Love Conquers Alz

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE - Susie and Don Talk About Their Upcoming Important Documentary

October 06, 2022 Susie Singer Carter and Don Priess Season 5 Episode 62
Love Conquers Alz
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE - Susie and Don Talk About Their Upcoming Important Documentary
Show Notes Transcript

In Episode 62,  Love Conquers Alz Co-Hosts and award-winning filmmakers, Susie and Don  discuss what motivated them to produce their upcoming film, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE (NCFOP).  An important documentary that will be the required punch to the gut that forces people to take a good hard look at the Long Term Care crisis that has been going on for decades and the health-care system that is literally collapsing around us.

NCFOP will be a cautionary tale that exposes the dangerous façade of stability and safety held tightly by Long Term Care (LTC) nursing facilities. A pretense propagated by a system that subscribes to the notion that honesty is far less profitable than dishonesty and cavalierly regards human beings as commodities. A system that relies on deceitful marketing to successfully divert most Americans away from the fact that decades of underfunding has left the nursing home system in dire need of a seemingly unachievable overhaul.

In a case of every cloud having a silver lining, we have Covid-19 to thank for pulling the curtain back on this nationwide crisis. Still, without comprehensive and accurate data, interventions to improve outcomes and quality are limited and consumers have a difficult time discerning how risky a particular facility might be.  According to their producing partner, former Assistant Attorney General of Virginia, Rick Mountcastle (portrayed in the Hulu miniseries Dopesick by Peter Sarsgaard), it all comes down to understaffing. "With most not-for-profit nursing homes offering low pay, limited benefits, and not nearly enough training, and for-profit companies (that dominate the industry) having incentives to keep their costs low, neglect has regrettably become the industry standard."

In the first six months of 2022, Susie was witness to this systemic crisis. She saw things she cannot unsee. Things  she won't unsee.  Her mother had been a resident at a 5-Star Nursing Facility in Los Angeles for 5 years – a place where she took solace in believing her mother was receiving the very best care possible.  And as it turns out, she was. Unfortunately, the “best” turned out to be the worst. 

Susie had been on the front lines of what she calls a systemic catastrophe daily for the first six months of 2022.  And despite her relentless advocating, her mother died July 17, 2022 from what was inarguably egregious nursing home neglect and abuse. It's unimaginable to think what happens to residents without advocates. 

This is Susie's mother’s story. But it could be yours

For more information:
No Country For Old People

** If you've been a victim of Nursing Home Neglect and/or abuse, and would like to share your story in this documentary, please contactus at LoveConquersAlz.Susie@gmail.com.

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Don Priess:

Alzheimer's sucks. It's an equal opportunity disease that chips away at everything we hold dear. And to date, there's no cure. So until there is we continue to fight with the most powerful tool in our arsenal. Love. This is Love Conquers Alz. A real and really positive podcast that takes a deep dive into everything. Alzheimer's, The Good, the Bad, and everything in between. And now, here are your hosts Susie Singer, Carter, and me, Don Priess.

Susie Singer Carter:

Hello, I'm Susie Singer Carter.

Don Priess:

And I'm Don Priess. And this is :Love Conquers Alz. Hello, Susan.

Susie Singer Carter:

Hi, Donald. I'm excited today.

Don Priess:

Are you? You're excited. Are you excited about life, or about the show?

Susie Singer Carter:

I'm excited about life because life is good. Yes, because the alternative is not awesome.

Don Priess:

That's true. That's true.

Susie Singer Carter:

We have some really special guests today. I'm excited about I'm suddenly feeling like, you know what I feel like Smartless. I feel like the beginning of Smartless. You know, the Smartless with Jason Bateman. And Sean Hayes and yes, Will Arnett, yeah. Which is one of my other favorite podcasts, by the way. does not talk about this topic. Yeah, shout out to Smartless Sure. I'll be sure we'll be we'll be we'll be guests on your show. Why not?

Don Priess:

We'll be guests whether you want us or not.

Susie Singer Carter:

I would love to be a guest on that show. But they, you know, they always have to like, one of them books, the guests. And then they like brag about it, and then sort of build it up and see if the other two can guess who the guests are going to be.

