You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Hello, everyone, welcome to I Choose Me. Okay, So caregiving can be overwhelming, but you don't have to do it alone. In today's special I Choose Me episode, Debbie Matinopolis is going to share the tools and support systems and the mindset shifts that can make all the difference. So happy to have you with us again. Thank you so much. Our episode that we did a couple of days ago, it was very emotional.
Yeah, we left.
It all there, but right now I just want to deliver people some information and you are the perfect person to lay that out for us. So can we just jump right in?
Yes, thank you so much.
How can someone prepare emotionally and logistically before stepping into the role of caregiver?
Okay, emotionally logistical, I think emotionally you need to be very be prepared about what you're about to do and be completely honest, rudely honest with yourself of how it's all going to go down. And that means what the good, the bad, and the ugly, because it's going to be hard. I'm not gonna sugarcoate it at all. It's going to be very difficult. The more you care about someone, the more difficult it is to be their caregiver. Yeah, so be prepared for that.
Just know, just know that gives some thought.
Yeah, give it some thought and understand this is what you're stepping into.
Prepare yourself.
Prepare yourself mentally. With that, I had to do that mentally and emotionally. I'd always prepare myself. Even when I like go out for a minute and come back, I'd be like, Okay, I'm going to step back into the house. I need I need to be strong for this person, because this person cannot be strong for themselves. That's number one. Number two. I think we talked about this in the
last episode as well. You have to be an advocate for that person that you are the caregiver for because again, they don't have a voice, So you are the voice for them, whether that's the doctors that they're seeing every day, the hospital, if they're in a hospital, if you have help and there's caregivers at the house too, So you have to be the voice for them. They're also an
advocate for yourself. That's why I am the ambassador for National Family Caregivers Month this November because I feel so strongly about the fact that having been in a caregiving position and not at that time, not knowing you're in a caregiving position, you're just being a good daughter. You realize if you don't put the defibrillator on yourself, everyone else around you's gonna die. So you have to make
sure that you are taking care of yourself. You have to make sure you're eating, to make sure that you're taking even if it's five or ten minutes of just some peace and quiet for yourself, to quiet your brain and try to get back to your center, because you have to be at your center to be good for the person that you are caring for.
Very good advice. What about like healthcare directives or power of attorney.
Well, you have to accept what they want, as difficult as it is for you, and find some peace in it and find that you were able to.
I think it's important too that you get you know that in enough advance before things get to the point where they aren't able to either clearly articulate it or even think it through themselves. If you know my mom's situation with Alzheimer's and dementia, you got to get ahead of that and get all your ducks in a row like legally to make sure that what they do want ultimately is what.
Happens exactly, and also to you also, having said that, as difficult and as dark as it is, I would suggest having arrangements planned for the funeral. Do you want to be cremated? Do you want to be buried? Do you want to be and musleium? What exactly do you want us to do? Where do you want to be? Go get that plot of land, make sure it's all sort of buttoned up ahead of time. Because what happens is when someone does pass and listen, not everybody is
an opportunity is given that kind of possibility. But if you have the option to do this, do it because as soon as someone's passes you, even no matter how prepared you are for this person to pass, it's your brain does crazy things and everybody is scrambling and everybody is heartbroken, and you're almost living in you're almost watching yourself live and go through the motions, and so it can be very difficult to plant yeah or you know,
something like that. So just try to have as much of that as possible already set up.
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What do you tell people, like, what's the first thing that they should do when they decide that they're going to become a full time caregiver for their person?
Well, I would tell you this what I have done, what I have learned from the past of my father. There's so many different technologies out there now, there's a million different technologies that can help us that weren't around when you know, even ten years ago with my dad, they just weren't there. And every day there's a new app, there's a new like some sort of texting, there's cameras, there's this or that. There's something that I have been
using that has been incredible, Jenny. It's called no most smart care, and it is it's non invasive because, for instance, with somebody like your mom who is and now your mom and now my mom, but your mom who's suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's is they don't want cameras in their house if you haven't noticed, they're not a big fan of having cameras. And when you get to that place, a lot of times you think people are spying on you. Not a good thing for somebody who may be having
some sort of you know, memory loss. They're not into it. So with this, it's so non invasive. And my mom, who is thank goodness, she's still well, but she's older and she lives by herself. And now having lived having experienced that with my dad, I'm trying to get ahead
of the game, like you said. So with no Moah Smart Care, they have these like tags and these these little satellites that they're basically like little plugins and you plug them into your wall, just like you would plug anything else in Okay, and a hub that's connected to them.
