Episode 8: Transcript

"No one prepares you for this level of ... intimacy?" - with Tiffany Noel Taylor and Richard Furlong

Doug French:

So you had cake.

Magda Pecsenye:

Ah yeah. Six different combinations of cake, filling, and frosting.

Doug French:

And what did you choose?

Magda Pecsenye:

Well, I don't want to tell you. Nobody's going to find out until the actual wedding.

Doug French:

Ooh, palace intrigue.

Magda Pecsenye:

Let's just say that there's one layer that's going to have chocolate frosting and one layer that's going to have white-colored frosting.

Doug French:

Are they gonna do the chocolate frosting in that poop emoji look?

Magda Pecsenye:

No, not at all. She just frosted the cupcakes and they looked like poop emojis <laugh>. The cake's not gonna look like a poop emoji.

Doug French:

I'm glad that's not a microcosm of what she has planned.

Magda Pecsenye:

No, no, not at all. Yeah, so we met with the caterer this morning and picked our the outline of our food, and then we got our marriage license, and then we met with the cake lady. So it's all happening now.

Doug French:

It's almost official!

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah.

Doug French:

Cool. All right. Well, I, I really enjoyed editing this episode eight …

Magda Pecsenye:

… with Tiffany and RB.

Doug French:

Yeah.

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah. I enjoyed recording it, too! They're so much fun. But I mean, Tiffany and I have been friends since we were 14. And I love RB. Tiffany and I are the kind of friends who are like, yeah, just come over, my house is a disgusting sty. Just come over, and you can move your own crap to make a space for yourself on the couch.

Doug French:

Make a garbage angel and have a seat.

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah, exactly! <laugh> So yeah, and RB is... You know, like he's special, he's just great. I love him. And I've been really feeling for them in this situation that they talk about in the episode. Her dad became suddenly very, very ill, and so they have been, along with her brother and his wife, have been... managing their dad's care for the last two years in and out of the hospital. Nobody can seem to figure out how to get on top of what's going on with their dad, who's in his mid-70s. I mean, he's not even that old. And he was healthy, until the point at which they admitted him to the hospital suddenly and had to call the paramedics. And so what they're talking about in this episode today with us is what it is like to be caring for parents who are having health problems. How that affects your relationship with them, how that affects your relationship with each other, how you keep your head above water emotionally, and just sort of what the rhythm of all of that is like. And I found it very interesting and enlightening because I think the myth is that your parents just sort of decline steadily. And so you gradually take more and more care of them until it sort of switches over. And that's not at all what happened to Tiffany. That wasn't what happened to me when I was taking care of my uncle, either. It was just sort of sudden. And I think the sudden thing is much more common than we think it is.

Doug French:

Yeah, that was the amazing thing, the whole “record scratch” of the experience. And it's not meant to scare people …

Magda Pecsenye:

No, not at all.

Doug French:

… but I do think it brings up an awareness of like, do not put stuff off. I mean, they even, they had nothing prepared and they're still above water on this, which is amazing.

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah.

Doug French:

I mean, you can speed the plow a little bit and get a few things in order, just so it's a little easier. But that was the striking part, about how parental both their parents were, and how this sudden shift has now got a whole new level of intimacy. As she said, it's like, it's a whole new thing when you start washing your father.

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah, yeah, it's true. <laugh>. And I think the thing that they did have in place that a lot of people don't necessarily have the ability to have in place is that they very much trusted her parents and her parents very much trusted them, already. Like they saw each other all the time, multiple times per week. They lived very close to each other. And so it wasn't like suddenly taking care of somebody that you didn't really know very well. It was just a big role reversal for them.

Doug French:

Yeah, and the other revelation that their siblings are also married. So there's this real complex knot of relativity that's dividing and conquering what needs to be done to take care of the parents because Tiffany's brother is married to R.B.'s sister. And, wow.

Magda Pecsenye:

I agree. And I think it helps that Tiffany is good friends with her brother and has been so for a long, long time. And R.B. is good friends with his sister, and they have been good friends for a long, long time too. So I think that helps a lot.

Doug French:

Well, I gotta say: Thank you so much for hooking us up with those two. That discussion was very interesting, very informative, very funny. I really liked the way they're finding the humor in this. I think that's a big part of how they've been together for 27 years and bonding over all that time is really helping them figure all this out. The raw footage of this was over two hours. There's so much laughter, so much consternation.

Magda Pecsenye:

Right. “When the Flames Go Up … After Dark.”

Doug French:

After Dark … featuring The Facilitator.

<both laugh>

Doug French:

Oh, and I found the article about that Loofa System at The Villages.

Magda Pecsenye:

I saw that! I don't... oh my gosh. I'd like to say I'm too old for this, and yet apparently I'm too young for this.

Doug French:

I mean, I think the vast majority of loofas anybody buys are white, and white is the “Novices and Beginners.” So, buying a white loofa essentially means you're going to get descended on.

Magda Pecsenye:

Yeah.

Doug French:

Fresh meat. God. So, thanks for that. I'm gonna call my parents now and talk to them about this experience just to see what they say.

Magda Pecsenye:

Oh, I thought you meant you were gonna talk to your parents about the loofa thing. And I was like, “What are you about to do?”

<music>

Magda Pecsenye:

Doug and Richard, have you ever met each other before? I don't think you've met each other before.

Richard “RB” Furlong:

We have not.

Doug French (00:00:04):

I don't think so.

Magda (00:00:05):

So Richard is my--

Richard (00:00:06):

I’ve heard many wonderful things, but I've, no, we haven't met.

Doug (00:00:08):

Really? Wonderful things?

Richard (00:00:10):

Yeah, absolutely.

Magda (00:00:12):

So Richard is my platonic soulmate, and Doug is my ex-husband <laugh>.

Tiffany Noel Taylor:

That's a good summary.

Doug (00:00:21):

Platonic ex-mate. Yeah, pretty much.

Magda (00:00:22):

<laugh>. It really is a good summary.

Tiffany (00:00:26):

So just to say to both of you, RB and I have been listening to your podcast and we're fascinated by your ability to co-parent and communicate and talk to each other, because we're still married to each other and I don't know that we communicate that effectively. <Laugh>.

Richard (00:00:44):

Oh, it's awful. It's terrible.

Magda (00:00:46):

Well, okay. I think we do talk to each other a lot better than we did when we were married, for sure.

Doug (00:00:51):

Well, and I do think, too, that that divorce agreement that we got and put in a drawer, that's, I mean, every couple should have that divorced or otherwise. I mean, any dispute that comes up, you just reach into the drawer and say, “I'm sorry, this says we're going to my parents for Christmas.”

Magda (00:01:05):

<Laugh>. Yeah, I mean, it's very true. Like, I mean, okay, so I have not put the divorce agreement in a drawer, because I needed to pull out the divorce agreement and print out a copy of it because I am going to apply for my marriage license next week to someone else. And you have to show proof that you're divorced, because they're not in the business of enabling bigamy. So I have to pull it out.

Doug (00:01:28):

Wouldn’t that be something if the paperwork were delayed 16 years or whatever it is?

Magda (00:01:33):

Really

Doug (00:01:34):

“We're working on it. Covid really set us back a bit.”

Magda (00:01:37):

<Laugh>.

Tiffany (00:01:37):

I wouldn't know where the paperwork was ‘cause that's just who I am. I wouldn't know. I'd be like, “Oh, was there paperwork? I don't know where the paperwork is.”

Magda (00:01:45):

<Laugh>. Okay, so Doug is sitting here thinking, “How on earth did Magda find a copy of the divorce paperwork? Why did she not message me and say, ‘Hey, can you send me a copy of the divorce paperwork?’ <laugh>, since I—"

Doug (00:01:59):

That is impressive. I got to say, if you retained your own copy of that, that's pretty sharp.

Magda (00:02:02):

I scanned it and Gmailed it to myself.

Doug (00:02:07):

<Laugh>,

Tiffany (00:02:09):

I'm proud.

Doug (00:02:09):

Hey man, whatever works.

Magda (00:02:11):

And I put the word “divorce” in there and it pulled it up and there it was. It was a miracle. An absolute miracle. And yeah.

Doug (00:02:20):

I don't think I've seen it since I had to drive to Canada with the boys and me. I, as the father had to have written permission that it was okay for me to bring the boys across the border into a new country.

Magda (00:02:33):

It wasn't just because you were the male parent, like any, in theory, of course it was. No, it wasn't.

Doug (00:02:38):

You didn't need a letter from me. Yeah. You had to write a letter saying it's okay for this man to bring the boys across the border. But when you went there with them, I didn't have to write any letters.

Magda (00:02:46):

Yeah, you did.

Doug (00:02:48):

No, I didn't!

Magda (00:02:48):

Didn't you write letters when I took the boys to Canada?

Doug (00:02:51):

No.

Tiffany:

Interesting.

Magda (00:02:52):

I don't know. Interesting. Maybe it helps that they have my exact same face, but I don't know. <Laugh>.

Richard (00:02:57):

Well, you guys, both of you have my permission to take either or both of our children to Canada whenever you want.

Tiffany:

You're welcome to them.

Richard:

Today would be great. If you're free after this.

Tiffany (00:03:08):

Yes, please.

Doug (00:03:09):

I don't know. Now that we're empty nesters. I got to say, I'm getting kind of used to this idea.

Tiffany (00:03:15):

Ugh, please.

Doug (00:03:16):

What should I do, Dad? I don't know. Figure it out. <Laugh>,

Tiffany (00:03:20):

Tell us what it's like. So, RB and I were in the car driving to collect one of the adult children to help them navigate something, of course, because it's a Monday and we're putting out fires, right? So we were talking about this in the car when we were alone. This is interesting that we're going to talk to Magda and Doug today and we're going to talk about the situation with my parents and the big pharma and the medical community and navigating all of this for the last 26 months. And he's like, “What about the kids? Like where does that fit into this conversation today, <laugh>?”

Magda (00:03:57):

Well, I think that's a good question, right? I mean, so, okay, so the background to all of this is that your dad got sick and was hospitalized 26 months ago, and they've never been able to fix it or get back on top of it. And he's not an unwell person and he's still relatively young. So this isn't like normal decline into old age. This is like, there's something wrong and the entire medical community hasn't been able to coordinate enough to get on top of what's wrong with him. But at the same time, you have adult kids who are at home. So it's not like you’ve got little kids that you have to drive to piano lessons and whatnot, but it's a whole different set of stressors.

Tiffany (00:04:42):

Right. The whole time while this was happening, we had one kid finishing college five states away, and we have another one finishing high school. We have found this to be a very busy season with our kids. They're moving into adulthood, but they've still got a lot they're navigating and working through. And so yes, we're navigating all of that and <laugh> my parents and taking over what remains of my dad's real estate business from him. My dad's not struggling with dementia or any kind of traumatic brain injury that's stopping him from being able to think or argue with me <laugh>. But he's often unwell and hospitalized. And so we're having to navigate that with him. And through all of this, then my mom got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Doug:

Ugh.

Magda (00:05:38):

Now it's not the really bad kind of pancreatic cancer. There's a really horrible kind of pancreatic cancer that basically the survival rate is something like 3% or something like that. And then there's another kind of pancreatic cancer that's not as horrible. And your mom got the one for the kind that’s not as horrible.