Don Priess:

So now I know why you're excited because you booked the guest today.

Susie Singer Carter:

I did book the guests today. Yeah. So do you. So So okay, so let me just give you some hints. Okay. Okay. So one of the guests that I know is, well, first of all, I really really liked this person. And I've known this person for ever. And, and I, I think what this person does is fantastic. And this person has a great heart. And this person is afraid of me, which is great now.

Don Priess:

That's always the best.

Susie Singer Carter:

So I'm the ruler now. And then the other one, you might know, you might know. I'm just saying you might need the other one. And that person just might be a fashionista and might have an obsession with color. Okay,

Don Priess:

That's it. Yes. So these are all clues. that's it.

Susie Singer Carter:

Guess who? We could wait and have our audience kind of right into guesses. But I'd show doesn't work that way. Just guess you want me to guess? I'm guessing that these are our favorite two guests of all time, Susie Singer CarterAnd Don Priess. That's right. It's us. Wow, that was a huge build up for that. and I are going to be producing, or we are just starting to produce right now. And that's No Country for Old People, which is a documentary based on my personal experience within the Long Term Care Health System, which is going through horrific crisis, and it has been for decades. But most of us don't know that until we're in it. And when we're in it, it's also overwhelming and also complicated. And for the most part, pretty much not what you expected. Not person centered. And in fact, almost the opposite. x

Don Priess:

I was just gonna say that. it. Your experience has been so much the opposite of what you expected. I you know, you think everyone just has these kind of like, oh, this is the way it is. And this is what hospice is and that's what all and we found out far from the you know, far from the truth.

Susie Singer Carter:

Right? Listen, I'm not throwing the net over every single facility. There are always exceptions. And there's some lovely facilities that are well meaning and are doing the best to navigate within the system that they have to but they're still even the greatest facilities are up against a very rigid sort of a system that doesn't doesn't favor the residents or, or or our loved ones. I didn't really know hospice. I didn't even know what to be honest. What a bedsore was, I, you know, my, my, my vision of what a bedsore would be would be, you know, when you lay too long on one on one side of your body and it's red and it's on a sore, I get no clue how how severe they can get. And that they can actually create the beginnings of of a ripple effect that leads to death. They're that severe, and they're that dangerous. So, you know, these are things that we should, we should know, we should be taught, but we don't know until we're in this situation. And there's so much going on that we could barely navigate all the facets of it. And all the politics, insurance and and all the rules, there's so many rules that are protecting everybody, but your loved one, unfortunately, and it's too much for us as caregivers on our own to really advocate because we're up against a really solid network, like a like a hairball. It's just so it's like a knot. And it's been in place for so long. And that's what everyone's used to. This is the system, this is what we work in. Now, let's make it work within that system. But what we need to do is burn the system down and start building it from scratch. Right?

Don Priess:

Because it's so flawed. Well, before COVID, you know, there was a problem. And it has been there for a long, long time. And COVID has just opened up our eyes to say, oh my gosh, this is this is this is an epidemic, this pandemic, and and it's something that needs a vaccination and a booster. Actually, it needs more than that. But it needs help. And it needs help. Now

Susie Singer Carter:

I'm going to read, I'm going to read a little bit of of research just to set the stage on how this system works a little bit, just to give you an idea. So most states there that we have Medicaid, right that that is the payment system that reimburses nursing homes, and they do this at a at a relatively low level. And the government doesn't hold these nursing homes accountable for what they're spending their dollars on. And that includes how they directly spend it on their residents care. There's really no accountability in terms of where the money and how the money is spent, as long as the rules of Medicaid and the rules of government and the rules of the nursing home are checked off and no one's liable for anything, then everything's okay. So what happened, like what Don said is like COVID-19, exposed the devastating consequences of staff shortages in nursing homes and staff shortages are really the root of all of the evil and staff shortages have been around for decades. It's just COVID really highlighted that when people were getting sick, and there was nobody to replace those staff members for 75% of the nursing homes have had inadequate staffing, before the pandemic even started. And what's worse is there's no national regulations, although California is one of the few states that has their own regulations. But that's not necessarily regulated the way it should be. There's the rules that are not as stringent as they should be. So the some of it feels a bit like a pacification because even the facility that my mom would she was a five star facility that she was at. If you look them up, you'll see that their staffing quotas are well above the regulated amount that they're supposed to have. And yet I can I'm here to tell you, it wasn't that at all. That was not my experience. There was often not a CNA or a nurse to be found on the floor, and nurses were complaining and CNAs were complaining and you know, so there's the objective report. And then there's the subjective report. And that's me, there is a lot of money that's going into nursing homes, but the money is misappropriated. And the most expensive part of this business are the employees. So that's where they look to cut their costs. And on average, you have CNAs and nurses working between 17 to $21 an hour and that's that's for skilled nursing facilities. That's minimum wage.

