WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
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liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio
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or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W FOURCY Radio.
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Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday,
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six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at
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w four cy dot com. This week and every week,
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we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life,
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as well as a focus on health and wellnes. Now,
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let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson as together we
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start with Asking Good Questions.
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Hello, this is your host, Benita bell Anderson, and welcome
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to the Ask Good Questions podcast. We are so excited
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that you're here today. We have an extra special guest,
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someone that I've known now for a while and I've
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been watching her progress. She's also in the financial industry.
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Her name is Marie Swift, and I would love to
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invite her to the Proverbial podcast stage right now. Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.
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I'm so glad you're here. I've been looking forward to
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this conversation because I feel like this is going to
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be such an important topic that everyone needs to be
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thinking about and hear about. So I'm going to read
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this little diddy about you and then we'll get into
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our discussion. All right, sounds good, Okay, Well, here's here's
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a little short bio about Marie. Our guest today is
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Marie Swift, found and CEO of Impact Communications. While known
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for her expertise in the financial services industry, and I
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want to tell you, yeah, this girl gets around. Marie
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joins us today in a deeply personal capacity. She'll be
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sharing her family's experience navigating the complexities of eldercare, sudden
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spousal change, and the challenging dynamics that emerged when her
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mother became suddenly single under unexpected and difficult circumstances. Marie
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will bring a unique perspective, blending her professional understanding of
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financial matters with the raw emotional realities of family crisis,
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and will share valuable lessons learned about asking the right
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questions in times of immense stress and change. So have
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you got any beginning thought that you'd like to begin with.
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Well, as I thought about this conversation today, Bonnie, I
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was nervous. I am a professional communicator. I do marketing
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and pr for a living. I've done it for a
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very long time. I coach people on how to be
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articulate and gracious and graceful under pressure. But this is,
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as you said, a very deeply personal and vulnerable matter
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for me, and it is a little raw. I just
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got back two days ago from an unexpected respite care
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visit to help my sister. Bless her heart, she is
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just a saint. My sister is now the primary caregiver
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for my mother, and we're going to talk about that.
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But my initial thinking is that life comes at you
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in unexpected ways, and I'm a better person for the journey.
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But it has been hard.
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Yeah. I have got many examples in my family, including
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my mother and my sister and my brother. Yeah, I'm
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with you. Well, can you take us back. Let's begin here.
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Can you take us back when you first realized that
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your mother was going to need care.
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Yeah, at the time that the stroke happened. My mom
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was eighty nine. This was November last year, so about
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eight months ago, and she wanted to continue living independently.
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We had no idea that a stroke was in her future.
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She was living independently. She was living in a community
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of other people in an independent retirement community, very active singing,
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going to the community choir that she practiced in her
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church activities, you know, all of the things.
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With her family.
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I live in Kansas City, my sister lives in Idaho,
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my mom lives in Utah, and we have three brothers
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who are in Colorado.
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In California.
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So when my mom decided that her right hand was
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excuse me, her left hand was bothering her with carpal
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tunnel and she wanted to continue to play the piano,
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one of the loves of her life. She thought, well,
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carpal tunnel surgery will take care of that.
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Well.
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As a result of getting ready for that surgery and
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taking her off her medication some of her blood dinners,
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she actually a stroke happened because of that, and so
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fortuitously I was there to help her recover from the
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carpal tunnel surgery. But when I woke up that morning,
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it was as if there was a voice drawing me
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out of my air mattress in the living room. It said, Marie,
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get up, and it was a man's voice, and I
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could guess that maybe it was a divine calling for
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me to wake up and to check on my mother.
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And she was in her bed just a short distance
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from me. And it's hard to hear over some of
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them metal devices, like oxygen machines. But I went and
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she was having a stroke. And it took me a
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minute to realize that she was having what they call
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a waking stroke, where you wake up and it's very scary.
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You're having a stroke as you come out of sleep.
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So those were the moments where everything changed. I had
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come in for a three day visit to keep my
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mom company while she recovered from what should have been
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minor surgery, and instead this complication meant that she would
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have long term medical care needs.
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Wow, well, how did that sudden change impact her? I
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mean emotionally and physically. You know it must have been
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I mean, I I you know, I always joke about this.
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It's like, this is never going to happen to you
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and me, Right, We're not gonna We're not going to
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I can only imagine because you and I are both
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strong independent women, and I'm guessing that your mom was
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probably a strong independent woman, right. My mom taught us
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all how to ATV ride, and she would rep her engine,
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look over her shoulder and say eat my dust as
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she would race away and leave us behind in her dusk.
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So she taught us how to be strong, independent people.
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And so as a single mother raising five rather rambunctious children,
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me being the oldest of the five, she led the
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example of being independent, being self reliant, having that good
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pioneering spirit and put your shoulder to the wheel and
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do what you need to do and just suck it
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up buttercup and no cry babies allowed.
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So my mom was like that.
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She was tender, she was sweet, but she knew how
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to get stuff done. And that's how she raised her kids.