Tiffany (00:05:56):

Right. It's still pancreatic cancer, but it is significantly slower moving. It is very rare. It's not the kind people usually get. So it's not the diagnosis that there's even a lot of research about, or there's a lot of conversation about, my mom just happened to have lucked out that she had another incident that led to them finding this. And she's very fortunate that there's an amazing nationally-recognized surgeon who knew how to handle this right here in our hometown. Well, how do you want to explain what you do with my dad? Because we were talking about this.

Richard (00:06:36):

I don't know, I, you know, when the doctor says--

Doug (00:06:39):

You’re the arm candy, Richard?

Richard (00:06:40):

Yeah. You know, I'm just here to look pretty <laugh>. No, but it's like when the doctor says “scalpel,” <laugh>, I'm there to hand things, or I'm there to move people.

Tiffany (00:06:56):

He's the lifter. He's the rearranger. He's the transporter. I have said to him, I think this would make a fascinating action movie where you've just got some septuagenarians in the mix of trying to get across borders or stop the terrorist attack. You've just got to move some septuagenarians in and out of wheelchairs and in and out of hospital beds. Like, no one's seen that film yet.

Doug (00:07:23):

Here’s my question. Let me ask this, then, I think, to get it started a bit, because it sounds like both of these diagnoses came on pretty suddenly.

Tiffany (00:07:31):

Yes.

Doug (00:07:32):

So what type of affairs were in order before this happened? Were you prepared for it at all? Was there a power of attorney in place? I mean, there's a lot of succession going on here and I'm just wondering how much of this are you having to knit together from scratch and how much were you prepared for?

Tiffany (00:07:49):

None. We were prepared for none. Richard is looking at me right now. Like, can I say we were not prepared because we were not, we were not prepared. I mean, just days before my dad went into the hospital, was transported by squad and then was put into a medically induced coma, my parents were planning a cruise with their siblings, right. They'd all gotten their vaccinations. They were all coming out of the pandemic. My parents were, you know, making their brunch schedule <laugh>. There were not things in place for me to take over the business for the four of us, my brother and his wife and my husband and I, to take over my parents' needs. And we had no expectation that my dad's little infection was going to turn into this medical odyssey that was going to take my parents out of their home. They're living with my brother and sister-in-law and we're doing all of the external appointments and out-of-the-house visits.

Tiffany (00:08:49):

My dad has 12 different specialists and he's across four different hospital systems. So it was not until my dad was sick, and it was actually not until my dad had been in the hospital for three months and experienced cardiac arrest and was resuscitated and survived, that we even had a medical power of attorney. And then we realized, “Oh shit, somebody needs to be able to speak <laugh> and take care of things.” Then the next step was the power of attorney to manage the business because then we realized because my dad has real estate, there were documents that needed to be signed, there were taxes that needed to be handled. There were different appointments with real estate agents or vendors or you know, renters, things that had to get done that, informally I've done this for almost 20 years with my dad and sometimes as a contractor or an employee of my dad, but formally I was not running the business. I was not a partner in the business. None of that existed legally. So now we had to do that, too. So I think if anybody's got a parent in their sixties, <laugh>, sit down with your parents and talk about it.

Magda (00:10:04):

Now to tell listeners, you and I have been friends since high school, so I know your situation entirely <laugh>. And I know your parents and I know your brother and I know your sister-in-law and you know, I know your kids and all of them. And I think part of--

Doug (00:10:17):

And I know zero of these people! So I'm looking forward to the back and forth in this conversation. I get to play the role of the everyman who is going meet this family for the first time. And I, for one, can't be more excited.

Magda (00:10:30):

Part of what I have always thought about your family and your parents especially is that they were always helping you guys, whether you wanted it or not. So I think for people listening and thinking, “oh, well it shouldn't have been that hard to just pick stuff up when there was a medical event,” you were telling me that you would drive over to your parents' house and your dad would bring you out your favorite sandwich that he had made you, but you weren't going inside to eat because of the pandemic. But this was like, your dad was caretaking you, up to like two days before this event happened. So it wasn't like these people were in decline and there was a natural point at which you would've said, “okay, let's have a talk about this. It's time to back out of the business. What do you want to do?”

Tiffany:

Correct.

Magda:
That kind of thing. There was no transition from them being the caretakers to you being the caretakers. It was like one day they were still taking care of you, as much as you can take care of your adult kids, and then the next day your dad was in the hospital.

Tiffany (00:11:42):

Yeah. It was very sudden, it was very unexpected. It was happening during the second year of the pandemic. So we were navigating all of that too, right. With the kids and college and high school. And now we'd added this extra layer with my dad being hospitalized. We were to a point in the pandemic where if you did not have covid, you could have someone with you at the hospital. But when my dad initially came into the hospital via squad, he was in and out of consciousness because he developed this raging infection that was moving into his bloodstream in his brain, the hospital immediately assumed he had covid. And five covid tests later I found a doctor who's known my dad for 20 years to advocate for my dad because again, we had no medical power of attorney. My mom as his spouse couldn't fight for this.

Tiffany (00:12:37):

We had to have a doctor come in and say, “You've done five tests. He has never tested positive for Covid. He's fully vaccinated. He's had very little interaction or exposure. We have no reason to believe this is a covid case. This is really about the infection and the sepsis that's triggering all of this.” When that was formally accepted by the hospital, my mom could then go in and be with him. She could visit with him and then as his case progressed, she could actually stay with him at the hospital. We've been lucky that he's been in ICUs where you may have someone with you 24/7 if you choose. And we found that to be really helpful when you are unconscious to have a person in the room who can talk, who can call other people to get answers, who can verify what's being said. But leading up to this, we had no expectation. My mom just called one day and said, “Daddy's taking a nap and he doesn't want to wake up.” That's the understatement of the century. But that's what she said. <Laugh>. Wow.

Magda (00:13:48):

Wow. [Big pause.]

I think

Doug (00:13:50):

Hey Magda. Just quickly, I, what I've been doing now is I'm getting a delay. I'm getting Tiffany's voice and a delay and it may be because one of us, I think we might need to be muted while she's talking. So if you see me mute you, it's just because it's while she's talking.

Magda (00:14:09):

Oh yeah, I know. I thought you were just playing around with the features. I could tell when you were muting me.

Doug (00:14:13):

I am, but I also want to make sure that the echo, if I think the echo's coming, I can make the echo go away if, if we're both on mute while she's talking.

Magda (00:14:21):

Oh, okay. All right. That's good.

Doug (00:14:22):

So that's just, that's not me just muting you for fun.

Tiffany (00:14:26):

<Laugh>.

Magda (00:14:28):

Well, the time for that was probably 20 years ago.

Doug (00:14:32):

Can you imagine though sitting at your kitchen table and be like, mute?

Tiffany:
I'm done with you.

Magda (00:14:36):

I always wished for a court stenographer so we could just roll back, and see what the other person actually said.

Doug (00:14:47):

Do you think that that particular vibe between you and your parents put off the inevitable discussion that adults have to have with their older parents in terms of we’ve got to get some stuff in place here. Did you ever try to bring it up? And they said, “oh, don't worry about it. That's down the road.”

Tiffany (00:15:02):

I often refer to my parents as wildly optimistic. They're both crazy optimistic humans and I just think about myself, right. Tomorrow I'm turning 51 and at 51 I don't feel different except that I see I have adult children <laugh>,

Doug (00:15:22):

Right.

Tiffany (00:15:24):

And a lot more gray in my hair. But I'm like, I feel the same. And I think my parents, because they were both healthy. Prior to this cancer diagnosis, my mother had never had a surgery. My mother had never been hospitalized other than to give birth to her children. She's had no stitches, no broken bones and she wasn't on a single medication. And so I don't think my parents felt differently. I don't think my parents felt like there was any impending reason for them to have this conversation. They were still making all the decisions about the properties. They're making all the decisions about their investments and their finances. And we actually knew very little about it. I knew my parents had money. I didn't know how much money my parents had. I didn't know any of that. And maybe yes,

Doug (00:16:12):

Does any of us know that? I don't know that. They tell me they've got some to give me, but they won't tell me how much. And yeah, I think that's smart to a point. I don't want to sit and count any chickens, nor do I want to feel macabre about it. But I don't know what it is about this generation and our generation or how it's just really taboo to talk about fundamental financial stuff that adult kids need to know about.

Richard (00:16:36):

I know they don't feel differently because they still refer to us as “the kids,” you know.

Doug (00:16:42):

We’re 51-year-old kids.

Richard (00:16:43):

We're doing medical care where we're down on the floor on our knees getting on his stockings or his shoes to get to the doctor's office, and I kind of creak getting back up off the floor and he's like, “Oh, what's the matter? You're just a kid.” And I'm like, I'm the same age you were when I met you now and I don't recall you being referred to as a kid then.

Doug (00:17:03):

Well, yeah, I guess a lot of grandparents are like that. I mean, I'm heading out to see my parents in the next couple of weeks and my mother's already saying like, “What should we put in the fridge for you?” It's like, Mom,

Richard (00:17:14):

My mother does the exact same thing.

Doug (00:17:16):

And I get the whole idea that you forget that you're in your fifties. I mean I don't do it as often because there's a mirror over my toilet

Richard (00:17:25):

<Laugh>.

Doug (00:17:27):

And so I am constantly reminded that even though I feel less than 57, boy am I 57 on the outside on a good day.

Magda (00:17:40):

Okay. So when I was with my uncle in his decline, ‘cause I was the adult kid in charge when my uncle, I was his next of kin, when he declined and died. I thought that there was a track that you, when you got into the hospital that there would be a doctor or some person who knew what was going on that would coordinate information from different tests and from different doctors and things like that. And I was, I guess I would say “stunned but not surprised” maybe to discover that there was nobody running anything there. His liver doctor would come in and say his liver is very bad. And then the nephrologist would come in and say his kidneys are very bad. And then the stomach doctor would come in and say his stomach is very bad. But it wasn't like they talked to each other at all. And I feel like that's the horrible discovery that you have made also.

Doug (00:18:38):

There’s a whole lot of shrugging going on in the medical community.

Magda (00:18:40):

Yeah.

Tiffany (00:18:41):

I think I'm someone who's walked around for a long time thinking, oh, doctors know things, <laugh> doctors know things, they understand things, they see things. And really what I've discovered across this last 26 months is most of the time they're making really educated guesses. They're looking for patterns, they're looking for things they've seen before. It's a lot of detective work. Right. And sometimes it's only as good as the information that's being collected and the questions being asked and the answers they're being given. The beginning of this journey with my dad was very difficult because my dad was unconscious and they had no way of knowing things if my mother was not with him. And because of covid protocols, her ability to be with him was limited. And the hospital made a decision to move my dad into a rehab facility. That was the wrong situation.

Tiffany (00:19:36):

That's not where he should have been. He put on 75 pounds of fluid, he went into congestive heart failure. I fought to get him out of that facility. And that was something Richard and I talked about today. It's having someone who's your advocate. And it's usually, I think, someone younger because they have the ability to fight for you, but you want someone who's articulate. I have to compartmentalize all the time and remove the emotion. And not think about my dad as my dad. Like, this isn't my daddy, this is this 76-year-old man presenting in this fashion to these people. And so when I take the emotion out of it, I can talk about facts with these doctors. So that May, in 2021, I was fighting to get my dad to a doctor because this rehab facility had limited visiting hours. They had these covid protocols in place.

