welcome to artful aging with amy where i
ask caregivers and professionals the
difficult questions that will give you
guidance on your life's journey support
is only one conversation away and this
is your first step let's go
good morning everyone i'm amy friesen
and this is artful aging with amy we've
discussed on the show in past episodes
the need for healthcare system
navigation as you know my company
tiantos helps families navigate senior
living options and a large part of this
work includes helping medical
professionals and families get on the
same page and understand each other
which is so important for decisions to
be made properly and everybody to feel
in the loop and taken care of properly
as another facet of the healthcare
navigation death doulas have been
starting to gain popularity for those of
you who have not heard of death doulas
they are trained professionals who
provide assistance and guidance with
holistic services to individuals and
their families during the end-of-life
transition
debbie obfalter joins me today and she's
the owner of senior solutions a
companion and home care service as well
as elephant in the room which is focused
on end-of-life care and supports
families with death doulas welcome
debbie thanks so much for joining me
today
thank you amy for having me it's been a
pleasure
i'm happy to have you here so that we
can get a little bit more information
about what you do maybe we could first
start by looking at what home care is
and what types of services people have
access to when they remain in their
homes during their senior years can you
give us a bird's eye view of what
families might expect
um
we
tend to try and keep people in their
homes
families don't want to leave mother mom
and dad don't want to leave their home
they have the old stigma
going out to pasture or going to nursing
home as opposed to long-term care home
so they do want to stay in their homes
so we're able to offer transportation
um
personal support work which is a psw
lots of companionship uh we cook at home
we can do their shopping for them or
without them we offer house cleaning
services so we do sort of uh uh a
blanket of everything that they would
need in order to stay home we work very
very closely with the family
they get reports and
we are they they are able to stay in
their home
until their end of life
a lot of seniors especially during covet
you know there was a lot of people who
didn't move there's still a lot of
people that did move to retirement or
long-term care but definitely more
people were looking at options to stay
at home you know how can they best fit
theirs or their family's needs
while staying in their own homes
now you've been running your business
for 15 years
over that time what have you seen
that have been changes for seniors and
families
um
when i started the business in 2007 it
was sort of to pla plug in a hole that i
saw there was a need and it was out of
the need of my mother-in-law um who lost
her license and then lost her husband so
i was doing all this
um and then that's how senior solution
was created since we started i'm finding
there's more of a need um again for
people to stay at home or navigation
like like tea and toast finding the
proper
the proper care and a full concierge of
every care like you said in the
beginning we want to work together so
that we can have a full concierge
services for our clients
um what we're finding is
a lot of our clients the families live
out of town or out of the country so
they do need help so when when they when
they come to visit they realize mom or
dad need needs a lot of help or they
need help to go into a retirement home
and they're literally have no clue so we
were able to um
navigate that
um
and what we've noticed with the changes
is
the demand is so big because the
population is growing so it's been 15
years
um so the population is getting bigger
um
as you notice that you know the
population of staff are getting less
um and with covet didn't it wasn't kind
to seniors
no not at all and you're right the
population has just been exploding i've
talked about it in other episodes in the
last 20 years it's you know
it's been raising but in the next 20
years the next one's coming up it's
going to still raise another 68 or so so
the population just keeps going and
going
but you're right the pandemic burned out
a lot of our industry burned out a lot
of the caregivers and people are
actually looking for jobs outside of
health care um there's a lot in the
retirement living and long-term care
specifically
that are just you know it's hard to keep
track of anybody because they're gone or
they're doing something else because
they were so burnt out yeah did you find
sorry go ahead no no
it's just gonna say did you find that
people required more care during the
pandemic or were they more apt to try to
do things on their own
both
both
people that were living at home felt
safer at home but needed extra care but
we're about to go into retirement home
and then we're not able to do so
um people in the retirement homes of
course during in the beginning of the
pandemic agencies weren't allowed in so
that put a huge strain on the staff that
was already existing in these homes and
in long-term care and that's where the
burnout came
being locked in their rooms
um
making sure they're nourished hydrated
stimulated it was a really really tough
job for
anybody who was in long-term care
because they weren't able to get help
from agencies like ourselves um and then
you add on hearing impaired and visually
impaired and now you've got masks
and gowns and shields and it made it
very very difficult for
uh seniors in residence so if they were
home a lot of them stayed at home
uh to see where the pa how far the
pandemic was going to take us
for sure and a lot of people i just
wanted to clarify as well so during the
pandemic it did lighten up with bringing
in care but you're right the first a lot
of people could not come into the
buildings because frankly nobody even
knew what was going on right they didn't
know how to contain it they didn't know
what to do with the pandemic
