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There are some people who can take the most difficult situations and find the humor in them. Cathy Sikorski is one of those people. I met her several years ago at a midlife bloggers association meeting and became an instant admirer. She's written a blog for years dedicated to examining the hard and hilarious life of caregiving, which she's done herself for the last twenty years. In addition to that, she's a practicing dealing largely in Elder Law and in today's episode, has all kinds of personal and professional/legal advice to pass on to you. She’s the author of several books, the first being “Showering with Nana." Today we’re going to discuss two more that outline very eloquently how to talk to your loved ones about their end of life plans – or what needs to happen when dementia is in the picture: Who Moved My Teeth and Twelve Conversations: How to Talk to Almost Anyone about Long-Term Care Planning. Not the most “fun” conversation to have – but vital ones. Our Advertisers Links! Click HERE for the NEW fabulous offer from AG1 - with bonus product with your subscription! You can hear more about this and many other topics by listening to my podcast, SelfWork with Dr. Margaret Rutherford. Subscribe to my website and receive my weekly newsletter including a blog post and podcast! If you’d like to join my FaceBook closed group, then click here and answer the membership questions! Welcome! My book entitled Perfectly Hidden Depression is available everywhere and you can order here! Its message is specifically for those with a struggle with strong perfectionism which acts to mask underlying emotional pain. But the many self-help techniques described can be used by everyone who chooses to begin to address emotions long hidden away that are clouding and sabotaging your current life. And it's available in paperback, eBook or as an audiobook! And there's another way to send me a message! You can record by clicking below and ask your question or make a comment. You’ll have 90 seconds to do so and that time goes quickly. By recording, you’re giving SelfWork (and me) permission to use your voice on the podcast. I’ll look forward to hearing from you! Episode Transcript Speaker 1: Well, you and I have known each other, Kathy, gosh, for 10 years. Maybe a Speaker 2: Long, I, I know a long time. We've grown up a lot in the years that it's been, so I'm gonna go Yeah. A long time Speaker 1: . Yeah. A long time. Well, I think I met you, uh, when we were all meeting at Midlife Boulevard and that kind of thing. Right? Right. Speaker 2: Yep. That's what I remember in that, in Nashville, I'm gonna say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: That huge hotel ...Yeah. It was great. And I have loved your work since, um, tried to have you on as one of the first guests of self-work, and I had no idea what I was doing technically, and I botched it, and I practically was in tears and said, I'll have to have you back on. And six years later, here we are, Speaker 2: , hey. But you know, a lot has happened in six years, and honestly Right. This is the universe because now is a really good time for us to talk. Yes, I have, and you have refocused our work many times. Right. And the refocus has helped us be better, um, Sherpa's for people in women especially, but people, uh, in what we're trying the message that we're trying to get out. Right. And so, I'm happy that it took six years. I, I, I, yeah. Really am, because I'm better focused about what I wanna say. Speaker 1: Well, you are incredibly kind. Your first book that I read was showering with Nana. Yeah. And I, it brought tears to my eyes, and I, I just loved that book. Speaker 2: Speaker 1: Well, for those of you who don't know, Kathy Sikorski's work, basically, I mean, she's, she's gone. And I want you to tell your story, but you've gone from being someone who was caring for a lot as I understand it, gone from a family member, a friend who was caring for a lot of people who were getting older and having those kinds of problems to then you earned your elder law degree and, and really have changed your whole life. And so I greatly admire that because it's, it's something where you have said, let me take what life has given me and then be able to have the experience on a lot of different levels, both personal and professional, so that I can really help other people. And I wanted you on, because I think this is so important, um, that we talk about, um, elder care and, um, everything you talk about, you have two new books, uh, that you sent fairly New, who Moved My Teeth, which I, after I read this, I peppered my husband with questions about, do we have that? Do we have this, do we have this? Um, and then I, I read until about 10 30 last night, uh, 12 conversations, how to talk to almost anyone about long-term planning. And so I have both of those books here with questions. Uh, so tell us a little bit about your story first. Speaker 2: So, so, yeah. I'm so happy that you brought up the fact that my life, what happened in my life, really informed and changed the way I decided to have a career. Yeah. Because I think, especially women, we get very feeling trampled down about what