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Elder Care Is A Life Plan with Shanika Batchelor · Holding It Together (Kinda)

• 1:13
  Michael Mackniak: Welcome back to holding it together, kinda.
• 1:16
  Michael Mackniak: I'm your host, Michael Mac.
• 1:17
  Michael Mackniak: Hello and welcome to Today we're diving into a topic kind of.
• 1:21
  Michael Mackniak: I'm your host, Michael Macniac.
• 1:22
  Michael Mackniak: Really here we will get real on our conversations about culture from home care to be a facility.
• 1:29
  Michael Mackniak: And the messy reality problem and all balance.
• 1:31
  Michael Mackniak: Personalized care sugar coating, no clinical jargon, just real talking about the hospital care medication battle.
• 1:39
  Michael Mackniak: And the toll it takes on a home.
• 1:40
  Michael Mackniak: Assuming that we have a discussion.
• 1:44
  Michael Mackniak: The next step, obviously.
• 1:46
  Michael Mackniak: It's possible every single day.
• 1:49
  Michael Mackniak: Holding it together for the overthinkers stepped up version of characters.
• 1:54
  Michael Mackniak: Anyone feels like they're once built a coffee away from a mouth.
• 1:56
  Michael Mackniak: Hopefully we saw it coming, but mind that's on YouTube ad it's it's kinda H I we often AI E D A nursing home scribes, like the necessary evil, twist exhaust, or whatever you need to do, or even clinical crisis.
• 2:10
  Michael Mackniak: But as our global population ages and our single entity of family and community care stretches to the breaking point, we have to ask: is it time to change that narrative?
• 2:23
  Michael Mackniak: Joining me today is Janika Bachelor.
• 2:26
  Michael Mackniak: Shanika is doing something truly fascinating.
• 2:29
  Michael Mackniak: She's bridging the gap between U.S.
• 2:31
  Michael Mackniak: care standards and the emerging market in Egypt with her company, Armana Assisted Living.
• 2:37
  Michael Mackniak: Egypt of all places, folks.
• 2:39
  Michael Mackniak: We're going to talk about the guilt of the caregiver, the demand for dignity and aging, and why the quote-unquote nursing facility might just be the most important infrastructure of the next next decade.
• 2:52
  Michael Mackniak: Or maybe even more.
• 3:07
  Michael Mackniak: And Shanika, just do me a favor, just introduce yourself to my listeners and tell everybody what you're doing and what's got you really fired up these days in terms of your work or your passions or whatever you got going on.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so hello everyone.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Shanika Bachelor.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: I am the co-founder and the founder of our co-founder of All of Our Love Assisted Living up in Wisconsin and also the founder of Armana Assisted Living up in Egypt.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: So pretty fired up because I am pretty much introducing the Middle East, North Africa area to a Western concept of assisted living, long-term health care for elderly and advanced age.
• 3:54
  Michael Mackniak: And that's what's got you.
• 3:55
  Michael Mackniak: I mean, that would that would be enough to get anybody fired up.
• 3:57
  Michael Mackniak: So obviously, you're fired up about that and the progress that you're making there, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, definitely, definitely, definitely.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm super excited about this new chapter of my career and all the opportunities I'm going to be able to give people and also the knowledge and spreading knowledge of what elderly care could be.
• 4:18
  Michael Mackniak: And well, there's a couple of factors that go into play there.
• 4:21
  Michael Mackniak: Number one, you have a successful facility that you've been running in Wisconsin for how long?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so I opened my first one up while I was active duty in 2014.
• 4:36
  Michael Mackniak: 2014, you were in active duty.
• 4:38
  Michael Mackniak: What branch?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Navy.
• 4:41
  Michael Mackniak: Navy.
• 4:42
  Michael Mackniak: Okay, good for you.
• 4:43
  Michael Mackniak: And congratulations on your success and your service.
• 4:45
  Michael Mackniak: Thank you.
• 4:47
  unknown: Thank you.
• 4:47
  Michael Mackniak: Okay, so you started that in 2014.
• 4:49
  Michael Mackniak: Now we're we're more than 10 years in, and you decided you're gonna make a move to Egypt of all places.
• 4:56
  Michael Mackniak: Can you tell us how this came about?
• 4:59
  Michael Mackniak: I mean, I this is a big giant elephant in the room that I, if I don't ask, I would be not doing a service.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm you are not the only person.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: They'd be like, why Egypt?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I go there so many times, and I I absolutely love the place.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: I love the people there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: They are just it's just a very warm community.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been living there now for two years.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Before I moved there, I kind of looked at as being an owner of assisted living, I kind of always look at how the infrastructure for elderly care is at any place I go to.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of weird, but my passion is elderly care.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: So when I was there, I had a lot of people come up to me and ask me for suggestions in the US for assisted living.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, don't y'all have any?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, no, we don't.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, let me do some research.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that took me down a whole rabbit hole to learning policies and procedures, what do they have there?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Which they have convalescent homes, which are basically equivalent to the US as a small group home.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: So nothing on the major scale of assisted living where it creates more of a community.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I decided to introduce this concept there, and I'm working with the local government and trying to figure out how we can make this a good thing.