Don Priess:

Well, it's just above minimum wage. And I literally drove by a restaurant the other day in Simi Valley, and I saw a sign and said dishwashers and I'm not, you know, disparaging dishwashers, but it said dishwasher wanted$20 an hour. So, you know, that puts it into some perspective, that these are people who are taking care of our loved ones and possibly ourselves. And, and they're doing medical things. You know, it's not that they're, you know, that's not that they're just mopping a floor or anything. Yeah,

Susie Singer Carter:

it requires a lot of skills. It requires people skills, it requires empathy. It requires intuition. You know, these are people, everybody reacts differently. These are not easy jobs. These are hard jobs. There's no incentive to want to work in this arena. Uh, when you're getting paid so low, and that's why over 425,000 employees left the nursing home workforce since 2020. That's incredible.

Don Priess:

Yeah. And so then who's replacing them?

Susie Singer Carter:

No, I mean, people that aren't trained. Yeah. And if they are, you know, if they're being replaced a lot of the, you know, the training is cursory, I was witness to that the requirements are show up, you know, unfortunately, and this is another statistic that's going to blow your mind is between one and a half to three, almost 4 million infections happen every year in long term care facilities. And these are infections that can be avoided easily. And I'm talking about UTIs, I'm talking about bed wounds. I'm talking about sepsis, and pneumonia, there's so much that could be avoided. And that's not even COVID,

Don Priess:

Right. And the bed wounds can be the root cause of all the things you just mentioned, the UTIs, the sepsis, the pneumonias, and you just have to make sure that they are not sitting in the same place or lying in the same place for too long, that's not a high skill, that's just care. That's just having enough people to make sure they're not. And that's so preventable. When you see the very beginning of one, make sure it doesn't go any further. And that's not even being done that and therefore it gets to stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, and then eventually leading to all these things, and to death in many in most cases with those once you get to a stage four womb. So for the first six months of this year, I watched as you fought this really hard battle with the nursing facility your mom was living at. And that sadly culminated in her passing on July 7 teams, once someone has passed on, most people kind of want to move on because it's been so difficult and so hard. But you're motivated to create this documentary and I was interested why you're so motivated. And what led you to this point.

Susie Singer Carter:

So, you know, my mom had Alzheimer's for 16 years, just to just to backtrack a little bit. And and, you know, I learned a lot throughout this journey. And then I didn't know anything about Alzheimer's in the very beginning who does right? I learned by rote how to navigate and make the best out of the situation was someone who I love dearly, and who was one of my best friends. And I was so happy because I was, I didn't want to put her in a facility. But when I found the facility that she eventually went into I was I felt relief like most of us do, because you know, you stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can't keep them at home because a you either can't afford it, or their care is is is beyond what you can do in your own setting. So which is both both of those reasons were why I had to put my mom into a facility and finding this facility that she was in I was thrilled. And I talked about it on on the podcast all the time, how I just felt a relief that I could sleep at night my mom was taken care of. She was happy. She was thriving as best as she could with this disease and loved and that I didn't have to helicopter her

Don Priess:

Because you did, you sung the praises of this place for so long. But when did you realize that something might actually be wrong with her care? I mean, you Yes, you know that that. But you think well, they'll just replace them with somebody qualified. So when when was that point?