life is throwing at us and how we can't go do the thing we thought we wanted to do, or what we should be doing, or how we thought life should let us do this. That's right. Thing. Right. We feel very trampled by, by caregiving, by caring for our children, our parents, our, our, our spouses or whatever. And yet, it's an expectation that right or wrong, and a lot of times wrong, comes with just being a female, right? Mm-hmm. . Speaker 2: And so, I, I, I became a caregiver for eight different family and friends over the last 30 years. And honestly, this is a job for me that happened out of certainly love and respect for people in my life. My grandmother, my aunts, my, you know, my very good friend who fell down a flight of stairs and had no one to care for her, and had a traumatic brain injury. My brother-in-law, my sister passed away, and he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the worst possible kind. And so I became his primary caregiver. So my only point being about that, that you made, which was, there were times when I was mad about that. Like, this isn't what I wanna be doing. This isn't what I think my life is supposed to be about. Right. I have dreams, I have aspirations. And it turns out that that's exactly what my dreams and aspirations were all about. It was taking my life experience and turning it into the person I wanted to be, which was this speaker, author, educator about something really important that I learned that I could share with people to help make their lives better. Speaker 1: Was that even close to anything that you had predicted or dreamed or wondered about that maybe that's the direction your life would go? Was it anywhere close? Speaker 2: No. Well, I didn't know it, but yes, because here's the thing. I wanted to be an actress. Okay? I was a theater major in college , um, for a couple years. And then I realized two things. I had a boyfriend. I couldn't spend any time with him, and I didn't, wasn't sure I could make any money being an actress, right? It, it, it's the poor girl's way to, to go about it. Maybe, I don't know. Lots of people make money and lots of money, but, so then my other dream was to be a lawyer, which is exactly what I did. Um, but in my mind it was the, the Clarence Darrow, the, you know, the big trial lawyer who's gonna save and help people by, you know, making these great trial things where, like you see on television the big surprise ending, whatever, all of which, of course has an acting component to it. May I add, right? Speaker 1: ? Of course. Speaker 2: So what that means for me, really what that meant for me is two things. I really wanted to help people, and I wanted to be in front of audiences in some fashion, right? Mm-hmm. and Margaret, that's exactly what I do. Wow. That's exactly what I do. Exactly. Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm. , it's giving me goosebumps. Speaker 2: Me too. . Speaker 1: And that's, you know, how when you say you got angry about it, it, it's, I mean, that's a lot of people to be primary caregiver for. Speaker 2: Yeah. . Speaker 1: So, I mean, can you tell us a little bit about, was there no one else? Did you just do it better than everyone? And you knew you did, did you, was it just everybody? That's the way your life turned out. Speaker 2: Everybody in your audience probably is a caregiver on some level, let's be honest. Mm-hmm. and, and, and the caregiving, you know, like I say, the joke is the train comes to my door and stops and everybody gets off. I mean, two things happened. Number one, like my grandmother in that book, my first book Showering with Dana, she came to live with me. And I had a two-year-old at the time. Mm-hmm. , so had a 92 year old and a Speaker 1: Two year, which is a hilarious book, by the way. Speaker 2: Thank you. They were, they definitely wanted to, you know, gang up on me and see what they could do, get away with it, Speaker 1: , Speaker 2: And it worked a lot. Um, but they, but that experience then led to, you know, other family members both on my side and my husband's side needing care. And as I'm doing this, as you remarked, I, I was a, I was a small town lawyer at the time mm-hmm. mm-hmm. . And as I started to formulate my practice around elder law, which is really kind of a new area of law, it is not, it is not the ancient law of, you know, criminal law and trial law, and even a state law, which goes back hundreds of years. Elder law is new because it's, it's about Medicare and Medicaid and nursing homes and, you know, things that have been growing and growing and growing during our lifetime. Mm-hmm. . But I needed to know this stuff cuz the people I were take, I was taking care of were old people. And then I was taking care of not so old people, but who were also in a system of Medicare and Medicaid because of their illnesses, their dramatic illnesses or whatever. So I, I just had to learn it. Sure. And then I became an elder lawyer, you know, cause of that. Speaker 1: Is that an actual, uh, specific kind of law, specific law degree? Speaker 2: It isn't, it isn't a law degree. There are certifications that you, certifications take. Yes, absolutely. And there are classes now, I would say they're fairly new