and one of the questions that were asked
a lot and why i want to clarify it is
that yes in long-term care and
retirement you can have companion care
you can have private home care you can
have public home care and i want to make
sure people understand that because a
lot of people
work with someone like yourself um or
your
employees that work with you as well and
they work with you at home and then they
might want to look into making a move
and some of them get hesitant because
they want to bring you with them and so
one of the big things we're always
educating people on is you know if you
have a service at home you're welcome to
bring it into the retirement home in in
most cases i would be hard to find a
case you couldn't eh well we actually
have a few clients that are in
retirement homes and we're doing 24-hour
care
right there wasn't enough care in the
home whether or not they have to stay we
have one lady she has to stay in her bed
because she keeps falling she's broken
her hip she split open her head so we
have to be there 24 hours
a day until she gets a long-term care
bed so we're a month in now and she's in
a retirement home so um
financially it has been difficult for a
lot of families over
the pandemic who were already in a home
and
needed to isolate so that's we were
doing a lot of 24-hour care keeping them
in the room
like i said it's been very unkind and
not knowing how far it was going and
hopefully we're going to see an end of
it
hopefully yeah yeah and it was
specifically difficult as well with the
isolation that you're talking about with
folks who have cognitive issues that was
something i hadn't seen a long time well
ever i don't think it's just it was so
complicated because there's a lot of
people of cognitive impairments that
would normally be a wonder risk and go
about and then they had to stay in their
room and so a lot of people
had to come to you i'm you know i sent a
lot of people to you and i'm sure that
you had a lot of people as well that
needed that 24-hour companion care
because they needed someone to kind of
keep people in their suites
and and and not to decline a lot of them
declined quite a bit
we've got a few clients that have
declined out of loneliness
it's it's been tough it's been tough for
sure so we're doing the best we can we
do a lot of but now we're able to get
back into the retirement homes it's been
over a year well about 18 months so
we're back in
and when staff sees they're so happy
that we're there
because it's one less room that they
sort of have to peek in on because
they're they're they're busy they're
they're they're very busy yeah for sure
and you know because like you said for a
while
we they couldn't have any other care
agencies in for a while until they kind
of got the lay of the land and so
there's a lot of people
that would have been in the homes either
getting care coming in or
family coming in and helping you know
i've talked to families that you know
their loved one
eats a certain way or has a special diet
or whatnot that they were helping with
because
of ethnicity or whatever the reason was
and all those people couldn't come in so
generally you know they wouldn't need
help right and so their homes are
staffed for the care they require and
then the pandemic came the staff went
down and everybody else that was you
know coming in as help are gone
that's correct
yes and a lot of times we were able to
go in as an essential caregiver
and and not even the family we were able
to go in and the family wasn't so we
were
the eyes and ears for
uh the family we're we're we're
highly advocate advocate for our clients
and all our seniors whether we see
something happening to someone that we
don't even know we are very strong
advocates for our seniors um and that
was um
that's been another challenge too
absolutely absolutely can you tell us a
little bit more about death doulas and
their role with the family as well as
with the medical professionals i believe
you can look at it similar to end of
life coaching kind of a midwife scenario
is that accurate debbie that's kind of
when i do my research
yeah we we are we have about five on
staff and um that really uh picked up
during covet
um people didn't want to die in a
hospital they had a dnr we were not to
call an ambulance we were not we were to
let them die at home
we all want to die at home about 67
percent of people die in a hospital
so it's not making that call at the end
of the life so we work very closely with
the doctors and the in the and the
nurses so
again
they got very busy so we were able to
assist in a non-medical non-law non-law
slash lawyer and non-religious
so wherever we again are the concierge
for the family if we want to get we've
had end-of-life doulas that cook
uh their favorite food um um navigate
people that are coming in from out of
town getting them a hotel
um advocating for that person that is
passing when we think that they're not
listening they can hear you we
we've had
res you know family members arguing over
money in another room and and all of a
sudden
mom or dad is twitching because they can
hear it so we do advocate for
our client when they pass away we had
one particular gentleman he was 104
albert he lived at home and we saw him
three times a day so he died over the
thanksgiving he was able to die at home
i did a video of him three days before
he died very cognitive
and we were trying to get a doctor to
come it was thanksgiving day
nobody was coming
brenda our end-of-life doula was there
albert was able to pass away at home
some somebody a lovely nurse left her
thanksgiving dinner and came and met us
and and was able to assist us medically
so when we um the lady that was the
neighbor of alberti had no children
she didn't want to see albert leaving
the room so brenda and tammy
um
the other lady the neighbors she picked
out the clothes and brenda and tammy
changed him they watched him they
changed him
they brought in and put in put him on a
gurney i'm gonna cry and um they were
leaving him so the coroner said was he a
veteran and um
brenda said yes
so they draped his body over with a
canada flag and as they were leaving the