Susie Singer Carter:

So COVID-19 exposed the devastating consequences of staff shortages, all we could do was zoom. And so once a week, I was zooming with my mom and my family. And about I want to say the middle of the first year, and my mother was in a wheelchair, but she wasn't bedridden at all and very in and still as social as she could be with the stage of Alzheimer's that she was at right. And every Wednesday at three o'clock, I would start noticing my mom was in bed at three in the afternoon not dressed. And I asked the CNA who was facilitating the zoom. You know why? Why is my mom in bed? Is she okay? Oh, I don't know, Suzy. She's let me find I'll ask the nurse and get back to you. Right. So week after week I kept and I also would email and say, you know, hey, is there anything wrong? My mom has been in bed. The last few times. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. And I eventually got a couple of calls from the social worker who I knew very well who said she wasn't sure when my mom was in bed but her guess was that maybe she was having a sore or something they were trying to keep her off of the chair. But no one had alerted me of that. So

Don Priess:

and they're supposed to have the by, by their by law, they're supposed to if you have a bedsore they're supposed to tell you correct.

Susie Singer Carter:

Yes, yes. So you know, but I still and also, you know, I trusted them. So I was thinking, well, you want everything to be good because your hands are tied. So you keep you make excuses in your mind. You think, Oh, that makes sense. Why is she in her pajamas at three in the afternoon, right? Like, it looks like she hasn't even been her hair hasn't been brushed, and she just doesn't look right.

Don Priess:

And the boat, you never had to rock before. So Right? It's like if you don't know what's going on at the point. So you kind of have to You're getting gathering information as it's going. Right? That's hard to over zoom. So

Susie Singer Carter:

yeah. And then I was told a couple of times she was she was tired, and they were just resting before dinner. And I thought, okay, and you want to believe that then there came this the last, the last zoom I had had with her in January was like, I really felt like she was I don't know how I could tell. But she looked dehydrated. She didn't she wasn't responding the way she normally did. You actually came with me. On that weekend to see her we were able to visit with her outside. She did look dehydrated to me. She looked unkempt and not bathed. And we ultimately found that she had someone else's bridge in her mouth. That you discovered.

Don Priess:

Yeah, because she does. She did. She didn't wear bridges anymore, you know, for a long time. And suddenly I go What's that in her mouth and flopping around. Yeah. And it was sorry for the grossness. But you know, as

Susie Singer Carter:

it is, yeah. And they were not clean. That pretty much ended our visit. I rolled her back into the lobby. And I said, you know, think my mom's got someone else's bridge in her mouth. Oh, that's impossible. I said, Well, they're not hers. And the charge nurse came over to look. And so she was mortified and took them out of my mom's mouth and said, You must be the temp nurse because everything is marked here. And yeah, I'm sorry. And did the data and I said, Well, yeah, I'm a little concerned because COVID And she also doesn't look clean, and she looks dehydrated. Can you guys give her some attention. So that was that. And then less than 36 hours later, my mom landed in the hospital. And I was called by the hospital and told she was being admitted with a level for a bedsore on her back along with sepsis, and a UTI and pneumonia, and 10% kidney functioning. And that was the beginning of the end.

Don Priess:

That was the start of the six months I was talking about. Yeah, you just went through

Susie Singer Carter:

So it ended up that my mom was in and out of the hospital five times in six months. And the reason why this occurred was that the accepted long term protocol that's in place was not working for my mom, it you know, it becomes a checks and balances, which is guided by Medicaid and Medicare, and what they will cover and what they won't cover. And when somebody becomes too time consuming. They want to push that resident into hospice and move them along quicker than they should be moved along. Right. So what happened was the the lack of care that was given to my mom took an egregious toll on her physical health. And it also accelerated her cognitive decline. And the stage four pressure wound was being ignored and that continued to create that ripple effect that I spoke of before continued to bounce her in and out of the hospital. And as she became more labor intensive and with the lack of staff that they had, she was not having her wounds taken care of and and that wound continued to exasperate all the other vulnerabilities that come along with that UTIs and sepsis and pneumonia. Despite my relentless advocating, my mom died, essentia lly from a bed wound.

Don Priess:

That was not even, that wasn't even revealed and that you never knew about.