in law school. Law schools are now offering elder law classes. Um, and it is definitely a specialty in law for sure. Okay. It's ab and there's lots of lawyers. That's Speaker 1: So that's really what I do. I try to teach everyone out there why you need an elder lawyer. What is it that you need? And what is different about elder law as opposed to any other, Speaker 1: Well, you make that point very well. again So, but the point being that I think some of us do go on autopilot, even if we're aware of these kinds of things. Speaker 1: And then other people just simply don't wanna think about it. You know, I grew up the daughter of funeral director and we, I mean, death was a part of life. I heard about people dying every day. And so I have a little bit of a different take on it, I think because of that. But certainly in my practice now for a long time, I, you know, mortality is something that, an illness and losing control, I mean, it's something that we all fear so much. Look at what's happening to Bruce Willis right now. I mean, he's taking the very brave step of letting some information out about it. Fronto, frontotemporal dementia or something like that. Mm-hmm. Speaker 2: mm-hmm. Speaker 1: . Um, and so, you know, good for him, but it's also very frightening and, uh, very, I think probably how many people have said, I'd rather just be hit by a bus than develop Alzheimer's. Speaker 2: So here's the thing though, it doesn't work that way. Yes. That's the problem. It doesn't work that way. And by ignoring at your peril, not taking, getting your affairs in order mm-hmm. , you really make it hard for the people who love you. That's right. And that's not what you wanna do. You don't wanna make it hard for the people who love you. And so, especially in my world where I deal with people who are sick, I deal with people who are incapacitated. So, so Bruce Willis is a perfect example of being so generous of spirit, his family, to share this diagnosis with the world, which is quite frankly, a horrific diagnosis. Yes. It's, um, to say, we've been dealing with this, we now know what it is and we're going to continue to deal with it. Speaker 2: But you can absolutely pretty much ensure that they have their affairs in order. So in other words, during the journey when they were trying to figure out the problem, they made sure that their powers of attorney were in order. That they, that those powers of attorney let them do what they want them to do. Because it's like you said, sure. You sort of know about it, you hear about it, you have it. But did it really do what you wanted it to do? Which is why I talk about it more specifically in the book so people know what questions to ask. What kinds of questions am I supposed to be asking about this document that somebody has shoved under my nose to sign? Right. Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about, I mean, I did not read all of who Moved My Teeth, but the, the picture of the book that I got was certainly, there's a lot of information about exactly what you just said at the beginning of the book. And then the latter part of the book is more, um, well, practical, practical, pragmatic, Speaker 2: Practical advice for caregivers for really Yes. When you're stepping into it, how do I talk to my person who, you know, how do I spend a whole day with someone who's quite frankly making me insane with it? The same questions, or Sure. You know, what kinds of things can I do? What are they acting crazy? Maybe they have a urinary tract infection. And I never knew about Speaker 1: That. I was gonna ask you about UTIs, cuz that's really a big deal. You know, before we move on too much, there's a young man I worked with several years ago now, he lived on a farm kind of complex. All his family lived together and he adored, adored his grandmother. And she was diagnosed with, uh, a terminal illness and she refused to talk with him about her dying. And I'll never forget, he came, this young man was tough as a brick, you know, and a reared on a farm and used to, I mean, he didn't, I mean, the fact that he even came to therapy was a minor miracle. But he said, it's just like there's this, she's gone, she was dead by the time he came in. And she, he said, I never got to talk to her about how I was gonna miss her and what I loved about her. And I know that's a separate topic in many ways from some of the more legal things, but not really. I mean, it's intertwined, isn't it? Speaker 2: But I, yes, and I love that because these legal things are an act of love. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: This is an act of love both for you as the person who is doing it. And for you as a person who's saying, mom, dad, I wanna spend time with you. I just had this conversation with two three daughters who, who have a, a podcast as well, which, which we talked about doing that. But, but they, they said we had to step in so quickly as caregivers. We didn't get the end of times as daughters. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: And, and I have read this again and again, that people would so much more rather be grandsons and daughters and loving spouses rat…
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