Tiffany (00:20:34):

And so my dad was really isolated and we were watching him swell up and we knew that this infection was not under control. And you have to have an advocate, you have to have someone who's keeping track of everything. There are Google docs for my dad. My dad calls it The Big Binder of Bompy. And that's my kid's name for him, Bompy. So we call it The Big Binder of Bompy because someone has to track what's happening because we're in four hospital systems, including the Cleveland Clinic and University of Michigan and the VA, these huge hospital systems and our local hospital system, they don't have a person who's doing the care navigation across systems. So I'm the fighter <laugh> and I'm the advocate and we've learned a lot. And I don't know how you navigate having conversations like this with your parents. I don't know. I don't know how you have them ahead of time and maybe you don't. Maybe it's not realistic to have them with aunts or uncles or parents or the person that you're going to, you know, be there for.

Doug (00:21:39):

I mean, is that the way it works? You just resign yourself that you're going to have a very steep learning curve just because there's no way you could map out everything that you should know. I mean, it's nice to have a few stepladders in there to just get a sense of what you're going to have to do when the time comes. Especially when you're talking to lawyers and you're talking to medical professionals and other people who do ostensibly know more than you do. So how steep was that learning curve and how has your faith and your ability improved or declined as you've had to learn all this stuff so quickly?

Tiffany (00:22:11):

Ooh, that's a good thing for Richard to answer.

Richard (00:22:13):

<Laugh> really.

Doug (00:22:15):

Thank God you're here, Richard.

Richard (00:22:18):

<Laugh>. Well, watching Tiffany navigate this with her parents, my faith in her abilities has grown exponentially. I am wildly impressed by her and admire her ability to move through this on a daily basis. My faith in my own abilities to handle this when it comes to my own mother has gone downhill <laugh> in equal amounts.

Doug (00:22:43):

No, come on man.

Richard (00:22:44):

No. It seems like on a parent-to-parent basis that pendulum is going to go back and forth. It's going to be so different for every individual. My mother is one year younger than Tiffany's parents. She just retired at 74 and is going on cruises and is going to exercise classes and

Tiffany (00:23:10):

She was in The Villages.

Richard (00:23:12):

Yeah. And, but she loves to plan--

Doug (00:23:14):

And she's steering clear those upside-down pineapples.

Richard (00:23:17):

Yeah, yeah. <Laugh>.

Tiffany (00:23:20):

That’s how we found out about them!

Doug (00:23:22):

Yeah, there's a flurry of stuff on TikTok about that now, but I am feeling like the ultimate country mouse right now. Cause I had no idea that was a thing.

Richard (00:23:29):

Oh, we didn't either.

Magda (00:23:31):

Doug messaged me and he was like, “Do you know the upside-down pineapple is the symbol that people use at RVs to indicate that they want to swing with other couples??”  And I was like, ‘Yeah, I knew that. You didn't know that?” And he was like, “What??”

Doug (00:23:45):

And here when I have a house warming, I like to bring a nice pineapple along and who knows where that could have gone.

Tiffany (00:23:51):

<Laugh>, I have these ceramic pineapples in my office and I'm like, I can't ever have those on camera. People think I'm some kind of like, I'm looking for something. Right.

Doug (00:24:04):

Of course what I want to do now is whenever I see a pineapple displayed anywhere, I want to turn it upside down and just stir up something awkward. <Laugh>.

Tiffany (00:24:13):

Yes, I, and apparently it's very popular on cruises, but this is a thing in The Villages. And my dad actually had a nurse, my dad had a nurse that was a life flight nurse that was frequently in The Villages. And she said, “Oh yeah, they were our biggest client. Our hospital was there all the time. And our life flight was always going there because there's a lot of alcohol related accidents with golf carts in The Villages. A lot of people falling out and hitting their heads and breaking their hips out of their golf carts.” Whoa. I

Richard (00:24:46):

In The Villages. Distracted drivers looking for pineapples.

Tiffany (00:24:49):

That's the difference of where Richard's mom is in this season. Just one year younger than our parents, having had her own cancer diagnosis, surgery, chemo, radiation. Survived it, moved on the other side of it, just in the last couple of years. It's so different than what's happening with my dad and by extension what's happening for my mom because when we needed to move my dad out of their home, it meant, you know, my mom was leaving her home because she couldn't handle his care alone, because my dad needs to be lifted, my dad needs to be moved. My dad's actually in a place right now where he's not doing any of the activities of daily life alone. Like, my dad can't get into the shower, my dad can't get on and off a toilet. My dad can't shave himself. Like none of that's happening.

Doug (00:25:37):

Well now, Richard, now that you are watching Tiffany go through this with her parents, and again, everyone's relationship with their parents is different, but is there anything that you have learned particularly from what Tiffany has gone through that you would like to apply somehow to how you care for your mom when she needs it?

Richard (00:25:57):

We have definitely had more discussions about this since this began happening with Tiffany's parents. And my mother's been living alone for over 30 years now. So she resigned herself a long time ago to, I think, to being prepared for these types of things in advance in a way where maybe when you're happily married as Tiffany's parents are, that you don't want to think about that. Whereas as a single woman, my mother has been planning ahead for these types of things and has been very candid about, well this is, you know, “Don't try to bring me back” and “This is who the executor is” and all the paperwork is in place and meeting with financial planner, she's taking care of a lot of that and has been open about it,

Doug (00:26:48):

Accelerated by her cancer scare. I mean, was she more aware of her mortality when she had to go through all that? Which is now why she's off cruising on cruises.

Richard (00:26:57):

She’s had a couple of surgeries, she's had knee replacement surgeries about, I'd say a little over a decade ago. And when she was going in for those surgeries, she was like, “I'm okay. I've lived my life. If anything—" I'm like, this is pretty bleak. I I thought they did these all the time. <Laugh>. She's like, “Well if anything were to happen…”

Magda (00:27:18):

Well, but that's me, too, after going through this whole thing with my uncle. There was no paperwork and the chaplain at the hospital who was also a personal friend of his, they were drinking buddies, just sort of sweet-talked him into signing a medical power of attorney, and like 36 hours later he was unconscious. And my brother and I had to use that medical power of attorney and that put the fear of God in me. And I had a very minor surgery two years ago that was going to require me being out for about 20 minutes. And I walked in to the nursing station to the pre-op with like three copies of my power of attorney, and they were like, “What is this?” And I was like, “If something happens to me, this is who you call to make that decision.” And you know, my number one person is my brother. Because once you've pulled somebody off a vent with someone, you know you can trust them.

Tiffany (00:28:16):

There are layers to this. We can Google a lot about my parents' diagnoses about terms that we're hearing and we can understand. My dad has a very complicated case, a very unusual case, but you can't Google about the familial aspect. Right. And how do you have the conversations? My parents still have a business that required intervention and interaction and how do you talk about this and how do you work through this? Maybe if my parents were different people, they would have thought about it differently. Like Richard was saying about his mom, she does put some paperwork in place and she's always open about the paperwork is here, this is what I've said in the paperwork, this is who's in charge of whatever. You know, she doesn't want there to be any confusion, like you said at the start of this conversation, Doug, you know, pulling out that divorce decree. Like, here's what I know, right? Here are the rules of engagement here. Here's how we'll navigate this.

Doug (00:29:15):

And Magda, you didn't bring that to your appointment along with your powers of attorney. You didn't bring your divorce agreement?

Magda (00:29:20):

<Laugh>. I did not. Because even if you and I had still been married, any power of attorney I had, they would've gone to that person first.

Doug (00:29:28):

No, I think it's funny that spouse, here's who you should talk to and here's who you should not talk to.

Magda (00:29:33):

<Laugh>. Right? Well it's like, I mean do you remember filling out the cards for kids when your kids were in school? There was always that thing about who was allowed to pick 'em up, who was not allowed to interact with them. And at this point in my life, there's nobody I would say shouldn't have any control. But there were people I didn't put on my power of attorney because I didn't want them to have to make a decision. For instance, when I filled this out, when I had this surgery, our older child was already over 18. So in theory I could have put him on it. I didn't put him on it and I told him I was making the power of attorney but not putting him on it. I didn't want him to have to make any decisions and I also didn't want him to have to make any decisions and his brother to be too young to make decisions and then have there be any kind of weird blood between them. Which brings me up to another question. How are you guys managing it with your brother? I know that you guys have been intentional about a lot of things.

Tiffany (00:30:35):

There are challenges, the four of us. Richard and myself and my brother and his wife who also happens to be Richard's baby sister.

Doug (00:30:45):

<Laugh>. That's, yeah, that's a cool development. The fact that the family are that overlapped. That's definitely very both intriguing and maddening-sounding <laugh>.

Tiffany (00:30:56):

We're very interconnected. Just for clarification, Richard and I were the two older siblings. We met each other. He's from Connecticut.

Doug (00:31:05):

Are you sure you're not in the royal family? Somehow?

Tiffany (00:31:07):

<Laugh>, he's from Connecticut, I'm from Ohio, and he and I met first and a year later we introduced our younger siblings to each other and they hit it off. At that time, much to my chagrin, I called my mom immediately and I was like, “You’ve got to break this up. I’ve got a good thing going here. He's going to ruin it for me.” <Laugh>. But there's this layer of our connectedness, which some days makes it wonderful and some days makes it challenging, right? Because I can't turn to Richard and say, “oh my brother's wife,” because that's his sister <laugh>, and he can't turn to me and say “my sister's husband” because that's my brother. So we have this other layer that's there. But I think what happened accidentally for us was that my brother and my sister-in-law were in the middle of a kitchen remodel. They had taken down walls, they had taken out,

Doug (00:32:04):

Oh my God!

Tiffany (00:32:05):

They were, when this happened, the day my dad went into

Doug (00:32:09):

Talk about confluence of life events, geez,

Tiffany (00:32:11):

<Laugh>, we were building a patio outside that day. My dad had cardiac arrest. My brother and my sister-in-law were out, I think picking out floor tiles. And this is a weird thing. When the hospital calls you to tell you something has happened with your parent, they don't tell you what. And my brother called me and said, should we go through the checkout <laugh> or should we leave? You don't know what to do. You've never been faced with this. And I said, well look, you're 20 minutes away, you might as well finish the checkout. I'm closest to the hospital, I'll get there first. And we didn't know. We didn't know if he was alive or dead. So, and this is significant--their living room was the staging area, right? Their living room finished and beautiful and lovely. But that was where they had their drywall and their cabinets and all their stuff set up.

Tiffany (00:32:59):

So when it became apparent that my dad was leaving rehab and he has to come home, but he and my mom are not going to be able to go home alone to their house, I think people imagine that home healthcare is going to step in. My dad's got the Cadillac of insurance and Medicare because he is 74. No, there's no home healthcare that steps in that takes over 24/7 unless you're paying for all of that out of pocket at the rate of like almost $200 an hour. So we were going to have to navigate this together. I know I've used, I've overused that word today, “navigate,” but that's really what this is. You're always looking for a path forward or through or around what did we already try? What will we try next?

Doug (00:33:49):

Navigate’s a good word. It's just because you are out in the open ocean. Fogged in and wondering when the mutiny is coming. I mean there's so many moving parts that you’ve got to figure out and make sure the ship goes straight, or at least you want it to go straight until you realize that's probably not possible.

