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Advice From Your Advocates
Advice From Your Advocates
Thriving in Retirement: Caregiver Support & Breaking Aging Bias in Elder Care
In this episode of Advice From Your Advocates, we delve into how to make the later years your best years. Elder Law Attorney Bob Mannor is joined by geriatric care expert and author Dr. Corinne Auman to explore the vital topic of elder care, revealing how aging can be a time of growth, connection, and purpose.
Dr. Auman shines a light on her groundbreaking book, Keenagers: Telling a New Story About Aging, introducing a transformative perspective on life beyond midlife. Listeners will uncover ways to provide vital caregiver support, reduce stress, and prevent social isolation.
Together, they discuss strategies to challenge age bias in healthcare and society, build purpose, protect mental health, and strengthen social connections for a fulfilling retirement. Whether you’re caring for a loved one or planning your own next chapter, tune in for inspiration on how to live longer—and better.
Host: Elder Law Attorney Bob Mannor
Guest: Dr. Corinne Auman
Executive Producer: Savannah Gillett Meksto
Assistant Producers: Samantha Noah, Shalene Gaul, Alecia Campbell
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ABOUT US:
Mannor Law Group helps clients in all matters of estate planning and elder law including special needs planning, veterans’ benefits, Medicaid planning, estate administration, and more. We offer guidance through all stages of life.
We also help families dealing with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other illnesses that cause memory loss. We take a comprehensive, holistic approach, called Life Care Planning. LEARN MORE...
You're listening to Advice from your Advocates, a show where we provide elder law advice to professionals who work with the elderly and their families. Welcome back to Advice from your Advocates. I'm Bob Manor. I'm a board-certified elder law attorney in the state of Michigan and we have a fantastic guest for you today. I really find her topic interesting. She has a fantastic book that I recommend, so, Dr Corinne Allman. Dr Allman, can you introduce yourself for us and then we'll get into your book and all the useful information you can provide to our listeners.
Speaker 2:Sure, so my name is Dr Corinne Allman and I'm based in North Carolina. I'm the founder of a company called Choice Care Navigators, where we are a geriatric care management agency, and then I've written a book called Keen Agers telling a new story about aging.
Speaker 1:Let's get right into your book. So that's a term that you coined, that term right, keen Agers. I think it's really interesting, so tell me what you mean by that.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm popularizing it.
Speaker 2:I tell the story in the book of how the word came about, but essentially the term teenager is my way of trying to find a positive word to talk about the aging process and growing older, because so much of our language around this time period isn't positive. And if you're trying to write a book about telling a new story about aging and kind of reframing or reshaping how we talk about it and all you've got to use is words or codger and old coots and all these negative words, it's like what are we going to do? So in the process of that, a friend of mine's mom said oh, we like to be called keenagers, and I think that's really a great word, because the definition of keen is highly developed, or having a real interest, a sharp interest in something, and I think that really describes a lot of older adults today. They are highly developed and they are very keen to keep doing things, keep learning, keep growing, not just retire and sit on their front porch in their rocking chair. And so that's how the word came about.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the whole aging process has changed. You know, our expectations of aging has changed over our lifetimes. I remember being a young college age person watching Cheers and the people there were, you know, in their 30s and 40s and they were looked at as kind of older. And now we think of older as not he's in 40s by any means. It's a whole different world. I think it's a positive development that we don't start aging people out when they're 40.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:I just think it's really interesting. So you have this book. I want to name the book specifically. It's an award-winning book, teenagers Telling a New Story of Aging. So tell us a little bit more about the book. I have specific questions. I'm going to ask you about it, but I want you to just kind of give us an overview of it.