• 6:20
  Michael Mackniak: Oh wow.
• 6:21
  Michael Mackniak: So you even got the government involved in and support, theoretically, in support of this process.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it kind of ties together with it's this action plan Egypt and not just Egypt, the whole Middle East, North Africa area have going on called the Medina 2030 Action Plan, which is Middle East North Africa Stands for Action Plan.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they're trying to improve the health care and med they like introducing medical tourism, improve the health care of elderly and the underprivileged there.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: So my concept of what my business is, is like fitting in so perfectly.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not really not.
• 7:02
  Michael Mackniak: You're right on you're right on the on the cusp, and on the you're you're a pioneer of it.
• 7:06
  Michael Mackniak: And down there, that's that's pretty impressive.
• 7:09
  Michael Mackniak: That's pretty impressive.
• 7:10
  Michael Mackniak: Now, explain to people listening the differences between what we would call our group home, our nursing home for lack of better term, or skilled skilled nursing facility, acute facility, and what you're doing in terms of assisted living.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: So a group home is usually a smaller facility, usually it's like five people.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: For in Wisconsin, where we're at, we call we don't really call them group homes, we call them adult family homes.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's more of a family morse setting.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it's no more than four people.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Once you've got five and I believe up to 150, which is uh quite a jump, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Five to 150 people, that is a CBRF.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the CBRF is where they don't need much nursing, as in actual RN care.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: They can be taken care of by a personal care worker or a CNA type person.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then there we have residential complexes here in Wisconsin, which is more of an independent living type of situation where they don't need any care, they just probably need help with just a you know, you know, like those independent elderly home communities they have where it's just cheaper for people 55 and I'm older.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next will be skilled nursing or nursing home.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's those people who need like full-term care for nursing, actual RN, they have traches, they have devices that really need the RN care.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's levels to it.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Some people can, you know, need nursing for short term, which is acute care, which most nursing homes offer, to then you know, go down to assisted living, which is more of an independent, but we have aides and staff to be there with you 24.
• 9:10
  Michael Mackniak: Right.
• 9:10
  Michael Mackniak: That's the nice thing.
• 9:11
  Michael Mackniak: I think a lot of people, as they get older, like the idea of assisted living because it offers them the freedom.
• 9:19
  Michael Mackniak: I mean, you basically have in most cases that I'm thinking of, you have an apartment or a con little townhouse, you live in there, but on staff would be a nurse in physical therapy and things like this, in case you wind up needing that in for whatever reason.
• 9:36
  Michael Mackniak: And then there's all kinds of, you know, there's supposedly, you know, recreational activities and things like this for folks to do and make a a really try to make it as much of a home with a little backup plan, a little safety net for you.
• 9:50
  Michael Mackniak: Yeah, but of course, there's different degrees of uh acuity uh within assisted living.
• 9:58
  Michael Mackniak: Some of them are more geared toward making sure that we have medical care, and some of them are just not, they're just a place to go where you've got dances and there's a bar and there's all kinds of fun activities going on, and I you know, so I've seen all of those.
• 10:15
  Michael Mackniak: And a lot of them, and I believe you're going in this direction too, also ha house now memory care units.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so a lot of places, well, most assisted living nowadays do have small memory care all timers dementia situation going on, which is very, very good because you can start off in regular community assisted living and you know, might have struggle troubles remembering things, and they don't have to transition to a new place, they could just go to another floor where it's more hands-on for memory care.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: I am introducing Alzheimer's dementia section into my facility here.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: It does lack that type of facility in Egypt.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And another thing that you were mentioning, when it comes to families that because that considers assisted living, they may can like in Egypt, you can probably afford a nurse.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of private nurses and aides and stuff there, but you don't have that community, you don't have, you know, you can't go out and have activities, and just even as being a family member, you know, you can't take mom and dad to, you know, go play cards with their friends every day.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it kind of gives that sense of community to mom, dad, or whatever family member you have for these assisted livings.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of assisted livings are offering not just for elderly, but for people who have mental health or disorders or or anything.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's opening to just adults with with that need the extra care with ADLs of activities they daily living.
• 12:00
  Michael Mackniak: Yeah, and I I I'll be the first to go on record as saying I think that the socialization aspect, especially as we age, obviously when we're very young, and then as we get older, I think the socialization aspect is the probably the paramount thing to make us human and make us live and feel alive.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that is true.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Had a friend tell me she had her father had passed last year, and she believed that her father passed because of loneliness.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, they they're so busy in their lives, they gotta make a living and stuff.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And when you just you're not intentional, I don't want to make anybody feel like you know, you're not being able to take care of your being there for your parents, but it's we really do have lives that we gotta pay our bills, and with the economy and how it's going, it's hard.
• 12:49
  Michael Mackniak: And that's a big part of what I want to talk to you about because you're obviously coming at care from perspective that needs to be heard because it is there, it is vital, it is essential, and you know when we have uh let's say this family-centric care, right?
• 13:09
  Michael Mackniak: Being a deeply culturally rooted concept uh theoretically in our in our society.