Tiffany (00:34:05):

Right? By default, because they were in the middle of this remodel, they had space that we could move my dad and a hospital bed and a Hoyer, which is a lifting device that cradles a person like a hammock. So we had to have the space to be able to set up essentially a hospital room. With oxygen and beds and all the things my dad came home on IVs. We had to be able to do all that and also make it possible for care providers to come in to give some support. It's very minimal. But to give my dad that support, which continues even now, you have to get real with your siblings and you have to be really comfortable saying to each other, Hey, I'm having a bad day today. I don't want to talk about it, but we have to talk about it. I don't know. How do you feel like we talk about it together?

Richard (00:34:53):

Just the divvying up of the duties that are required. It's a lot on our siblings. I'm trying to figure out how to refer to them. Now that we've gone through the whole,

Tiffany (00:35:02):

The siblings

Richard (00:35:03):

To the siblings, there's a lot on their plate because the parents are in their house. So they're never not on call. As far as immediate needs, there's no breakdown of who's got the day shift, who's got the night shift. And we live only, you know, five minutes away. So there are times where we'll get the 4:00 AM call because they were taking care of things all day and all right, we'll be over whatever you guys need. Okay?

Tiffany (00:35:32):

I mean, I don't have a better answer than to say that it's hard. We had no idea what was ahead of us and now we're 26 months into this. So we thought my dad's going to set up in this hospital bed outside of hospital, outside of rehab. And this was partially just because as great as my dad's insurance is, Medicare decided you are done with being at rehab, you need to go home. There's nothing more we can do for you. The division of responsibility I think is ‘cause this guy does a lot of the lifting and the chauffeuring. Right back to that action movie star

Doug (00:36:09):

<Laugh>. This is what he does.

Tiffany (00:36:13):

What are you going to call yours? I mean you can't call it The Transporter. We've already had that movie, right? So the lifter, I think it's The Lifter,

Doug (00:36:19):

The Facilitator

Speaker 5 (00:36:21):

<Laugh>.

Tiffany (00:36:22):

Doug, I would like you to narrate the trailer for that. I think it would be amazing

Doug (00:36:28):

In a world where your dad is sick.

Tiffany (00:36:31):

Yeah, it's exactly that Richard. It's exactly that.

Doug (00:36:33):

Richard Furlong is

Doug (00:36:35):

The Facilitator.

Tiffany (00:36:37):

You know, it's a lot of us having conversations and I'm sure there are days that our siblings hate us, that they're like, Mom and Dad are still in our living room.

Doug (00:36:46):

Well, some days they're your siblings and some days they're your in-laws <laugh>.

Richard (00:36:50):

Exactly, exactly. <Laugh>.

Tiffany (00:36:53):

So they're,

Doug (00:36:53):

And normally those two occupy very specific separate real estate in your mind and you have to marry those somehow. That's got to be a hell of a challenge.

Tiffany (00:37:00):

There are so many layers to these family dynamics that I think we're lucky that even when we're angry or hurt, we can talk to each other. And I can say that about myself with my parents and I can say that about the two of us with our siblings, we're lucky and communication is kind of the only thing that you can count on in this, right? Who you can talk to. But Magda, it's like you said, right? Having gone through with your uncle, you knew that you could count on your brother. So we learned a lot about each other, the four of us as the kids, we've learned a lot about what we can handle, how we can communicate, who gets overwhelmed by what we've divided up responsibilities. Doug, you asked us how much can you plan ahead for? And some of it I think you don't know until you're in it.

Tiffany (00:37:57):

Who will do well at what? My sister-in-law was really good and is really good at thinking strategically about what needs to get done. You know, what needs to happen for the properties, what needs to happen for insurance. And so she's often in the background filling out forms, filling out paperwork, sending emails, following up with those details because she's good at that part where I'm the mouthy one, right? I'm, you know, it's just true. Like, I'm the mouthy one, so I'm going to be the person who picks up the phone. I'm going to be the person who talks when someone needs to be talked to and I'm comfortable in that position. Now if I had to do that and I had to do all the paperwork and the emailing and the yadda yadda, that wouldn't get done.

Doug (00:38:49):

Well, that's the beauty of having the four of you. You can kind of divide and conquer and play to your strengths and get stuff done. Assuming that of when the four of you get together, the best idea is going to win. There's a go-to person for every particular thing you encounter.

Richard (00:39:02):

Some parts have become a well-oiled machine while also dealing with the unpredictability. For instance, last week we went to a doctor's appointment thinking he was going to get a shot, and they took his blood pressure and we ended up going to the hospital. We thought we were going out to lunch after the doctor's appointment, <laugh>. And we ended up at the ER because Tiffany's father's blood pressure was so dangerously low.

Tiffany (00:39:27):

Things come up daily. We've also had to figure out, because we run our own business, right? How could we keep running my business while taking on this responsibility with my dad, supporting my dad, assisting my dad? What would that look like? So just outside of the hospital system, if you have a life that you're living and you have to figure out how are you going to keep living that life, find moments that are good, find moments that are normal, find your own routine because you could very easily get swallowed up. We've worked really hard to create some boundaries to create some normalcy for ourselves, for our siblings, for our kids. My kids are in the this great phase of their life, right? Where they're moving into their adult life, they're moving through college and we want them to not feel like, oh wow, everything centers on our grandparents.

Magda (00:40:28):

There's also something about the fact that you were a social worker for a long time. That you are so much more aware of emotions and trauma than a lot of other people are. And through this whole process, you and I have been talking about how traumatizing just the experience of being in and out of hospitals, having to interface with all these doctors. And some of these doctors are best in class, but there's no mechanism for them to interface with each other. So it's you putting together all of the information and just how traumatizing that is to you, to your kids, to your mom, to your dad, to your in-law siblings, to everyone in the whole thing. And you know, I've always thought that your genius is in navigating and creating systems to make things easier. So when you said that you had this binder and you had created a narrative that you could just hand someone who was a new provider to say what had been happening to your dad because you realized that every time somebody asked that question and you had to tell them what had happened to him in his presence while he was sitting there listening to the story of how he almost died was re-traumatizing to him.

Tiffany (00:41:49):

Because Richard is my storyteller, right? Because I'm married to this guy who tells stories for a living and writes stories for a living. He and I would talk about this, we would process, you know, at the end of a day or at the end of a week. And he had said to me, what if we just create a document that we can hand to people? So we made a spreadsheet of my dad's 27 medications. We made a spreadsheet of his 12 clinicians. And we also, for every one of my dad's medications, here's a weird little thing--we not only gave the script and the dosing and the timeline, but how long he'd been on it, who was the prescribing doctor and what it was for. Because sometimes my dad's on a medication off-label or for not its general purpose. So that's just a little tidbit that we have found really helpful that we made this spreadsheet of all of his medications, despite all the charting and the electronic data. There's no system where any of these hospitals can see that. If you only have 20 minutes with a provider, just going through my dad's medication, it could take up to 45 minutes. I mean this was because of RB that I wrote this one pager with just a summary of this is what's happened to my dad. We update it monthly. My dad's had multiple procedures, more surgeries since the inciting incident and it's made a big difference.

Richard (00:43:15):

Well, that's very sweet of you to give me credit for coming up with this idea of telling the story of it. I think that this has just become my job within the family because I'm very good at remembering events that cause a great deal of anxiety. So any of the anxiety like, you know, <laugh>,

Magda (00:43:30):

If only you could put this on your IMDB page.

Richard (00:43:33):

The fun family members. That's Tiffany's wheelhouse. And I get to remember when the pets die and when the parents went in the hospital and--

Tiffany (00:43:40):

He could remember everything and he would be sitting in the car and I would be texting him and saying "what day, what date, how long?" And he was like, let's just put this into a one pager that we can hand to someone. You don't have to keep telling it. You don't have to keep texting me. It'll always be there. Any of us could put our hands on it. If his sister is submitting paperwork because we want to get approved for something, a lot of times they need a timeline. Okay, here's your timeline. We can submit it. She can copy and paste it into whatever form that someone else has so that it goes there. So some of this, I'm not naturally maybe an organized person this way, but Magda, I know you're a lover of spreadsheets. This is organizing what's happening. I think sitting with your parents and asking them questions like what they think is important, what do they want people to know?

Tiffany (00:44:34):

That's also really helpful. I don't know that everyone has those conversations with their parents. My dad has a long medical history, right? It isn't just this 26 months. He's just been healthy and strong and such an overcomer and a survivor. We wanted to also have that. So that's the second page. Like if you get through the first page of the 26 months, but you want to know more about my dad's history and his journey. We made a second page again. ‘cause sometimes people are like, "so you never had a problem before today." No, that's not true. <Laugh>.

Doug (00:45:07):

Well, that never occurred to me but that makes perfect sense, the whole idea of having a journal. So that number one, if you do have to change providers, if you need to switch to another specialist or whatever else, you've got to have that information at your fingertips. Not just for them but for you. I mean it's just, it's too much. You’ve got to write it all down and put it on a Substack and charge people to read it.

Tiffany (00:45:27):

Yeah. <Laugh>, <laugh>, my dad's a very modest, very private person. It's very humbling. There's a major loss of control and we want to try to honor my dad as much as possible because remember through all of this, my dad is mentally still here now. He's on a lot of medications and he is on a lot of drugs that sometimes impact his awareness and alertness. We're not trying to make my dad feel like he doesn't know anything anymore because he does. But we had to have very real conversations about, hey, you're not going to be in charge of this anymore. <Laugh>

Doug (00:46:07):

Just how is he coping with that? That's actually, I know there are people whose parents become really irate because they're so frustrated by the decline of their faculties. They're not in control of their lives anymore. That they're reliant on a lot of people just to exist. How is your dad coping with that and what advice would you have for people who might be having a harder time of it?

Tiffany (00:46:28):

Richard looks scared, if you all could see his face. He looks a little scared about this question.

Doug (00:46:33):

Again, there might not be an answer to this. I'm just saying in general, I think a lot of people are going to listen to this and take from your story that you had, as you say, you had zero preparation and so you kind of had to scramble and you've learned a lot in a very short time. So hopefully people who are listening can be inspired by this to make the road a little less rutted. I'm walking away knowing that I want to start journaling when it's time for me to chronicle what's going with my folks, right? That didn't occur to me in the past. But if there were some kind of universal thing that you think people our age would benefit from what you've learned, what do you think that is?

Tiffany (00:47:08):

On multiple occasions, my mother will say things like, I'm not dead yet. My mother and my daughter are cut from the same cloth. My mother has treasures and trinkets and knickknacks that my daughter loves. And so my mom will come to my house, which she's not at a lot right now because she's usually with my dad. But she'll come over, we'll bring her over to the house and she'll sit with my daughter and I and we'll have coffee and snack and we'll be talking and she'll be looking around the room and she'll see something and she'll say, "Hey, those are my Cupids, I'm not dead yet." <Laugh>, you know, because my daughter has picked up a knickknack out of one of my mom's houses and brought it to my house and my daughter's good at handling her grandmother. So she's like, you know, you want me to have that and I'm enjoying it because you can't enjoy it right now. And that'll quiet my mom and she'll be like, okay, alright. Do you think my dad's grouchy about not being in charge?

Richard (00:48:04):

Yes. Very. Yeah. But again, depending on the day. You know, that's the other difficult part is when we're going to one of those late night calls, we don't necessarily know what situation we're walking into. Is this the grumpy version? Is this the sad version? Is this the version that's prepared to handle this situation with levity, which is, you know how I tend to approach these things, like try to keep it light? I would be surprised if anyone could navigate that transition without a certain degree of grouchiness or being upset at the loss of independence, particularly in our situation. Because it's almost like he got hit by a bus. Yeah. Where he went from being fully independent to overnight, this is the new reality. 