And so it's like a it's emotion sensor. And there's an app on my phone where me and my sister and my brother all connected this app and we know what's happening inside of my mother's house and we this the the technology learns your loved ones behaviors, and the routines say, you have this tag on your mom's door, which is it's this big you can't see it. It's the same, the same sticker. It's like a sticker exactly. Okay,
And you can put one on the refrigerator. You can put one on a pill box, you can put one on the bathroom door. You put the plugins like wherever she passes and walks by. Most of the time there you don't see them at all. But I know, like it'll it learns her patterns and it'll say, okay, mom got up to date at eight thirty. Tomorrow, Mom got up at eight thirty, and it goes, okay, well, what if Mom's starting to get up at nine thirty, which is going up at ten thirty. What if she didn't
open the refrigerator to eat. That's weird.
You're seeing all that like happen.
So you're seeing that perhaps she's slowing down and you're like, okay, Mom, You're okay, it's weird. You're getting up later and later. Now you can see if she's eating, you can see she picked up her pill box and took her pill, or if she didn't take her pill, or if she
took her pill twice. Because if you have memory loss and you forget these things, you can put them on the front door on the back door in case they walk out of their house and you're like, oh my gosh, she left the house at such and where is she?
Where is she? Yeah, it gets wild when you can't you can't really trust the person, you know, you can't put your full belief in what they're telling you, because sometimes they don't. They're making it up or they thought they did it, or so. This sounds like a game changer for people who are at that phase where they're not ready their parents, not ready to not live the way they've.
Always lived exactly. It's like a little buffer before the next exactly. And Okay, also it keeps you if something were to happen that hub that it's connected to that that kind of looks like.
A Alexa thing.
Uhh it.
You can talk through it. So I could get on my app and be like mom, Mom, are you there? Which is cool.
My mom would be like, what the hell?
I know?
Where are you? I know? It's that is you know? Is everything? Okay?
Like.
The reason this was so important to me when when I heard about it and I wanted to partner with them is because being far away and not being able to be there with her was one of the reasons I didn't see my dad slipping, Like when my brother and sister were like, oh, he's getting old, I said, he's not getting old. He's sixty eight years old. Why
is he losing his gait? Why is he slurring? But I was across the country, so if I'd had something like this, I would have been alerted, like always getting up slower?
Ah, is this that? You know?
What I mean? I'm like, what's going on? And look, it was als Was it going to do anything? Likely not, because there's very little out there to even slow the progression, and certainly not a cure. So in my case, I would have just known earlier when I put him to the doctor earlier.
But that's all great technology thought, that's exciting.
Yeah, there are other cases where you do know if you know someone's health is starting to deteriorate a little bit. So I just you know, I wish I had had it then, But now I am all about it, and I am the biggest cheerleader of this, And I got to tell you, I'm gonna send it for your mom because you should have it on your mom's bedroom door, you should have in her pill case, have it on the fridge, because it still gives her anconomy because a time where you're not breathing down her neck and oh
did you do this? Mom? Did you do that? Just check the check your you know app.
Because she doesn't like that. Yeah, no, she wants to fill independent, even though it's not really realistic. We talked about this a little bit ago. Or caregiving can be very isolating, and you said that being your own advocate is really important. How what are like a couple of little, tiny ways that we can remember to take care of ourselves while we're also caring for our parents.
Well, I think even look, it's hard. It's easy to say, get some time away for yourself, but it's also really difficult to actually do. Like we were talking about, I was on shifts, I was taking care of my dad. My mom would come home. Then I would go and do something. If you can't leave the house, take a bath, get in the bathtub, just sit there with yourself, sit there for a moment. Go outside and sit in the grass ground yourself. Take off your shoes and sit in
nature in the sun. If you can't. Also, you know what else is interesting that my body started to really fall apart because I had to lift him so many times. And you know, because some people, whether they're have a long term illness or they're a wheelchairs or whatever it is, it's it could be very physically taxing. So do stretches.
Stretches.
Do need to stretch, because if you throw your back out like I did, then you're only you're slowing everybody down. Remember to you know, I don't know, jerk, meditate, eat like you may, yeah, because I exactly it was hardly eating. But you know something that really, something beautiful that could come out of that, and that did for me was journaling because I go back now and read what I was writing, and you don't remember any of that, Jenny, because you're so amrod. You're a good idea so bad
and you're just trying to go through the motions. And when I would lay in bed after i'd know he was safe and sound and he's laying there and he's going to go to sleep, I would and i'd give him his medicine. I'd go upstairs and I would lay in bed and I would just meditate for a moment, just in peace, just quiet, just quiet my mind and my heart, and then I would I would journal about what happened today, How I'm feeling today, how I'm feeling
about things? Am I remembering my childhood and remembering this, like and you go back and read it in some of the most beautiful stuff that you will ever have. I feel so I'm so happy I did that.