Susie Singer Carter:

And the truth is, is that the actual definition for neglect is any bedsore that's past a level two, because anybody can get a sore that happens, you know, when you're bedridden, or if you're sitting in a chair too long that can happen but that's what one of the main jobs is at a long term nursing home. Most people are confined to chairs. I didn't see a lot of people walking around in long term care. Most people are in wheelchairs.

Don Priess:

And as you've said, you stop Over the zoom, since she's just why she embedded in the middle of the day, right? Why? Why? Yeah, it's so

Susie Singer Carter:

Right. Right, right. I mean, I found myself I was basically in the front lines of this catastrophe for six months. It was a systemic army that I was up against, you know, that I didn't even know I was up against. And so it didn't matter how much I advocated and, and that I was there every day, which I had never was there every day before. But I, I felt compelled to have to, to have to be there. Because if I wasn't something awful was happening. And it still was, even though I was there like you. You coined it as Whack a Mole. And that's exactly what it felt like.

Don Priess:

Well, because yeah, I mean, sometimes I would go with you, but most often, you would be going by yourself. And so after, you would, it was like literally every day. It wasn't that the you know, the same thing was happening every day, every day, there was something different, something new, that was fully preventable. And and so you were you were constantly trying to navigate things you didn't know you every day you came across something you didn't know was happening, what was supposed to be happening, right? What do you even ask for? What what do we even say, What how do we address this.

Susie Singer Carter:

And the truth is, is that once she went into the hospital, because of the wound, her extreme case of pneumonia caused her to have to be intubated. That caused them to have to give her a G tube, which was supposed to be temporary, which is feeding her through the stomach. They told me that her and the Foley catheter but and then when she was finally released from the hospital, and I said, those, the Foley catheter and the G Tube need to be removed. Now my mom was you know, urinating before fine. And eating his her life. Right? Like, she needs to get back to eating through the mouth. I mean, those are the joys that's quality. You know, without that, what do you have? And they there? Yeah, right. And they refused to take it out saying that it was too much of a risk and, and that the Foley catheter was completely healthy. And, you know, as it turned out, it wasn't. My mom ended up back in the hospital, because of the Foley catheter causing her to hemorrhage. My mom was suffering so bad because she wanted to eat orally. And they refused to do that. And why did they refuse to do that? Because there wasn't enough staff. And this was an easy way to make her less work. And, and then there's a point in this system where they push their residents into hospice before they're ready to go. Because in hospice, and these are things I learned along the way, Medicare and Medicaid don't cover certain things. It's really a you know, a waiting out period for someone to pass away. And so they push the morphine and tell you that everything's gonna be okay. Or whatever ailments your mom has, whether it's a UTI, whether it's pneumonia, whether it's the wound, just give her morphine and she'll be okay. She won't feel it. Well, no, she wasn't ready. She was still at the baseline that she was before she went into the hospital. They just decided they didn't want to deal with the repercussions of what had happened in the hospital to get her back to where she was. You're so tired and you're so emotional. And you're so overwhelmed as the caregiver you're looking for answers and even if you know in your gut that what they're telling you is wrong. You're up against this wall of of people that are trained to come back at you with those answers. You're stressed out. You're not You're not You're not seeing the reality. Your mother's dying well yeah, she's dying but she's not ready to die now which is proof proof by the fact that she lasted for six more months when they told me she needed to be in hospice.

Don Priess:

Well, they told you she had one hour two hours to live right six months earlier and six years later she was still and also and going back to what you just said they you know that it's you you know you're the problem basically you and then yet they want you to make the decisions. Yeah, stressed you're too stressed out you don't understand what do you want us to do?

Susie Singer Carter:

Right right like the calls I got it like two in the morning here mom is hemorrhaging. What do you want us to do? What do you mean? What do I want you to do? I want you to take care of her can you take care of her there? No, well then you need to call 911!

Don Priess:

Oh! Is that what you want us to do what you want us to do?

Susie Singer Carter:

So you know all most of the decisions are made on you know mitigating their liability and and making sure that you know, they are they are doing everything by the book and not for the good of the of the patient or the resident. And so,

Don Priess:

based on the the quote unquote norm Well guess what with human beings there is no norm everyone's different.