Doug (00:48:51):

For many people also that grouchiness often overlaps when he is less lucid. And so the irony is the less lucid they are, the less able you are to reach them and kind of diffuse that frustration and anger. ‘cause I know when I talk to my folks in general, I just, I know where the buttons are now. It took me several decades to figure it out. But if you know where the buttons are, you can kind of diffuse things if you need to. But when the lucidity fades, those buttons aren't as useful anymore. Is that your situation? Or do you see that coming down the road?

Richard (00:49:27):

He tends to be more grumpy when we're dealing with a painful situation because he has these ulcers on the bottom of his feet. So we're dealing with wound dressing and I mean, you know, Tiffany will touch a pressure point and he'll yelp in pain. And I always know we're in for the grouchy version when he says, "Let me explain something to you."

Tiffany (00:49:45):

Yeah. Humor goes a long way. I don't know that I'm the funny one, but my partner is the funny one.

Doug (00:49:51):

<Laugh>, there's that trigger phrase, right? Whenever your parents says, "Let me make sure I've got this straight." You're like, oh dear. Right, right. Here it comes.

Tiffany (00:49:58):

So,

Doug (00:49:59):

So brace for impact.

Tiffany (00:50:00):

Yeah. So he knows and, he will jump in and, and he will try to make it lighter and we're not going to have important conversations when he is on his nighttime meds. We're not going to talk about power of attorney. We're not going to talk about what's going to happen with a particular property or what's to be done. So this is probably a gradual process for a lot of families. For our family, it was very fast, it was very, it was slamming into a brick wall. And because of my parents' relationship and their partnership, my mother chooses not to make decisions. That's just who she is. I wish it was different. She has always made them with him. But I think my dad has often had the final say. And now that there's an expectation my dad won't have the final say, it seems that my mother would prefer that we make those decisions, but we always have to include her in the conversation. 

Doug (00:51:01):

Parents love when you say that, by the way. Right? We can  just a threaten them with authority. That's, yeah, a one-way trip to peace. 

Tiffany (00:51:08):

That would be so weird. And I'm a parent myself, right? And I have adult kids who I know already look at me like, why are you doing it that way? That's ridiculous. Are you

Doug (00:51:19):

Looking at your belongings, <laugh>,

Tiffany (00:51:22):

I want to honor that in my parent. So we do pay attention to, is today a good day to make this decision? So for those of you who have parents, remember your parents are human beings. They're people, too. They probably don't feel all that different than they felt when they were 45, or the way they felt when they were 25. If you can find the sense of humor, if you can find the fun and the levity in some of these moments, this is hard. You're dealing with big life and death issues. You're dealing with things that if you get too wrapped up in the foreverness of it, <laugh>, it will wipe you out.

Magda (00:51:59):

I also think it's stressful, you know, when you're with your kids and they really want to do it themselves and you know that you can't make the decision for them, you have to include them. It's like that whole, you know, when you're trying to teach kids how to cook, it's like you've got to just watch 'em flail around with the knife and all this kind of stuff. But you know that they're going to improve. The frustrating thing with humans in general is once you reach a certain age, you're not going to improve. I don't know. There's not a logical payoff to including your parents in that, right? Because it's not like you're training them to be able to make those decisions for themselves  because they're coming out on the other side of the parabola.

Tiffany (00:52:40):

I think I would feel afraid. I'd feel a little bit afraid of like, what's next? Like when will I have no choice in this or no option in this? We have had very open conversations, not only about DNRs, right? And whether my dad wants to be resuscitated or you know, what he wants. And now for my mother, the same conversations, people think of that right away. But yeah.

Magda (00:53:05):

But the DNR is the easy conversation. 

Tiffany (00:53:07):

Right? Beyond that, what do you want your care to look like? How do you want us to make these decisions about whether you are at home, whether you're in rehab, whether you're in a facility. And I think most of us won't have those conversations until there is an illness or an inciting event. But some of you might be lucky and you'll be like RBS's mom over here. Like, Hey, this is what I'm doing, <laugh>, this is my plan. Or they'll show up like you Magda and they'll just have all their paperwork. <Laugh>, I've been ready. 

Doug (00:53:41):

While we're talking about this. I know you've referred to Richard as RB a couple of times. Do you want to share what that means?

Richard (00:53:46):

It's just my initials <laugh>.  

Tiffany (00:53:50):

He's a Richard Benjamin.

Doug (00:53:51):

I just asked cause my dad calls my mom JB, which is Joanie Baby. 

Tiffany (00:53:55):

Oh, yeah, it should be something like that, right? It should be like a Richie Baby or something. But it's not, he's a Richard Benjamin. And he'll, this is how you, I know when I meet people in his life, I know when they knew him from, because he's had so many different nicknames and so many different names. So his family calls him by his initials RB. He went through grade school and all of his cousins and everyone, they call him RB. I go in and out of, 

Doug (00:54:23):

I love that RB Furlong sounds so authorial,

Tiffany (00:54:26):

Doesn't it? Doesn't it sound

Doug (00:54:27):

You could absolutely be on a book tour.

Tiffany (00:54:29):

Yeah. <laugh> write the book, baby. 

Richard (00:54:32):

Just have to write the book. 

Doug (00:54:33):

Yeah. Just get it featured in the Paris Review and then that'll be the start. I mean, I'm all full of questions about the medical establishment and the insurance establishment. You've mentioned you've had to fight a couple of times. When you get ready for a fight with the insurance company, how do you build leverage to get what you want to advocate for your parent? Insurance companies are businesses. And the first thought is to appeal to their financial side, but at some point, what is your experience with insurance companies been like? And what, what about that can you tell people in terms of what to prepare for?

Tiffany (00:55:04):

It sucks <laugh>. It really sucks.

Doug (00:55:07):

Well, and that's all the time we have. Yeah. But yes,

Tiffany (00:55:09):

But Doug, I mean, that's very dismissive, right? It's very dismissive to say it sucks. 

Doug (00:55:13):

Well, you know, in most cases, rightly so. But please continue. 

Tiffany (00:55:16):

You have to have, this is part of why the spreadsheets and the Google Docs started happening, because you have to speak to data and facts. The insurance company is not interested in the emotion or your, I don't know, fondness for your human. They're just looking at statistics. Just one hospital stay that he had was a 2 million dollar bill.

Doug (00:55:42):

Oh my God.

Tiffany (00:55:43):

Yeah. That was just one. That was the start.

Doug (00:55:45):

And this is the kind of thing that scares me too, just because you see now, I mean, insurance companies since in many cases, are evaluating policies using AI, which is the most bloodless thing to have to deal with. 

Tiffany (00:55:56):

Yeah. They're looking at the data. So anything that we've wanted, we have to come back with information. And my dad's medication, I don't know that we've totaled it, but we went and just picked up two scripts. So he had this $15 copay, and I think my dad's savings that he did not cover was like $2,500. That was just two medications for the month. And my dad's on 27 medications, so, oh God. Getting doctors to write notes that say, this is why we're wanting to use this medication. This is why we're using this med off label. This is why we're doing this. This is why we're doing that. If you have a parent or a sibling who's been involved with the armed forces at all, reach out to the Veterans Administration, because my dad has not been inside a VA facility.

Tiffany (00:56:52):

He is not in a VA hospital, but we do get a lot of support for my dad from the VA, which my dad was not excited to pursue when insurance wouldn't cover something. We've been able to go to the VA and say, "We wanted to get these lymphedema boots for my dad." My dad doesn't have obesity, my dad doesn't have these other chronic conditions that would allow him to get these boots. They're like, you're too healthy, dude. We look at him and we go, no, but the boots out of pocket are 2,800 bucks. The cheapest we could find 'em was 1800. Insurance wouldn't cover them. We went to the VA. But it's data, it's data. Even for the VA, it's data. We have to have this, many doctors say this many things. They all have to all coordinate what they say. So if you're working through something with a parent and you want to be able to make your case to Medicare or the insurance company, I didn't know that when your parent goes on Medicare, their insurance must follow Medicare's decision. So Medicare makes a decision about something for my dad, his primary insurance now functions as secondary. 

Magda (00:58:13):

That is really not anything I had any idea about. And that is really, really, really crucial to know. Wow.

Tiffany (00:58:23):

Yeah. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Right? I mean, some people, you know, who rail against socialized medicine and rail against these programs. Medicare just has very strict guidelines. My experience of Medicaid having been a community-based therapist was Medicaid, which is based on income. Right. Which covers babies to end of life. Medicaid has more open parameters than Medicare for older adults. But Medicare, they require very certain things. They have to have certain proofs, certain evidence to say, we'll approve this, or we will not approve this. But yeah, I thought, okay, Medicare doesn't want to pay for it, so now his private insurance will pick it up and they'll pay for it. Right. No, that's not true. 

Magda (00:59:12):

I assumed that it would be at least two different entities to ask, you know, like if your dad won't drive you to the mall, you go ask your mom to drive to them. I kinda thought it was like that for insurance coverage.

Doug (00:59:27):

Well, then as far as when you look for your cool uncle, I mean is this the answer, like supplemental insurance to help cover what isn't covered.

Tiffany (00:59:34):

There are supplemental policies. Yeah. That's your cool uncle and you've got to look at that. But some of this too, again, I've got these nutsy optimistic parents and they were like, oh, oh, no worse. Are we going to need that? Like <laugh>? And at the time, right, that they would've been, you know, at 70, my parents weren't in a place where anybody thought anything was, just statistically, they didn't seem like the people <laugh> that were going to have these challenges. And we're looking at it for ourselves too, like, what do we need to put in place? You know, do we need to do it now? Do we need to do it at 60? Because we already know this is how this system works. Your private insurance has to follow Medicare. That's how my dad ended up coming home. Medicare said, you're done. You're too healthy for rehab.

Doug (01:00:21):

I wanted to ask also though, so yes, you are. Now you're in your fifties even though you don't feel like it and good for you. But at the same time, I know I think a lot about the things I bother my parents to make sure they do. I have to make sure I do myself. Like make sure there's a functioning will, life insurance, all that stuff. So what have you learned from this experience with your folks that is informing what you're going to do to prepare when you're in their position and your kids are in charge?

Richard (01:00:49):

No way. I dropped that in my lap. Yeah. 

Tiffany (01:00:52):

Tell us what would you do? What would you do, babe?

Doug (01:00:54):

This is a great dynamic, by the way. It's the old, look to your left <laugh>. <Laugh>, here you go.

Tiffany (01:01:00):

Is it making you sad?

Richard (01:01:01):

No, I just, it's making me realize, you know, how much we have to do, how much we have to put in place. <Laugh>, there are things we do have in place.

Doug (01:01:08):

It's intimidating, isn't it? You're like, yeah.

Richard (01:01:10):

Wow. Because Right. Well if you're looking ahead and they're like, they didn't have it taken care of yet but now we realize like, oh boy, they really should have had it taken care of

Tiffany (01:01:21):

For me, lining up your life insurance, I know this maybe seems silly, but understanding now what's the difference between a living will and your regular will? Like what all this means. I have a business just like my father had a business. There are people who are going to have to be in charge of my business. Does my business just dissolve? And if we dissolve the business, what happens with the money attached to the business? What happens to everything that is involved with the business? This has been very eye-opening for us. Difficult as it has been to have those conversations with each other, with our siblings, and even a little bit, you know, with our, our kids. Our kids are 19 and 23. Having those talks a little bit with our kids about what our intentions are, what our plans are, what we'd like to be doing. We're talking about it now so that there will be less of this when it feels more traumatizing and it's more emotional and it's a little heavier.