apartment
brenda said to susan susan you have to
look you have to look so she opened her
eyes and saw him being left with dignity
and susan said to me that was the
biggest gift that we could have given
her was for us to look after him
and then allow him to be um
escorted digni with with dignity so we
we that's our job that's our job we um
it's a gift it's um i think a lot of us
are inherently end-of-life doulas in
this business you know i've had people
die with me before i just didn't have
that the title the certificate to go
along with it so it takes a a a
different kind of person to to
when someone dies with me i look at it
as a gift and an honor
because i believe they choose you know
you always hear the story where oh i'm
just waiting for my cousin or my
daughter to come from england and sure
enough they die within an hour after
they've seen them so i i believe that
they have a choice
and uh it is it is a gift to to
help them pass
and cross over that's beautiful debbie i
feel like a lot of people i mean i've
talked about it in different shows a lot
of people
don't want to talk about end of life
planning they don't want to even you
know bring it up
some people feel like they're jinxing
things and whatnot but this is one of
the reasons why it's so important
to not only talk about it but make
efforts to make you know the end of your
life the end of your loved one's life
peaceful and and it doesn't have to be
um
this medically you know craziness in a
hospital and things like that you get to
choose right
and i think that that is super valuable
for people to understand the other thing
too is that you know when
when i'm working with families at tea
and toast we're helping them figure out
retirement living we're dealing with
care and things like that and which
homes fit best and it goes a long way in
my team that we can talk to the medical
professionals because
they don't speak the same language as
the family the family has a lot of
emotions a lot of things going on they
don't understand the terms and i would
suggest that it would be very similar on
your end as well that you know there's a
lot of things happening at end of life
and if medical professionals are in you
know they're talking often like people
understand everything that's happening
right they really don't
and then the other thing about it is is
that
at end of life there's only this much
time right it's not like you know all of
us maybe only have that much time but
specifically in this case it's you know
that much time and to have it be a
frustrating and emotional experience
still you know is troublesome to me so
having end of life doulas is fantastic
well we can be the liaison between the
doctor the client and and normally the
person that is um
dying they're okay with it it's the
family that are not okay with it so a
lot of time is hand holding the family
um letting them know you know
you can
you can have a body you can have your
husband or your loved one with you for
three days nobody
that's something that most people don't
know you don't have to have that even in
the hospital you don't have to say
goodbye to them you'll have time
um
i was at a funeral yesterday for a
client and i didn't know his life quite
extensively but i realized sitting there
listening to what a wonderful human
being he was and and to the max extreme
a cyclist and traveled the world we need
to ask more questions when they're alive
because
i've been to funerals where i learn all
about them after their death and they've
had extraordinary lives and they do want
to talk about it and we just need to
more ask more questions
and and let them live
their their youth or the the
this 104 year old man he was part of a
an elite caterpillar club jumping out of
an airplane after it was disabled and
pulling his parachute and living
he's part of a club who knew that
um so there's a lot of things that and i
learned that three days before he died
so i should have known that because i've
known him for four years
so um it's interesting it's it's it's
it's again it's it's an honor it's an
absolute honor and and
that's why i named the business elephant
in the room because nobody wants to talk
about yet it's the one thing
that we all have in common we're all
just walking each other home
and if we look at it that way we're all
going to die we just don't know when
so it makes me a little bit more kinder
a little more patient
um
and it has changed my perspective in
life
yeah i actually cherish it a lot
it's beautiful absolutely and you know
it's i agree there's not enough
questions asked of people's personal
experiences and i think some people
don't want to feel like they're impeding
on you know somebody's privacy or they
don't know what questions to ask but i
can also say on the other side what i've
heard from seniors in my life and my
business and things like that
is that they have the stories they want
to talk about them but sometimes they
just feel like nobody wants to hear it
absolutely and i think it's our job to
say yes i want to hear it tell me
something tell me tell me about you
even if we have to hear the same story
ten times that's okay because to them
sometimes it's the first time they've
told the story if they have alzheimer's
or dementia but it's a story and it
doesn't change the same story doesn't
change so it really is important
and we need to we need to we need to do
that a little bit more absolutely what
types of situations do you find that
families need the most assistance for
them
um we find uh our our number one um is
companionship
so when families come in um we even do
that maybe with our own families at
business you know we come in here's mom
here's your shopping yeah sarah
graduated and yeah the dog the dog died
it tends to be more where we come in and
we're a breath of fresh air and also um
it gives them something else to talk
about oh debbie was here today with
diesel and uh this is what you know
debbie was on a trip or debbie did this
so it gives everybody an extra chance to
um give them something else to talk
about but companionship is is our number
one it seems to be because a lot of our