Susie Singer Carter:

it's a rhetoric of this is what's best for them. This is comfort. We just want to keep your mom comfortable. Well, not giving her liquids is not comfortable is

Don Priess:

And being and being intubated three times is not comfortable.

Susie Singer Carter:

It's not comfortable.

Don Priess:

That's doesn't sound like...

Susie Singer Carter:

And having a G Tube folks is not comfortable. G tubes are for people that are normally in a coma, or had a stroke. And it's the last thing you want to do. Because if someone still has the will to eat and the will to drink, you need to respect that and allow them that that is their quality of life, like we spoke about with with with the speech therapist, Adria Thompson. Would speech therapists have to assess whether someone can swallow or not? It's a huge decision that you don't make lightly. Right?

Don Priess:

Well, and you showed them she could swallow, right, we're able to give her finally after fighting and fighting and fighting, they wouldn't give her any liquids anything. You they can they told you you couldn't? Well, when you showed them that she could swallow, they still said, Well, only you can do it. Our staff is not going to do that, because they she could aspirate, it's all a liability. But they're not worried about the liability of all the other things, all the other repercussions of the of the care or non care that was going on. And so there's, there's the conundrum right there. And that's what, that's what you have. That's why you are heading in this direction with doing this documentary to point out the problem.

Susie Singer Carter:

Yeah, I mean, I want to tell, I need to tell, I seen things that I can't unsee and I have to tell tirely different story than my mom and the girl. Even though this is inspired by my mom, this one is a cautionary tale. And this is a call to action. And I I feel compelled to expose like this facade of of what looks to be safe and comfortable and patient centered that that this long term care system has been successfully propagating for decades. And to the point where we all want our most of us, you know, let me rephrase that most of us care whether our our loved ones are being cared for. And when we're told that they're being cared for. We want to believe it. Why wouldn't we right? And so

Don Priess:

trust, we want one trust. Yeah, really, we want to trust and we want to trust in the people who have taken this on as their responsibility who have gone into this business. And it is a business to care for our elderly and are sick. And yet they don't want to do the things it takes.

Susie Singer Carter:

Well, they can't. They can't make

Don Priess:

the funds aren't there, the people aren't there. But yet they're still the facade is still there,

Susie Singer Carter:

right? But the end the funds are there. They're just being misappropriated. Because, yeah, back to what you said, it's a business. And this whole facade is propagated by these businesses that subscribe to the notion that honesty is far less profitable than dishonesty. And they really do regard humans as commodities. I mean, that's what they are, essentially. And, you know, I'm not a negative person. That's an i this is what's what I want to relay in this documentary is that I, I so I so had faith that my mom was in the best facility and in the best place, and really believed that, you know, but the truth is, is that it's deceitful marketing that works on most of us like it did me. Right. And I had no idea. Yeah, I had no ide...

Don Priess:

people choose to, and some people will, will just ignore it. And you know, it is what it is whatever they say it is, but you got confirmation from people, from staff members, that what you you were not imagining this?

Susie Singer Carter:

No. I mean, I had staff members say to me, we're drowning, and we've lost all our good ones. There was a few there was maybe one or two that were nurses and CNAs that were there before COVID. You know, and then when we had our, our guest, Rick mountcastle on the show, who was the subject of the of the Hulu mini series, dope sick, he had led this investigation on nursing home fraud, and he started to validate my fears, which was that, you know, when they were boots on the ground, and they were investigating these nursing homes that were five star nursing homes, all across the country, they find residents every time in a chair sitting in their urine or their feces for hours on end. And he said you know, that neglect had regrettably become Um, the industry standard. And that's that's just a fact, it doesn't matter what the rating is how much you pay, the business model depends on understaffing. It just does,

Don Priess:

By the way, these places are not inexpensive. No, they are very expensive. And so what you know, the unfortunate thing is, well, they'll say, Well, you know, we put more staff on, we're going to charge you more, it's not about coming out of their pockets, it's going to come out of the pockets of the people, we're going to be there to a point where no one no one's gonna be able to afford these places,

Susie Singer Carter:

We're lucky we have Rick Mountcastle as as a producer with us who's so supportive of getting this message out. And then we working with with organizations, like the National consumers voice who's been around since 1975. And they've been fighting against nursing home neglect, and they are powerful, and they're pure hearted. And they have research and they have all of you know, they have substantiated, what what is actually happening, we also are working with with cancer, which is a an organization here in California, that also protect the rights of residents in nursing homes, we really need to, unfortunately, we need to burn the system down and start over, we need to start from scratch. And we have to because my mom is just one of millions of people who are suffering like right now every day, because of nursing home neglect and abuse. And this is not just my story, this is your story. This is all of our story, because God willing, we all get older, and we all will be a carer or a carry. Right.