Doug (01:02:24):

All this comes on you, when you're least able to handle it. You know, you're at your most vulnerable, you're at your most fraught and frayed and it's a terrible confluence of emotions.

Tiffany (01:02:35):

Well, it's like Magda said, right? The chaplain came in to handle the medical power of attorney and I didn't even know that. I didn't, that's typically who does it, it is the chaplain in the hospital that comes in to handle the medical power of attorney, which is interesting how that decision got made. But that's <laugh>

Doug (01:02:51):

Like, sounds like the chaplain has nothing to do with either of those two things. 

Tiffany (01:02:55):

It's not a doctor. It's not an attorney, it's the chaplain. Okay.

Doug (01:03:01):

It's Father Mulcahy. Yeah.

Magda (01:03:03):

Yeah. Well I think it's because a lot of the times the chaplain can just have a conversation with the person that is about them. You know, that treats them as an actual person because the chaplain's not coming in to talk to you so they can take you away for a test or so they can stick you with a needle or they can tell you something horrible about yourself. Right? They're just coming in to chitchat and you know that they really are just coming in to talk to you.

Tiffany (01:03:28):

Yeah. I mean, it's true. It's a nicer conversation. It's a softer conversation. But we have really looked at what do we need to have for us? What do we need to have in place? I mean, there's no guarantee, right? Like my parents were not expecting this when it hit them, but I could look and say, well, you're 25 years older than I am, why weren't you expecting this? But they weren't. And so certainly for us in our fifties, we're not looking at it like, oh, this could happen, but it can happen, right? I had a big emergency surgery and medical odyssey of my own during this season and I was like, oh, okay, these are things I need in place. And I was a little bit like you, Magda. I was like, all right, all my stuff is lined up. Some people might look at this like it wasn't a big deal, but to me it was a big deal because I'm going through all this with my parents. I was like, I'm going to have these things in place. I want to know what's going to happen with the business. I want to know like just if some, I don't know, random, crazy thing happens on the operating table. Like, okay, if you can do things for yourself that's helpful, as not fun as it sounds.

Doug (01:04:41):

And what's the bullet list of things to have in place? You want to have your life insurance, you want to have your will. You want to have medical power of attorney. If you wanted to break this down as tangibly and incrementally as possible, what documents should be in that file that you have ready to go and when you need it? 

Tiffany (01:04:57):

Will, yeah, I think you want to have your last will and testament. You know, at this moment in my life, I'm not going to sign a DNR. I've watched my dad survive this, but I want to be resuscitated at this point, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I might make a different decision. And you don't know that you're not going to walk out the door and get hit by a bus or be in a car accident or have an event that no one saw coming. Certainly my mom's pancreatic cancer diagnosis, no one saw coming. My mom was really healthy. If you have a business, do you have the protections in place for your business? And even if you don't have a marital partner and you don't have a business partner, is there a key person who knows what needs to happen with the business? Knows where to find the paperwork, knows where to find the documents. So I have a whole outline of my business where everything is, and legally I have put things in place so that my spouse can take over all of my digital assets. You know, that's a thing that exists now in 2023. I have digital assets that have value and so

Doug (01:06:10):

Yeah, it's just like IP, like anything else,

Tiffany (01:06:13):

Right? So I had to make sure that all of those things separate from me personally, separate from our marriage, but for the business, that those things were in place and that he knows where to find them. And my kids know where to find them. And for us, because our kids are young still, you know, they're 19 and 23, there are things I would, I just wouldn't hand over to my kids yet. I just don't feel that they would know <laugh> what to do yet.

Doug (01:06:39):

Well, that's a good reminder, too, that these documents, once they're done, they're not really done. They're fluid. They need to be updated, right? New things happen, things change. And you have to just keep on top of it, like law or anything else.

Magda (01:06:49):

Don't put your will in your safe deposit box. Do not put your will and testament in your safe deposit box, because your will says who your executor–or whatever they call it, administrator–is. And that person is the only person who's allowed to get into your safe deposit box. And so if you have not designated who is allowed into your safe deposit box, no one can get in until you go through probate. And the whole point of having a will is to not have to have somebody designated by the state to be able to get access. That was actually a situation that happened to us. ‘cause my uncle was on the ball with everything and put his will in his safe deposit box. So yeah. Right.

Doug (01:07:38):

This sounds like the testimony of someone who bought her house out of probate and spent, you know,

Magda (01:07:42):

Oh, well, yeah, I bought my house out of probate, too. And it took no, what,

Doug (01:07:45):

Approximately nine years

Magda (01:07:46):

But yeah, it took forever. I mean, from the time I saw the house and made the offer till the time that we actually closed was an extraordinarily long length of time because they couldn't figure out how to sell the house.

Tiffany (01:08:00):

It's these little things until you've had to go through them, you don't know. So, you know, we have digital files of everything, right? And multiple people have to know where to find it, like how to log in, who knows where to go.

Doug (01:08:12):

And your passwords are written on post-its right there on your monitor so anybody can find them. <Laugh>,

Richard (01:08:17):

I'm looking at a rainbow of post-its along the bottom of the monitor right now. My exhaustive notes on the cocktail napkins and the backs of receipts and loose leaf paper that I keep up the folder on my desk. <Laugh>,

Tiffany (01:08:32):

That's that guy. I choose to back everything up digitally. I remember how irritated my brother was with me when I said, we're going to put dad's pills in a spreadsheet. But my dad sees so many doctors, every time he goes in the hospital, they're changing his pills. This is why you should have digital. It has to be updated all the time. These are fluid living documents and you know, they make software to keep your passwords together, not just in a spiral notebook. 

Richard (01:08:58):

Well, that spiral notebook is 99 cents <laugh>. 

Magda (01:09:03):

I think you guys, Tiffany and Richard, should make the spreadsheets that you use actively with your dad, you know, his medications, the events, the narrative, all that kind of stuff. I think you should put that in a downloadable thing and just charge people 10 bucks to download it if they're dealing with their own parents, because I think there are people who don't know how to start. So Doug, the background is that Tiffany's whole business started when she was doing marketing and stuff like that in a way that other people hadn't seen before. And they wanted her assets and all the files that she had, and so she started selling them, but the only way to deliver them at the time, because the internet was still so young, was for her to burn them all on flash drives. So Tiffany and Richard were just like constantly all day long burning these files on these flash drives and people were buying them faster than they could burn them. 

Tiffany (01:09:54):

We got a computer that we could burn six at a time. Isn't that what happened? You know, and then other things happened, right? There was Dropbox and there was Notion, and there were other ways, right? You know, and then there was Google Drive. There were other ways for us to share information.

Magda (01:10:06):

You were very much right in front of your perfect customer at the time, also. And those people may not have been able to deal with what, at the time were all the hoops of serving digital assets on the internet. They could just open the package from you and plug the little flash drive in and there was everything they needed.

Tiffany (01:10:26):

I don't know if we answered your questions today. 

Richard (01:10:31):

Did we go where you thought this was going to go?

Doug (01:10:32):

I think the point is that questions have questions and you're just kind of taking this moment by moment, day by day, week by week. And you've trained yourself not to get too married to whatever you're planning to do that day because it's subject to change at any moment, as is the flotilla of documentation and paperwork that you have to maintain. Someone's going to tell you there's something new you need to update or to add. So I mean, we're all looking for, you know, the answers, things to be prepared for. And again, I kept asking you, I tried to narrow down these things as much as possible just to say, these are things to have conversations about with your parents, regardless of how reluctant they may be to have these discussions. Because I think the main example from your experience is that a lot of shit hit the fan at once. And you can't go through life assuming that's not going to happen. Especially when, as you say, your dad was seemingly strong and healthy and everything else. And then all this happened. You know, if you approach it from fear, like, I remember when we talked to Asha a few weeks ago and she said, "I have been carrying around fear of my father's death since I was a teenager." I mean, I know I was trying to ask as pointed questions as possible. If the answer is you don't have the answer, that's an answer.

Tiffany (01:11:45):

Yeah. We don't <laugh>, we, you know, we're learning, we're learning. And you'll have to lean into the dynamic that is your child parent relationship or your sibling relationship. Like, what does that look like for your family? You can't be too precious about any of it. I know it's big stuff, but if you get really wrapped up in how big it is, I think that can be paralyzing. And I guess the final thing I want you guys to hear from us is that we're finding the fun in it. It's not always fun at 4:00 AM when my dad's had a little bit of a crisis and he needs us, but we're finding the days where he's better and healthy and stronger and he wants to have an outing and he wants to go out, or he wants to be with the kids. Like, we're finding the fun in those moments and finding the joy in those moments and not always making our relationship about what's going to happen with the business or what's going to happen with my dad's health, or what's the next medical thing.

Tiffany (01:12:49):

But finding opportunities when we can just be people together. You know, we can play dominoes and we can talk to each other and we can hang out and have fun together. It might not look like what we thought it was going to look like if you'd asked me two years ago, this is not at all what we thought would be happening, but a friend of mine referred to this season as Loving. Well, and that's really what it is, right? <Laugh>, when I'm having to help my dad get dressed, I try not to think about that thing that he did. I don't know when he grounded me when I was 17 and I was like, what the actual hell? I'm 17. Why are you grounding me <laugh>? Like, you can't ground me

Doug (01:13:24):

<Laugh>. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that too because we also have discussed being mortal by Atul Gawande a lot. And the idea that that book teaches you to kind of make the most out of this life, you have to divorce yourself from the administrative aspect of it and recognize this is still your parent. This is still someone you want to have quality time with, and you want them to spend the rest of their lives in as much comfort with as much quality as they can. And if you focus on that a bit, it kind of takes you out of the drudgery aspect of it, which it can seem like, especially if, as you say, the call comes at four in the morning. So I'm glad you can see the fun in it. I think that's part of how couples bond together, too, when they see what they go through and like Richard was saying, is like, wow, seeing you in action, it brings out a whole, it's kinda like how I felt when I first saw a child come out of Magda. I was like, oh boy, I'm in a whole new level of wow at this point. <Laugh>.

Tiffany (01:14:19):

Yeah.

Magda (01:14:21):

I think it was probably more impressive to you than it was to me. I was just like,

Doug (01:14:25):

Oh, I was, yeah, I watched it. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>,

Magda (01:14:27):

That was not fun.

Doug (01:14:28):

I watched it happen. You think you're going to be fine and then no, your whole, your central nervous system is completely rebooted <laugh>. So the bottom line is have a conversation with your parents especially about the pineapples,

Doug (01:14:43):

Boy, I've got to say, I'm so buffaloed by this pineapple thing. I mean, you've been talking about like spreadsheets and all I can think about is other uses of those terms.

Tiffany (01:14:50):

Not only is there the upside down pineapple, but do you know that there's also a system of colored loofas?

Doug (01:14:57):

I did see that. Yes. Someone posted that. Wait, there's a whole colored,

Magda (01:15:01):

Where are the loofas used? 

Doug (01:15:02):

At The Villages? There's a whole libretto of what a different loofa means.

Magda (01:15:07):

Oh my god.