families are are out of the country or
and um
got families that haven't seen their
loved ones in over two years because of
the pandemic and are not able to travel
so
it seems to be
it's it's it's also for the families
when they hire us to be a companion
um at the end of the day they get a full
report
um and um that's sent to the family and
it's good for them so that they know
that mom has a companion
take them outside take them to the park
we take them on picnics whatever it is
that they're capable of doing
um take them to bingo take them to
um
something within the building a lot of
recreation in the building we're just
sitting in the garden watching people we
forget the simplicity in life we feel
like we have to constantly be doing
uh acrobats and cartwheels to entertain
them sometimes it's just sitting there
looking at the birds
and just taking a moment with each other
it's really that simple
so a lot and a lot of families kind of
like you said it's kind of more
transactional more so for families i
find because
you know maybe they do see them more
often like for instance if they see them
more often that it is like here's your
groceries here's your stuff here you
know whatever and they know the stories
already they lived them right so now
we're new we're new we get to we they
get to tell their stories again
so uh it's important it's important
absolutely
now anyone who knows you or has been to
your website or you know in around
definitely wants more information on
diesel who is the therapy
companion dog we learned in episode 21
of the importance of the important role
of pet therapy and the important role it
plays can you tell us more about diesel
and your experience with bringing him in
to see clients because i've seen so many
pictures and it's just so lovely just
tell us more
well diesel is a red doberman he's
looking at me now he doesn't know that
he's a red doberman um he started
working four years ago after my other
doberman passed away and um
diesel didn't know life without odin and
it was devastating to watch
um diesel grieve so started training him
and he is a therapy companion service
dog for seniors so we are able to take
him to medical appointments cancer
treatments he relieves the anxiety of
clients we um
we raised ten thousand dollars in 2019
we sold diesel calendars and all the
visits that we did with diesel 100 and
the calendars 100 went into the
community for local seniors who are
being abused and that went right to the
eastern resource center
so
he is going to be nine this year
he can go to a restaurant he is the most
well-behaved dog i've ever met
he is um
he goes and says goodbye to everybody in
a circle
to watch him work is remarkable it is um
he's my gift he um
everybody remembers diesel but nobody
remembers me and i'm okay with that i
was in the hospital once and i was
walking and i'm like come on diesel
we're going and there was a group of
people and i heard someone say oh that's
diesel the therapy companion dog and i
look down i'm like dude you're good
so he's uh he's still working and we
have two other dogs now on staff
informally like um not formal uh therapy
companion dogs but they're able to come
and do visits so we have um two other
dogs now diesel is the main dog
because he's got the the training so
he's able to go everywhere
so he's a 95 pound therapy companion dog
yeah he's amazing is he is he still
sitting right beside you because i feel
he's right here he's right here he's
right beside because he hears his name
he hears his name
oh that's fantastic so diesel if you're
listening you're gonna have to train the
rest to be as awesome as you are because
i've definitely seen pictures i remember
when odin passed and i was just you know
i i remember
seeing what was kind of happening
obviously social media and things like
that but i'm just so it's just such a
nice and fantastic story that he kind of
found a new way to you know care for
people and love people and to fill that
void
i think too i think i look back
sometimes i'm like i'm glad that i tend
to think outside the box anybody who
runs a business that has to think
outside the box so i'm really glad that
i did because somebody once said i was
walking down the street with him and he
said is that a door room and i said yes
he goes i'm
i thought they were mean and vicious i
said i actually know a lot of people
like that so that's sort of my answer
now because he's not he's not mean and
vicious um but i think we need to um
have more animals in our seniors lives
there there's nothing more
beautiful than babies and puppies
yeah absolutely and you know i've worked
with seniors a really long time as well
and it's like i've definitely seen you
know people with animals i've definitely
seen people with babies and
like you i go anywhere with my
four-year-old they remember eva and they
don't know who i am so
ah
it's good though and people you know i
think i think that opening up that
conversation and you know like you said
about you know people being a little
worried is he going to be okay or what
not and it's true it's like i know a lot
of miserable people right and i know a
lot of mean people and it's just that's
amazing
yeah and i think once we open up our
hearts and our our doors a little more
to more animals
i think with seniors
we do visits we did a visit this week at
um linwood and
you should see their face lights up it's
it's unbelievable and he is happy happy
happy as you can see on social media
he's always smiling when he's working
absolutely yeah well debbie thank you so
much for joining me today and sharing
your story and giving us a little bit
more information i really appreciate it
thank you for having me amy and it was
all my pleasure and there you have it
for today's show if you got some value
out of today's show or you'd like to
help spread the word of artful aging
with amy we're here to help support
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remember support is only one
conversation away that's it for artful
aging with amy for me to all of you i
hope that you have a wonderful wednesday
[Music]
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