Speaker 2:Well. So, as I mentioned, I run a care management agency and that is work where I am often working with families when they are in crisis and maybe the whole aging process isn't going so well, right? So people will often say to me how can you write a book about looking forward to growing older the positive aspects of aging while also doing this work where there's a lot of crisis and trying to work things out? And the answer to that is that I have really witnessed over the course of this career how much your attitude about your own aging and how much your planning and preparation for your own aging really determines how well it's going to go. So, for example, my clients who have kind of denied their aging and they've been you know this isn't going to happen to me. I'll talk about planning and preparation when it's time and I'm putting that in quotes, because the time never really comes and what that leads to is a lot of chaos, a lot of stress, a lot of chaos, a lot of not getting what you want in terms of care or what you want to have happen as you grow older, and my clients who are looking forward to growing older, who are excited about what's coming and what their opportunities are going to be after their first retirement and they get to start some new career or new path that they haven't been down before. Those people are planning, they are doing their documents, they're doing their healthcare power of attorney and their financial power of attorney. They're preparing because they know they're looking ahead and going. This could be great.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about the years that are ahead of me, but also I want to make sure that this goes really well.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that it happens. And that is the power of a positive aging story. Because if you are looking ahead at your life and going I got some really fun things, exciting things ahead of me after I retire then you do things to plan and prepare and make that happen, whereas if you're kind of buying into our traditional you retire and then you go sit on the front porch or you play a lot of golf but you don't actually quote, unquote, do anything and it's kind of all downhill from here then it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that that lack of planning and preparation means that it doesn't go very well. That's what I'm trying to get at in the book. Is this idea that you have a lot of power and control over how well your aging process is going to go, and that story that you're telling yourself in your own head about what aging is going to be like has a tremendous impact on what you will do and how it will go.
Speaker 1:I love that, I think that's fantastic, you know. I think that there is a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophecy, right. And so I do feel, like some people, sort of dread retirement. I think this is actually a thing that lawyers you know we see lawyers often that will, we call them where they die at their desk and what that means is they just never retire and it's because they don't know what to do next. They haven't made a plan. They've done a full, very helpful, successful career and yet they just don't know what to do next.
Speaker 1:And so I think that's really important to start thinking about that at a younger age. It's not something that you're supposed to think about at 70. It's something that you're supposed to think about at about 45 to say, okay, what would be next for me? On the flip side of that, there is this sort of commercial image of retirement. I tease my colleagues in the financial industry about this, because when you look at most financial companies and they have a commercial on TV they always present this idolistic image of retirement on TV. They always present this idealistic image of retirement and for some reason the common scenario is that we're all going to own vineyards in retirement Because it just seems so odd Not everybody wants to own a vineyard, but when we're running on the beach and we're doing all these things, and so I think there is both. That it's that middle ground of being over idealistic, idealistic about retirement versus not planning for retirement.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So talk a little bit more about that please.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I think, yeah, we're kind of sold a false bill of goods in both extremes. Right, like we have this sort of you're going to own a vineyard or a bookstore I think a bookstore is another really big one right, you're going to own, you're going to do that in retirement or the other kind of bill of goods that were sold is the your health is going to be terrible and it's all downhill and you know you are really nothing but a series of health problems as you grow older. So there's like these two extremes that we're told.
Speaker 2:And the truth is more in the middle, in the sense that as we grow older, yeah, we probably are going to have more health issues. That is true for all of us. But I like to think about it as a yes and yes, I have this health issue, whatever it is, and I'm running down the beach with my loved one and my dog.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Or whatever it is for you. Maybe the point is always what's going to make you want to get out of bed on a Wednesday morning in retirement, right? So what's going to give your life meaning and purpose? And that's going to be different for everybody. Maybe it is starting a vineyard, right, but maybe it's caregiving for your grandkids, or maybe it's volunteering at the local whatever charity or group you're interested in. Maybe it's starting a new business, maybe it's being an artist, because you never had time for that before. It really doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can figure out what it is.
Speaker 2:Because the thing that so many people struggle with in retirement, especially like I like your example of lawyers, because I think they're a good one Doctors are another one. They have worked really long work weeks right 60 hour, 80 hour work weeks for 30 plus years of their life. They didn't have time for hobbies before retirement and their identity is really wrapped up in this career that they've had. And so then when you retire, you kind of go through this. You know it's kind of like a honeymoon period after you get married. This, you know. Six to 18 months of this is great and I love this and fantastic. And then at some point you kind of go this is it.
Speaker 1:What's next? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's next? Is this all? Is this what I'm going to do for the next 20 or 30 years of my life? Because if you, if you retire at 55, 60, 65, you're not looking at a couple of years of retirement, you're looking at a couple of decades of retirement, and all that leisure is really fun in the short term, but unlimited for decades you kind of start going this is a little boring and there's this sort of nobody really needs me for anything, nobody really wants me for anything, and that kind of starts to hurt your soul after a while, because it's that purpose, that meaning that's important, what's going to make me want to get out of bed on Wednesday morning. And if nobody needs me for anything and nobody wants me for anything and I don't have anything that I'm going to go do, staying in bed starts to look pretty good.