Doug (01:15:09):

See, I'm not prepared for this life. I, it's too arcane, it's too mysterious for me. I just want to live a very, you know, face value life. I don't need to be worried that if I go into Bed Bath and Beyond and get the wrong loofa, I'm going to get scromped <laugh>.

Magda (01:15:23):

Well, fortunately Bed Bath and Beyond is disappearing. 

Doug (01:15:28):

And maybe that's why! <laugh>

Tiffany (01:15:30):

Maybe that's it, it's the loofas in The Villages.

Doug (01:15:33):

It's weird. It's loofas in The Villages. They took down Bed Bath and Beyond and they're coming for you next.

Richard (01:15:38):

Just be a sticky note. The little personal message on your Amazon package now. Oh, I see you ordered the black loofa. 

Doug (01:15:45):

That note wasn't sticky when they got it. <Laugh>. Oh, one thing that we didn't get to Magda, I know you like people to do this, is just to introduce themselves. 

Magda (01:15:58):

Yeah. And then Doug will put it back in.

Doug (01:16:00):

We can say, yeah. Before we get started, you know, let's pretend we haven't had this conversation. Okay. You can just talk about <laugh>, especially Tiffany, you should talk about your business and we want you to, you know, we want to link to that in the show notes. Given the fact that we have all this footage already, I think you and I can just do the introduction ourselves in the opening if you think that's cool.

Magda (01:16:17):

Oh, we can just say who they are in the introduction?

Doug (01:16:19):

And I record the five minute intro, we can say, these are my friends Tiffany and R.B., and they're married and their siblings are married, and her mom is her cousin. And <laugh>, it's a big rat king of a relationship.

Tiffany (01:16:32):

It's so weird, you know, when we first got together, right? And then our siblings got together and we couldn't stop it. They were in love with each other. And I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. 

Magda (01:16:41):

You didn't set them up. I mean, Tiffany went to visit Richard for Thanksgiving and just brought Adam along so that he would have someplace interesting to go for Thanksgiving, right?

Tiffany (01:16:51):

Yes. So this is how it happened.

Doug (01:16:54):

I love that you're trying to undermine this as soon as it happened.

Tiffany (01:16:58):

We came to Ohio, right? We came back from New York to Ohio to see my parents. And we were not going to be with them for Thanksgiving. We were going to his mother's house in Connecticut. My brother is like, “Oh, hey, I'm going to be off for Thanksgiving weekend. I'll come with you guys.” And we were like, “okay, cool.” So my brother comes with us to Connecticut. His sister is home from college. We arrive very late night. She's sleeping in the living room, I think because one of the aunts was sleeping in her bedroom. Thanksgiving with his mom is a big, big deal. So I think one of the aunts is in her bedroom. She's on the downstairs living room couch. We head upstairs to one of the bedrooms, Richard and myself. I don't know where my brother ends up because in the morning we come down and she's making him breakfast and he's drawing her portrait. And I'm like, Hmm, what's happened, <laugh>, we go through the Thanksgiving weekend and I think on Sunday I call my mother because they're just inseparable. They're together. And I tell my mother, you have to stop this. You have to stop. I found the love of my life and it's going to fall apart. And my mother says, “You two like each other. Maybe they just like each other.” And turns out they did. So they've, we've been together 27 years. They've been together 26. It's all very romantic.

Doug (01:18:29):

I can tell. I just love the fact that you're, the way you described that, like “it's very romantic.” You know, it's like that's 27 years in right there, right? We're really in love with each other. It's awesome. Boy, it just gets better every day.

Tiffany (01:18:44):

That's so fabulous.

Doug:

Keeping it spicy by dealing with Medicare.

Tiffany (01:18:52):

This is our romance now. We have these short windows of time where we're in the car alone between our kids. And one of our kids has moved out and is now living with his partner in another house and another property. So we have these short car drives between places, and that's our real quality alone time. That's when we really amp it up. But when we tell older people about these siblings, you know, we're siblings who are married to siblings, they get it, right? Because they grew up in these little communities, and they're like, oh yeah, you know, we knew two twins who married two other twins. You know, like, like they get it. But when you tell young people about this, they're like, “Is that legal? Is that incest?” That's weird. Yeah.

Doug (01:19:36):

Are you with the Duggars?

Tiffany (01:19:38):

Who's married to who? <Laugh>.

Doug (01:19:41):

<Laugh>. And you say "whom, you grammar Philistine!" 

Tiffany (01:19:47):

We've got, there's a whole nother layer to this. So you can share it in the introduction however you like, whatever you'd like to say. And you can, you can introduce this guy as R.B. Furlong. You can introduce him as Richard Furlong. He'll go by either. 

Richard (01:20:00):

The Facilitator.

Doug (01:20:01):

The Facilitator. Well I think, yeah, at this point Magda, do you want to ask about “TNT Devaluation,” or do you want to just plug that at all, or should we just … I'll read us out there.

Magda (01:20:11):

<Laugh>, why don't you just read out? It's Divalution. It's not devaluation! 

Tiffany (01:20:15):

<Laugh>. It's fine, Doug. I made it up. It's a word that confuses people.

Doug (01:20:19):

It's “di-valuation,” isn't it? Is that, what is it? 

Magda (01:20:23):

It's “diva-lution.” Like “diva revolution.”

Doug (01:20:26):

Oh, diva lotion. <Laugh>. Do they use that at The Villages?

Tiffany (01:20:31):

Just, he's just making it worse. That's a whole, that's a product line.

Doug (01:20:34):

I'm just being willfully obtuse. Which is great ‘cause Magda gets to fully ignore that now. She couldn’t when we were married, but now she can tune it out.

Tiffany (01:20:40):

Diva Lotion. That's a product line. We could probably sell.

Doug (01:20:43):

Yes. That's IP. You can have that.

Richard:

That's our next business.

Doug:

That is no charge.

Richard (01:20:46):

<Laugh>.

Doug (01:20:47):

“I'm R.B. Furlong for Diva Lotion.” <Laugh>But don't use a red loofa with it.

Richard (01:20:55):

<Laugh>.

Magda (01:20:55):

Oh my God. The loofa system.

Tiffany (01:20:59):

This is the inheritance we have from the boomers: The Villages, the upside-down pineapples, and this loofa system. I'm like, what? What <laugh>? There's apparently something in The Villages they call “Dirty Uno.”

Magda (01:21:12):

Oh no.

Doug (01:21:14):

So what does it mean to “pick up four”?

Richard (01:21:19):

I don’t know. I played it a lot when I was a teenager.

Tiffany (01:21:22):

<Laugh>, “Dirty Uno!”

Doug (01:21:26):

Man, I got to say each of those Uno cards now in the porn context is an entirely different animal.

Tiffany (01:21:35):

It’s a lot of one-on-one.

Richard (01:21:36):

I will draw four. Thank you.

Tiffany (01:21:40):

This has been a joy to get to, like, talk about my parents for however long. I hope we didn't bore you too much. It's …

Doug (01:21:47):

No, not at all. I mean, I appreciate that. I think that's the main reason a lot of our guests want to come on because they don't get the chance to talk about this. ‘Cause no one is nosy as I am is going to ask them question after question about it. And I'm asking those out of my own terror just because I know it's coming. And my parents have shown varying degrees of communication. Sometimes they're actually very forthcoming. Sometimes they're like, well, “we'll talk about it later.”

Magda (01:22:15):

That was a pretty good impersonation of your dad. I have to say.

Doug (01:22:18):

That was my mom actually, which is, you know, strange <laugh>.

Magda (01:22:22):

I think that people are going to listen to this episode and be like, oh shit. I don't think anything you've said has been unrealistic in any way. It's just, this is not anything that anybody thinks about. You know, like people say, “oh, I've been taking care of my mom, she's been having health problems.” Right. And what we think that means is I take my mom to her doctor's appointment every month. And that's not always what it means. I mean, sometimes it's what it means, but it's really not always what it means. And for me, hearing your story sort of in real time as these 26 months have gone on, I knew what it meant to help somebody at the end of life. Right? Because I was my uncle's person and he was in the hospital for like 22 days or something before he died. And 22 days is like a lot longer than I thought 22 days was. But it's a different situation when they're not on their way out, right? Like your dad still has an easy 20 years left in him. If you can get on top of <laugh> …

Doug (01:23:32):

Wow. If you could see the facial expressions that these two are exchanging right now, wow. You just curb-stomped him right there. <Laugh>.

Tiffany (01:23:43):

Now there's there, now there's just terror. Now there's just fear. Okay, so this is, this is a real thing. I love my dad. No one prepares you for this level of intimacy. Sponge bathing and dressing and cleaning my dad and the wound care, and just what we're doing with my dad on a daily basis. And I know not every kid will have to go through this with their parents. But I don't know where the handbook is. I don't know where the guidebook is. We're very careful about who we talk about it with. Poor Magda, you've been one of my go-to people like that that I have these conversations with about what's going on. Richard just went out with a, just went out the other day and bumped into a friend of ours that, well they run, you know, these guys run out for coffee and, and sit and you know, go to concerts and do stuff together. But when he bumped into him the other day and he said, how's it going? What did you say?

Richard (01:24:41):

I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to talk about it. I don't want to go that dark right now. <Laugh>. Just want to keep it light. I haven't seen you in a minute.

Doug (01:24:48):

Yeah, it's a trigger, isn't it? You never know what you're going to get when you ask someone of our age, “how's it going?” Because wow, you're usually going to get an armful.

Tiffany (01:24:55):

Yeah. So you just, you know, you don't want to vomit all of this on anyone like the day-to-day. We've talked about that. I said to my dad, you know, we should be filming this because other people just don't know. They don't know what this is. And I'm sure when you were in it, Magda, 22 days, it's long. When you're in that it's long. Every day is hard. Every day.

Magda (01:25:18):

Yeah, yeah. It was really long and everything was very high stakes too. You know, every meal, every doctor's visit, every test, every time a nurse would walk in, ‘cause we knew there were going to be questions or new information or something like that.

Doug (01:25:33):

Well if the documentary isn't coming anytime soon, I'm really glad you sat for the podcast ‘cause that's, you know, the next best thing. And I really appreciate you coming on to talk about this. I think it's something that people are just starting to have a real long-term conversations about. And when you do share that with people who have been through the experience or are interested in that, you can really tell who your friends are. They share these really intimate details. And as you say, there's a whole new level of intimacy with your parents when you have to wash them and they have to give over so much of themselves to you. And that role reverses it can really cause a lot of stuff to come loose in your brain pan. So I really appreciate you coming on to talk about it. I think it's going to be really useful going forward. Again, we're building a library of experience here, and I really appreciate you sharing yours.

Tiffany (01:26:19):

Thank you for having us. Yeah, it was great to have this conversation and you should probably put a trigger warning at the front. <Laugh>

Doug (01:26:30):

“We’re gonna talk about geriatric chlamydia here.”

Magda (01:26:40):

Please do not say that.

Doug (01:26:40):

Say yeah, that's, that's going to be, I'll put that on the SEO tags.

Magda:

Oh, Doug.

Tiffany (01:26:44):

I think the loofas and the pineapples, you'll probably get a lot of people like tuning in just to hear about the loofas and the pineapples.

Doug (01:26:51):

We provide information and if I'm to be the litmus test, I'm the only one here who didn't know about that. So now that I know, I guess, I mean, Parade magazine got this before I did. I was researching this, and Parade magazine had a piece about it, like, three weeks ago. I'm feeling really edgeless at this point. <Laugh>, I feel like I'm just walking up to the big city in a pair of overalls wondering, Hey, the streets are paved with cheese!