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And I am I am a credit to her. I
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hope and I hope to continue to make her proud
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throughout the rest of my life and beyond. So, yes,
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my mom was independent, living independently at age eight and
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men she moved her the retirement village because she was
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forced out of her home when her husband became significantly ill.
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With dementia, like the bad kind of dementia that feels
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like Alzheimer's but they don't call it that. Where there
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was a lot of aggression and bless his Hearty was
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a sweet gentleman for most of their eighteen year marriage,
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but towards the end he was not himself, and so
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that blended family. The other siblings said, asked that she
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leave the home with three days notice, asked that she
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take her things immediately with three days notice, because she
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was no longer needed in the caregiver capacity. And so
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with three days notice, we moved her out of that
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home where she'd lived with her husband for eighteen years
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and moved her to the independent residential community where she
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had some quite a bit of adjustments. So she wasn't
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quite single at that point because her husband was still alive,
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and yet he was not the man that she married
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where they had so many good years together, and so
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we had to recuperate from that wound, those hardships, all
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of that financial hardship, and the adjustment emotionally and mentally
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from that, and then eighteen months.
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Later the stroke. So that's a lot.
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Well did it make her? Was she angry or how?
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Yes, the situation with the blended family. She was angry,
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she was sad, she was confused, she felt jilted, she
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felt thrown out. We were all angry, confused, and there
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was There were conversations with attorneys and clergy and other
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people therapists to help us through this, But at the
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end of the day, the daughters of her husband moved
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him to a memory care center and we were forced
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to move our mother to independent living when she could
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have and wanted to stay in their family home.
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Yeah, well, what were the most immediate challenges for you?
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Well, so, during the time of transition from the marriage
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unraveling due to the dementia and the blended family complications,
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there were a lot of challenges supporting moms. So my
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sister and I were able to be there for Mom
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to support her through all of that and the decision
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making that had to occur. But she did eventually get
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settled and was relatively happy in the independent living environment
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where she made new friends and so forth. So there
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were a lot of immediate challenges and needs to be
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there with Mom, but nothing like the journey that unfolded
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when she had her stroke in November.
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Yeah. Well, I'm just wondering from a you know, because
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we're both financial professionals, but from your perspective, and I
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think this is really unique because since you're in the
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financial industry, what are some of the biggest surprises or
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blind spots that you think that you encountered with this.
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Yeah, so I had no idea how Medicare works. And
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my mom has a Medicare advantage plan, and she also
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has a secondary Medicare gap policy. Now that may sound unusual,
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but my mom was working at Utah Valley Hospital for
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so many years and they had this wonderful retiring benefit
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where she had a gap policy to fill the bills
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and the medical bills that came along that the advantage
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plan wouldn't pay. So we had relatively few financial worries
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as long as we fought the insurance system. And so
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what we found is that the insurance system for people
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of a certain age with a certain prognosis is geared
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towards discharging them. And we had to use some pretty
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tough positioning to advocate for our mother, who said she
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wanted to live. She wasn't done living, she had more
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life to live, she had more stories to tell. So
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we had to really work hard. My sister and I
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to figure out a way to convince the two insurance carriers,
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if you will, or the different divisions to work together
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to create a plan and not to discharge on mother prematurely.
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We also found that some of the medical facilities, such
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as the skilled nursing centers and the stroke centers that
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we were encountering, that they were ready to push her
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out and give up on her.
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And so we advocated for.
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Her financially and also with medical care, even in the
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face of medical providers telling us to give up.
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Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about my sister. My sister
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had this horrendous autoimmune things that went on for her.
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Her We fouindly. We finally ended up taking her home
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from the facility where we had her and having a
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whole huge, long, roundabout thing with different members of the
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family helping care as well as like two or three nurses.
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But my sister, you know, I'm just thinking about what
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the patient thinks about. My sister looked at me one
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day when I was caring for her, and she says,
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I never thought this would happen, yeah, you know, And
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I was like, I never thought this would happen either.
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You know, and so you just it's as much as
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you know, we have both you know, had all these
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years in the financial industry, but there's nothing that quite
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prepares you for that individual personal experience that was happening
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to you, right.
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Yeah, I mean, you know, once our mother got through
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the acute care from the urgency room up to the
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stroke unit at Utah Valley Hospital and into the elite
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rehab where they put her on a feeding tube and
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that was pretty hard to watch, told her that she
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wouldn't walk again, eat again, talk again, give up.
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You know, all of that.
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We advocated for her care and we kept asking her, mom,
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is this what you want? And she says she wanted
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to continue on. But to see your hero, your mother
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go through this and the frailty of life and the
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human condition, it's really eye opening when you see all
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of that. And you know, there's a lot of humility
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that comes into the equation from not just that hospital experience,
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but into a skilled nursing center where they said she
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needs to go to a nursing home and we said,
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not going to happen, not in our DNA.
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We don't do that in our family.
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So if you fast forward from the skilled nursing center
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where they said give us, You've done all you can.
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And then we went to we moved from Utah Valley
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up to Salt Lake Valley where we had different team members.
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She said, yes, we can still work with her. Yes,
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there's still progress to be made. Stroke centers and another
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rehabilitation stroke hospital, and now into outpatient therapies and now