Speaker 1:And that can be particularly challenging. If you have a spouse that maybe needs some, maybe has some memory issues that are starting to develop or has some physical restrictions, then restrictions then you know it's okay, they need me, but this isn't what I imagined. You know, before they needed me and I got. You know, I got praised for the things that I did for people. Now somebody needs me and I don't get any. I don't get any awards for caring for my spouse, you know. So that can be very challenging.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and caregiving can also be very socially isolating.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because if you're caregiving for someone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you may not have time to go out and socialize, you may not want people coming into the home, and so that sort of not only the work that that is, but also the social isolation, can be devastating for people's mental health.
Speaker 1:So I know you understand these concepts, but it's something I always like to bring up. There's two things when we end up having a caregiver spouse and one spouse that needs care. One is that tendency that you just talked about to kind of cocoon in the house, which is not very healthy, and there are a lot of options and services out there for folks to get additional help, outside help but there's almost a stigma which I hate and I wish that we could get rid of that stigma which I hate, and I wish that we could get rid of that stigma. But it really makes things worse if we just kind of cocoon in the house. The other thing is the kind of tendency of well, statistics at least tell us that the caregiver spouse dies first, most of the time because they're putting all the pressure on themselves.
Speaker 1:You know, the person with, maybe Alzheimer's or dementia or something like that doesn't have the ability to feel the stress at the same level. Maybe the caregiver spouse is not getting good sleep at night, things like that, and so both of those things cocooning in the house and not getting any outside help and taking on all of the caregiving duties yourself often lead to a shorter lifespan. And now we end up with the spouse that needs the care not having their. You know, if the caregiver spouse dies first, then we're in a much worse position. So it's one of those things that we really try to identify and help people understand that it really is best and it is really important that we have something outside of your role as a caregiver. You have to have more than that. You have to have respite, you have to have a break. You kind of have to bring in some help at whatever level that is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I do want to talk about, since we kind of got to a more depressing area of the conversation. I want to talk about age bias. I'll give you my thoughts on it in a second, but I know that that's part of your conversation, that you have, and so let's talk a little bit about the bias.
Speaker 2:Well so age bias is ageism right? It's a stereotype about somebody based on their age, and typically we think about it with older people, although we can have age bias against younger people as well, If we look at somebody young and we go, oh, you're too young to know anything or too inexperienced.
Speaker 2:That's the same thing. But it tends to get worse as we get older, particularly for our older adults, as they and I'm like for our teenagers, for our people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. The age bias starts and you start to see it in things like the workplace, when you get laid off and it becomes much more difficult to get rehired in your face. We start to see it in healthcare when you go to the doctor and you've got an ache or a pain or something's going on and your doctor kind of goes well, you know, you're getting older, the kind of classic examples. But you see it all the time.
Speaker 2:If you've been to the doctor with your parent or your grandparent and the nurse comes up to your loved one and says, hey, sweetie, how are you today? Aren't you looking so handsome? That's elder speak and that is a form of age bias. So it's really all around us and comes in multiple different areas of our lives. Honestly, quite hard to avoid. And once you start really paying attention to age bias, you start hearing it and seeing it kind of everywhere in your life. Because I have to tell you now that I've been in this field for a while I, you know I listened to the things that come out of my own mouth and I go.
Speaker 2:why did I say that? But it's like it's so ingrained we just say these things or think this way, without even considering why we're doing that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I agree, I catch myself on these things too. It's one of the things. So in my office we have a program called Care Navigation, which is a little bit similar to some of the things that you do in your field. We have social workers on staff that are doing care advocacy for folks, and at the very beginning of every interaction with a new family I always ask them you know, okay, you've been told dementia, have you gotten any kind of specific diagnosis? And the vast, vast majority of time the answer is no, and you know, vast majority of time the answer is no. And you know dementia is a category of diseases.