Magda and Tiffany (01:27:17):

<Laugh>.

Tiffany (01:27:23):

It's on a need-to-know basis. If you weren't looking for this … I've never been on a cruise ship. I don't understand the cruise thing. Maybe I will later, but I don't right now. But my sister-in-law has gone on a cruise with my mother-in-law, so she already knew about this, right? ‘Cause she was on a cruise with a boomer and she was like, oh yeah, that's a thing. They put the upside down pineapples on their rooms. So you know, like who to, like, chat up.

Doug (01:27:51):

It's just a big viral slop bucket, isn't it? Ugh. Gosh.

Magda (01:27:55):

Wow.

Doug (01:27:56):

Thanks. Anyway, I wanted to ask too Tiffany, do you go by “Tiffany Noel,” or how will I introduce you?

Tiffany (01:28:02):

When you're formally introducing me? You should use all three of my names because I spent good money on them in the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. I like to use all three.

Doug (01:28:10):

Okay.

Tiffany:

Get my money’s worth.

I mean yeah, if you're going to use the TNT Diva Lotion, by all means that's got a whole aphrodisiac quality to it.

Tiffany (01:28:20):

<Laugh>. Oh God. There's a boom at the end.

Doug (01:28:25):

Yeah. Light the fuse, baby!

Tiffany (01:28:31):

This is a whole product line I hadn't even considered! I love this.

Doug (01:28:32):

I’m telling you! This is it. You know, it's like those KY things that like one part was blue and one was purple and apparently when you put 'em together, you call the burn unit.

Tiffany (01:28:48):

We could probably make these, and like we could make this whole product line and we could like promote it to the boomers. We could like, if we could really get it like out there, put it into the box.

Doug (01:28:58):

And the next step is to create a service that an elderly person who just went on a cruise can use to explain to their kids how they got the clap.

Magda (01:29:06):

Oh, God. Stop talking about the clap!

Doug (01:29:07):

Cause that's an intimate conversation as well. “Darling, I want you to know that we found some upside-down pineapples, and long story short, I need some Diva Lotion.”

Tiffany (01:29:15):

They're old perverts, Magda. They're just all perverts.

Magda (01:29:21):

I know why. It's because they watched the Golden Girls, and it was aspirational for them.

Doug (01:29:27):

Well, anytime I want to be Bea Arthur when I grow up.

Magda (01:29:30):

<Laugh>. Oh, that was a weird snicker, wasn't it?

Tiffany (01:29:34):

Who's your favorite Golden Girl?

Magda (01:29:35):

Okay, so I did not watch it when it was on initially, so I've only actually come to it in the last couple of weeks, honestly. Like ideologically, obviously. I have no idea why …

Doug (01:29:51):

I feel better about the pineapples if you've never seen The Golden Girls.

Magda (01:29:54):

Okay. When it was originally on, I was a teenager and I didn't want to watch a show about old ladies. I didn't understand. Rue McClanahan was my age when she started the show, right? And the joke, the gag on the show was that she was so horny all the time. And I'm like, oh my God, she was horny all the time ‘cause she was in perimenopause. That's why. Okay. So ideologically, clearly I'm aligned with Dorothy, but I think the way I like to approach the world is more like Blanche.

Doug (01:30:26):

I thought you were going to say Rose, for sure. Because she's also a nice little sweetheart from Minnesota.

Magda (01:30:35):

No! I'm not a nice little sweetheart from Minnesota. My God.

Doug (01:30:39):

I'm not saying you are, I'm saying it. That's aspirational. Yeah.

Tiffany (01:30:41):

But if you aspire to that? Do you aspire to the sweetness?

Magda (01:30:46):

I aspire to be an old lady who has a lot of sex.

Doug (01:30:50):

Have you seen, by the way, have you seen when Betty White went on SNL to talk about her her muffin?

Tiffany (01:30:56):

It's good.

Doug (01:30:57):

You know, there there's that famous NPR sketch with Schwedde Balls …

Magda (01:31:00):

Delicious Dish, right?

Doug (01:31:01):

Yeah. The Delicious Dish. And so Alec Baldwin came on talking about Schwedde Balls, and then she was on talking about …

Magda (01:31:07):

Talking about her muffin. I get it.

Doug (01:31:11):

“Oh, there's a tartness to this muffin. Is there a cherry in here?” <Laugh> And she's like, “No, my muffin hasn't had a cherry since 1936.” <Laugh>

Tiffany (01:31:20):

<Laugh> It's really fabulous. I really love Rose. I think Rose is darling. I probably move through the world more like Blanche. I don't think I'm as intelligent or as quick on my feet as Dorothy. I'm probably just much more like Rose. I'm just some nitwit from the Midwest who tells stories that are really boring to other people and too long. <laugh>

Doug (01:31:45):

Well I also love the fact that if we were 30 years younger, we'd be talking about which Sex in the City girl are we? But no, we're talking about Golden Girls now.

Magda (01:31:53):

20-year-olds don't watch Sex in the City!

Doug (01:31:59):

When it was on TV, they did! Talk about aspirational, about going out and having fabulous friends. And wearing weird hats and having Cosmos.

Tiffany (01:32:09):

That was us! But that was us. We're supposed to be loving the new version of Sex in the City.

Richard (01:32:19):

Aren’t they older than the Golden Girls now?

Tiffany (01:32:20):

They're older than the Golden Girls, but they don't look like grandmothers. And I don't think any of them have grandchildren, either. It's just a very different dynamic that, like, generational shift. But I watched The Golden Girls as a teenager with my grandmother.

Magda (01:32:39):

Oh, okay.

Tiffany (01:32:40):

And so I was very clear that old ladies liked sex. Like I was like, oh okay, I got it. This is a thing, I guess. <laugh>

Richard (01:32:49):

Was your grandmother calling out while she watched the episode? Like, “Preach, sister! Preach!”

Tiffany (01:32:56):

I just, I'm just always surprised by how open the broads in my family are about sex. I mean, they still are. Right?

Doug (01:33:06):

This is the first podcast conversation we're going to have behind the paywall. That's what's going to happen. Yeah.

Richard (01:33:13):

This. The honeymoon stuff. The honeymoon.

Tiffany (01:33:16):

So now I don't know if this is happening for you guys, but now the old folks in my life are telling the things they never told. Right? Like, like now Richard knows which of his aunts, how long they were a virgin, who was a virgin when they got married.

Magda (01:33:31):

Oh my goodness!

Tiffany (01:33:32):

Who slept with how many people, who like practically flunked outta college because of their drinking. Like all these stories we haven't known. Now they're all telling their stories.

Doug (01:33:43):

That's awesome. Yeah. I love it. Now they're all, Hey parents are people too. That's right. Who’d athunkit?

Tiffany (01:33:49):

Right.

Doug (01:33:51):

Well, thank you so much for listening to Episode 8 of the When The Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye and me, Doug French. Our guests have been Tiffany Noel Taylor, whose business is at TNT Divalution and we’ll link to that in the show notes, and R.B. Furlong, who'll be writing the Great American Novel any moment, talking about what it's like to have an abrupt change in your life and when it's time to care for your parents in a way you didn't quite anticipate. But thanks again for listening. We'll be back next week. Talk to you then. Bye-Bye.

<music>

Tiffany (01:34:25):

Doug, you have such a good NPR voice.

Magda (01:34:28):

He really does, but his sign off is very end of the work call sign off, right? Like, “talk to you then. Bye-Bye.”

Doug (01:34:35):

I could work on that. I could, you know, I could introduce something new. I know the sound, the signoff sucks, but what else are you going to do?

Magda (01:34:41):

It doesn't suck. It's just kind of funny ‘cause it's very like, corporate sounding.

Doug (01:34:45):

We should have an ending saying, “When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC,” right?

Magda (01:34:51):

Yeah. We should.

Tiffany (01:34:52):

You should.

Doug:

“All rights reserved, bitch.”

Tiffany (01:34:54):

<Laugh>. I want to get excited about what's coming! I think it's fabulous. And I don't like podcasts, you know. I don't like to listen to other people talk about things, which is terrible, but it's true. I don't listen.

Doug (01:35:05):

I just love the multitasking of it. The fact that you can pick and choose something to either learn from or be amused by while you're cutting the grass or driving someplace. I mean, that's always been useful to me.

Magda (01:35:17):

I think, you know, I just don't take in information that way. I could listen to an entire podcast and then at the end, you could be like, “Ooh, what was it about?” And I would have no idea.

Doug (01:35:29):

Because that's the way your brain works. You have, you think about a billion things at once.

Magda (01:35:33):

Chocolate? Insects? I don't know.

Richard (01:35:34):

I'm not taking in information. I'm just looking for the voices in my head to have company to <laugh> cancel each other out, please.

Tiffany (01:35:42):

Yeah. I know where R.B. is in the house all the time, because if he's alone, he usually has a podcast playing, and so I can hear him and I can find him. Just listen for it. So <laugh>,

Magda (01:35:54):

It's like a belled cat.

Doug (01:35:57):

And can you tell what kind of mood he’s in based upon which podcast he's listening to?

Richard (01:36:01):

Probably.

Tiffany (01:36:01):

Probably, yeah. Like if it's, if it's funnier, if it's lighter, if it's informational. But I just don't take in information that way. And I guess my perception is, and maybe if I flipped it a little and I was like, it's entertainment, maybe I would receive it differently and I could just say, okay, I'm going to listen for entertainment purposes.

Doug (01:36:20):

The future of social media, I think, in general when you're creating things like this, because there's so much out there that's just out there to be out there just to feed the algorithm. It was about “the more that's out there, the more SEO will find us and you'll have more access to our crap.” And I was like, all right, well I'm kind of tired of learning all about how to bother people unnecessarily. <laugh>

Doug (01:36:41):

So if you can decide to be useful, either if it means to instruct, to entertain, to have something good that people will come back to, that sounds human and people can relate to it in some way. I think that's the, the future of this. Because otherwise it's just propaganda and bullshit.

Tiffany:

Right, right.

Doug:

That's what I think Magda and I are hoping to do. And I think conversations with people who don't necessarily have 4 billion followers, I mean, that's the point. That's real stories, and I really appreciate that you're able to come and chat about it and especially on such short notice.

Tiffany (01:37:09):

This was nice. It was a nice little break. And usually if I'm talking to someone, I'm just talking about my business. And right now, that's been hard, because this is running in the background. It's such a big thing. I'm on video or on a podcast with someone and they just want to talk about business. And I'm like, how about <laugh>? How about what else is happening in my life? And trying to maintain my sanity and my money while caring for my parents. Like, can we talk about that <laugh>? And most of them don't want to talk about that <laugh>.

Doug (01:37:43):

Anyway, I'm turning this off now. We have two hours. I have two hours to winnow down to 50, 60 minutes, so …

Tiffany (01:37:49):

I'm sorry, <laugh>.

Doug (01:37:50):

No, no, that's, you know, as I say, we're going to have, “When the Flames Go Up … After Hours.”

Magda (01:37:55):

<Laugh> Right!

Richard (01:37:56):

From Upside-Down Pineapple Productions.

Doug (01:37:59):

<Laugh>. Don't ask. “Knock twice on the third basin, and ask for Jennifer.”

Tiffany (01:38:04):

<Laugh>