrapped. It’s amazing, the slightest thing had tissue paper and duct tape around it, and it could turn out to be a button. That was a little extreme at times, but nothing was broken. And I couldn’t have done it myself.

MB: It’s kind of analogous to what you do for seniors. It’s a very stressful time in people’s lives. The amount of things to do and information to learn is overwhelming. People can do it themselves, but if they can afford it or if they don’t have the time to learn it all themselves, hiring a professional just makes it so much easier.

SC: Exactly, exactly. You can’t do it all and you don’t now how to do it all. And there are so many choices, and hopefully if one choice doesn’t work out, another one will. But with people who have expertise or good research or value referrals that they have based on working with companies previously – you know, there is a lot of competition in every industry. There’s a lot of homecare agencies to choose from. As a matter of fact, I was speaking a homecare agency owner here in Chicago and found out that they can do things differently than ours did in Florida. In Florida, companion service or a nurse’s registry, they don’t do hands-on care. They’re not allowed to, you know, give you the medication or help you into the bathtub and outside of the bathtub – they’re not supposed to. Here, it’s hands-on. But here, the prices were almost double. I was astounded at some of the prices, but they’re used to it here, I guess. So I think planning, you know, like long-term care and so forth, but I think we have to be responsible for ourselves and then try to avoid having to either have your own issues, something that pops up that just changes your life or changes the lives of those you love. So like the Girl Scouts say, be prepared. I still remember that and that was a long time ago.

MB: That got burned in, along with the cookies, huh?

SC: Right.

MB: Sharon, I want to thank you for sharing your expertise with us. I think in your previous life you were probably a matchmaker and now you’re doing of the seniors and Boomers and the services that they need, and I think you’re just a delight.

SC: Oh, I appreciate that compliment. I will save it.

MB: Okay.

SC: And also, if anyone wants to write to me and to get free tips on caregiving, they can write to SharonCutler@gmail.com and request the free tips on caregiving. And you can write to my email if you have any special issues.

MB: Okay. And the website, again, is MatureResources.org. And information on anti-aging psychology is at NotAging.com. I’d like to share a baby step to help people live longer, healthier, and happier. I adopted a catch phrase a long time ago that you get what you expect and inspect. When it comes to little things like if somebody shortchanged you a dollar or you didn’t get that $5 rebate, it’s not worth my time. But when it comes to healthcare issues, when it comes to safety issues, you do have to not only have expectations of getting good quality services and getting what you need, but you do have to inspect it, because the mistakes are just too costly. And as I was talking about with Sharon, in a nursing home, you need to check the medications and make sure they’re right. You need to check the food and see whether it makes sense. You need to check and see whether Mom is getting turned often enough to prevent bed sores. So if you don’t already have the maxim, recommend adopting the maxim that when it comes to things that are important in life, expect and inspect. And if you’re not feeling well enough to do the inspecting yourself, then you need to find someone to do it for you. That’s what friends are for. And I’d love to get your feedback and comments. Just sent them to radio@drbrickey.com. Information on anti-aging psychology and the Defy Aging Newsletter, which is free, is at DrBrickey.com. This is Dr. Michael Brickey with

Ageless Lifestyles Radio on Webtalkradio.net. We’re talking with Sharon Cutler Editor of MatureResources.org. Information on anti-aging psychology is at DrBrickey.com. This is Dr. Michael Brickey with Ageless Lifestyles Radio on Webtalkradio.net. Thank you for listening on our quest to live longer, healthier, happier lives.