Speaker 1:There's a variety of things, and a real diagnosis of what type of dementia can be very helpful for setting expectations, having the family understand what the likely progress is and I know that they can't do a perfect diagnosis, and that's one of the excuses that we often hear that the doctors and neurologists give is that, well, we can't give a perfect diagnosis, okay, well, what do you think you know? Because it really would be helpful sometimes to know is this vascular in trying to plot out our future and making sure we're prepared for it? And I do think it's age bias when the answer. No one would ever say, hey, you have cancer. And you say, ok, well, what type of cancer? And they would say, well, it doesn't matter. No, you know, it matters, obviously. And so it matters also with dementia.
Speaker 1:And I think there's an age bias where we say, oh, you're old anyway, who cares? And I really dislike that about the medical industry and even the you know, the specialist industry of neurologists and things like that, that just aren't willing to share with the family the specifics of the type of dementia, and I do feel like that's an H-bis, and often we've got to push back on that and say, okay, well, thank you for the advice you've given us, but we really need to know a little bit more. We're not expecting a hundred percent perfect analysis, because we know that's not possible, but the vast majority of time you can give us an idea of what you think it is.
Speaker 2:Right, Right. And you know, the same thing is true just in the medical field. You know, not many doctors go into geriatrics because geriatrics is one of the poorest paid specialties Is that right and I think that's part of the age bias.
Speaker 2:It's also the case that a lot of when you're talking to new doctors, they don't really wanna go into geriatrics, not only because that doesn't get paid very well, but also because of their own bias, right? They think older adults will be harder to work with, they think they'll be stubborn, they think they won't listen, they think they'll be too complicated because they'll have too many comorbidities, too many pre-existing conditions kind of thing. And you know, if you believe all those stereotypes because that's what those things are then yeah, it doesn't seem very appealing to go work with older adults. But I think what a lot of geriatricians would actually say is that older adults are really fun to work with in a lot of ways because they are interesting people with long lives and all sorts of things that differentiate them. They're not just this stereotype of cranky old people that we have but that works against us actually getting geriatricians to specialize in working with older adults, because there's all these factors that are just really bias and stereotypes working against it.
Speaker 1:So I want to shift gears a little bit, and it is a good segue, because this is true for folks with a loved one with dementia, but it's also true for everybody, whether there's ever a dementia diagnosis or not. I saw a TED Talk I don't remember the speaker, but it was a TED Talk that talked about quality of life, and so it was. She actually talked about quality and quality. The biggest predictor is social connections, having someone to connect with. You know, if we have that where we're just kind of secluded and watch TV all day and don't get out of our chair, both the quantity and quality of our life is as likely to be lost, and her research showed us that, really, for both quality and quantity, it's about how many friends you have, how many good friends that you have, how many you know what's your family relationships and how close they are, and I think that that goes hand in hand with what you're saying. Is that right? Oh, yeah, I mean, and, as you said, there's what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Is that right? Oh yeah, I mean and, as you said, there's lots of research on this now that you know, having social isolation is as bad, if not worse, for you than smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.
Speaker 2:I mean it's terrible for you and I think we see that with older people and we saw it a lot during COVID, when everything shut down and older adults were socially isolated, you know, for their protection, but it was really terrible for their mental and emotional health.
Speaker 2:But we also, you know, you see it more now even with young people, where they talk about the loneliness, crisis and social isolation because everybody's on their phone and they're not interacting with one another. Right, but there's a lot of research too. If you've ever looked into the blue zones, these are the areas in the world where people live the longest and there's a really interesting documentary about the blue zones. They talk about what they eat and you know their nutrition and all these things. But the other thing that these areas where people live the longest have in common is their sense of community and social connection and that the older adults are actively involved in the communities that they live in. They're not living in a nursing home, separated out somewhere. They're not sitting in their home, never interacting with people. They are integral parts of the community. They're getting up and they're involved and they're doing things every day, and that social interaction is just as important as any nutritional program that we could put somebody on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that interesting. So I so much appreciate Dr Corinne, a gerontologist and author of Teenagers, telling a New Story About Aging. Any final thoughts you want to leave our listeners?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think so. I think we covered a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate you being on our podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe. We're on every other week and a new podcast every other week. We've got a couple of years worth of back podcasts and you can sign on and listen to those. But anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can register and get noticed when we put out a new topic or a new guest. So thank you for joining us at Advice from your Advocates and thank you for Dr Corinne Allman being our guest today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:And so I appreciate all the listeners and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. To learn more, visit manorlawgroupcom.