Don Priess:

Like you said, You've aggregated some amazing experts on the subject. But you've also heard from so many people who have experienced something similar, something you know, I mean, some of the truly shocking stories, yes, will be part of this documentary. Yes. The and I think people sometimes don't think they have a voice. Well, you're providing a voice, you know, through this. And and again, anyone who's listening to this, if you have stories or know of anything that that's related to this, we want to hear from you. Definitely, because it's so important that, you know, this, this documentary will be told through the story of Norma. But it it just that's the vehicle that we want, we need people to get on top of that vehicle and ride with we have

Susie Singer Carter:

Yeah, I mean, we have testimonials from nurses and CNAs, and doctors and specialists, people from Medicare and Medicaid and elder abuse lawyers and people that will pull the curtain back on all these failed practices. There's practices like the death panel, there's, you know, on the opposite end, there's also when people are not in hospice, and they're, and they're being given ultra high care. Needless, needless, you know, proceed. therapies. Yeah. So that they can so that they can make money off of them. And it's actually making that person frailer than they are making it stronger. So these are other practices that go on in the opposite direction. There's early hospice and there's even euthanasia. And that's that's a whole nother story. So, you know, it's it's really a much needed punch to the gut. Yes. To look at our health care system. That's literally collasping.

Don Priess:

And to be clear. Yeah. And and to be clear, there's so many people who are in this system, who are not in control of it, they are there they are true angels, right, that are that are that are part of the system unwittingly because and they I feel I feel for them, because they had to either be heard from them, we had them in there. And they're they're in pain over this.

Susie Singer Carter:

Oh my god. That's why a lot of them are leaving this this industry because they can't stand witness to this. I had a nurse tell me the week my mom was dying. And she said, Don't bring her back here. And was extraordinary because she could somehow compartmentalize and still be still have a heart. So you know, it's not easy. It's not easy. And so anyway, that's what we're doing. I hope to make some impact and move the needle and hopefully help other people avoid this horrible chapter that I went through that is so stressful and so on so many levels. You're already losing someone you love and then to have all this other unnecessary stress is is it's it's uncalled for and it's egregious and, and I don't want any buddy else says loved one to suffer physically like my mother did for reasons that could have been avoided.

Don Priess:

And for the caregiver to suffer, I mean, for six months Since You Went every day, you to a point where you had to move from your home into another place that was closer, because the commute was so bad. And the stress level on the caregiver is is unmeasurable and and that's why, you know, I think some people are going Suze, how can you keep going with this? It's, it's over? Well, no, it's not over. And your mom shouldn't have gone through this at you should not have gone through this in vain. Right and so, so through you and the team, you've you've created, and your mom. She's still there, she's still pushing, he sees right behind you every day, you know, this will not be in vain, there will be change.

Susie Singer Carter:

No Country for Old people, let's make it a country for old people. Let's, let's revere them. Let's change that. Stay tuned. We're going to keep you updated on it. And we've got some great other guests coming up next week that I'm excited about.

Don Priess:

Absolutely. And as we said, if you have stories, if you know anyone who would like to support this or be a part of it, we'd love to hear from you. And

Susie Singer Carter:

We really would. Because why? Because you know what, on. I love my mom so much you do love I did. I loved my mom and I still love my mom. And really, you know, it's what it's all about.

Don Priess:

It is you know why? You know why? Because love is powerful. Love is contagious, and Love Conquers Alz. Please share like, do all those things. Subscribe, and we'll definitely see you next time.

Susie Singer Carter:

Take care of yourself. Stay safe and kiss all the people you love.