Yeah, but even more than just like going back and read, just getting it out of you in the moment so so so important.
It's important because you need something and if you don't have anybody there to talk to, which I didn't, It was me and my mom. You know the Caregiver's Action Network, which is incredible. I'll give you all the information for them. They are incredible. They have a twenty four hour hotline. They they came to me and they said, we know your story. You want to partner with us? And I was like, a thousand million percent. You don't have to
ask me twice. I want nothing from you, but I want to scream from the top of the mountains of how great you are and how helpful you are. And one of the reasons being is what I talked to you about is they are lobbying. Well, we're gonna lobby. They're discussing us going to Capitol Hill, and lobbying for caregivers leaf. We have maternity leaf, we have praternity leaf. Why don't we have caregivers leave. We've talked about it. We're fifty six over fifty six million people in America
are caregivers to someone right now. That number is going to grow and as we get older, they're going to be more people on the planet and it's just going to continue. And we need to get ahead of this right now because so many people can't afford to do what I did, where they just got up and left and went and took care of their their loved one. And not only can they not afford it, but the loved one can't afford to be in a living facility,
a living assistant living facility either. So somebody has to look after these people. So why haven't we as a nation come together already to say this is super important. It's as important at the beginning of a life from maternity leave and paternity leave as it is at the end of a life. And we're so wild, it's like's forgotten. Yeah, yeah, because this is going to happen to all of us,
all of us. We're all going to get there someday and we need to show the same amount of grace and respect to our loved ones who are passing as to the loved ones who are just being born. And unfortunately, employers, well they don't care. We're all replaceable, all of us. So when you say, hey, my mom's sick, I got it. Would it be okay if I took a few weeks off? They're cutting already, they're looking down on You're like, a few weeks off. You know, the productivity around here is
gonna slip. So you go take the few weeks off. A few weeks turns into three externs of four weeks. You come back, your loved ones passed away, and you don't have a job. How has that help been?
Not great? Not great? We talked about that earlier, Like you said, through this organization, you can get that support because what if you are doing this alone and what if you don't have anybody to talk to or to laugh with. You know, I think that's that's a great thing that you're doing, supporting that and putting that out there for people. Tell me again what it's called.
It's called Caregivers Action Network. They are incredible. They're out of DC and they're incredible. Like what they are doing to change the game and to change the face of caregivers. I think for the most part, people don't think you're a caregiver and I'm a caregiver. They don't look at you and I and go, oh, that's a caregiver. No, they think caregivers are someone who's been hired to come into the house to help your loved one.
R and scrubs like somebody in an outfit, right that comes with the.
Yeah, exactly who comes with the you know, the arm cough to take your blood pressure, or it's the person who works at a assistant living facil Those are the type of people that are you know, dubbed caregivers when in all actuality, caregivers are you. They're me, They're my sister or my brother. There's anybody who is looking after someone who might have a terminal illness, might have you know,
it's just an age and loved one by a nerd divergent. Now, people who have nerdivergent children, who have autistic children, they're caregivers.
I mean as moms were caregivers.
Caregivers for moms. So, by the way, even though the smart technology that I've been using one other reason I love is some moth is because the founder actually, you know, out of the mother invention is necessity. And he actually created this because his father passed away of a stroke.
Do you hear my dog work? His father passed away of a stroke and had we all know the first five hours of a stroke are the most important, So had he had something like this in the house, he would his dad could have pushed the panic button and
someone would have been there. But you know, so even though he created it because of for you know, terminally ill people or for aging adults, in a roundabout way, it's actually now helping so many more people because it's also helping mothers web kids who have autism that are growing up, that have graduated high school and can go in the workforce, and they're not They're capable enough of living alone and having a job, but not capable of enough of not having someone also look after them.
Right.
So a friend of mine put it in her son's house and she's like, I cannot thank you enough because now it just gives me piece.
Of peace of mind. Yes, oh my gosh, you've given us so many helpful things to think about, like helpful tips, and this app and the sticker thing. I you know, I know you've helped me a lot with this conversation.
Listen, I want you to know that my phone is always on. I'm always here for you at any time, because it can get really heavy and when you're in it and you need someone to talk to, it's much easier to talk to someone who's been there and you can see the end of the tunnel and say, yeah, got this, you're.
I think that's another thing that you're giving us is that, you know, be that for somebody else that's about to do it. That's really kind. Thank you so much for all your time, Debbie. We really appreciate you, and I hope that we'll be able to link what you're talking about in our show notes so that people know where to find this kind of help.
I would love that we'll link the phone number and we'll link the websites. I mean, they're super important and they're there twenty four hours a day. They're great.
Great. Thank you so much, Debbie.
Thank you, Jenny, love you, love you.