• 13:15
  Michael Mackniak: I mean, there's societies that are much more uh deeply rooted that way.
• 13:20
  Michael Mackniak: For instance, the the Asian countries, you know, thinking of China, Japan, they take really good care of their elderly.
• 13:26
  Michael Mackniak: Here, I think we do a pretty good job, but not not as good as them.
• 13:30
  Michael Mackniak: But how uh do you work with families that are navigating that guilt aspect when children feel that they they just can't do it anymore?
• 13:41
  Michael Mackniak: They can't be there to drive mom to play cards with her friends every day.
• 13:45
  Michael Mackniak: And by the way, she's living in our home, and our home has, you know, it's a raised ranch, it's got upstairs and downstairs, and we, you know, she's basically confined to one floor of the house, and it's just not a good fit.
• 13:58
  Michael Mackniak: So when people come to you, how do you what do you have to say to them?
• 14:04
  Michael Mackniak: What do you what's the lesson or the verbs, the words that you want to impart upon them?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been there seeing my family.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's how my career started.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: When my great-grandmother, I used to help my aunt take care of my great-grandmother.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember going before, and I'm in high school now, a freshman in high school, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night just to turn grandmother over or make sure her medicines, or right before I'm going to school, had to change pull-ups and do all this stuff as a teenager just to help out my aunt before going to school, and that's overwhelming, right?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a stressor on families.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And when my aunt had made that decision to put my great-grandmother into an assisted living, it was hard, it was so heartbreaking to see the how she felt that she was betraying her mother, and uh a doctor said that it would be beneficial, but it is, and seeing that I didn't like the place that my great-grandmother went to is actually the reason why I said I'm gonna open up something and make it better.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: But as I got older, I learned what the best things of it was.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: You you can't give your parents everything when you still have a family to take care of, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, what we are in assisted living, if you got a good executive director or person that owns the facility, they they we are advocates, we are truly advocates for the family, not just for mom and dad to make sure they take care of, but we we are like the extended support system for for the children or the niece or the nephew, whoever, the sister, the brother.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So we are there to help you through the emotional part of it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: We're here to help you take take a load off with helping with the medication management, helping with talking to the doctors on the everything that's going on, the updates on mom and dad.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're keeping you in a loop.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're not we're not taking away your rights or your involvement.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're basically just a help.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're we're the help that's offered to you.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So you're giving your family members something more.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Don't think as you taking away, but you're giving them more, you're giving them more than you can offer and giving them a community that you you can't give them.
• 16:39
  Michael Mackniak: Well, and I think that uh we we sort of have this uh I don't know, uh Hollywood movie script idea in our head that mom is old, so now it's my decision to make whether she goes into a home or not, right?
• 16:54
  Michael Mackniak: And that we're gonna play, we're gonna put her in a home.
• 16:57
  Michael Mackniak: But you know, in my experience of 30 plus years in law and whatnot, uh in helping families with exactly this kind of thing and and and uh estate planning and whatnot, mom, the elder person, is involved with the decision making.
• 17:13
  Michael Mackniak: And I mean it's you know, hopefully that's still the case.
• 17:16
  Michael Mackniak: And and mom sees uh the earth the need for this, and I would hope that mom also one thing I I I pray is true is that mom doesn't want you, daughter, to be uh doting on her, to be dropping everything in your life to take care of her.
• 17:34
  Michael Mackniak: She had her life and and she wants you to live your life too.
• 17:37
  Michael Mackniak: And I really believe that people feel that way.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think people feel that way, but you know, as a a child, you you look at all the things, especially, you know, if you had a single parent or something happened to one parent, you you want to you've seen the struggle that your parents had with you, and you like you want to now that I'm older, I want to give the most to them.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you you have to re like realize that a facility is not a place where you're just dumping them off, you're not, you're you're giving them so much.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we it's it's a lot of communication that you need to have with families, and it's a lot of talking, and it's it's definitely preparation.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: People think that you wait till mom gets ill, and then the highest level where you really can't take anymore, and you really need help, and she has no other choice but to go to assisted living.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now you're not taking the time to find the right one.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now you gotta hurry up and get finances in order.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes it takes two years of getting things done and accounts and stuff in order and talking to these estate lawyers to get things prepared for mom and dad to get into these facilities.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I think making these choices more open and planned, and and I think it needs to be people we need to talk about it more.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: It needs to be a part of the mainstream, as a part of the life plan, not just like the asterisk.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it needs to be like a part of it because this is a thing, especially baby boomers, they have that many kids.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, it and then a lot of them are getting older, but a lot of them now statistics can show they're more active, so they want to go to communities that that are more active, and communities are more active now, they're not what they were 20 years ago, 10 years ago.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: They're introducing more holistic care as more luxury services now.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like, oh, you're just dumping me in an old folks' home where people just sit around in wheelchairs and it's gloomy but resent lights.
• 19:58
  Michael Mackniak: Yeah, yeah, they call it God's waiting room, right?
• 20:01
  Michael Mackniak: Everybody's just sitting there.
• 20:02
  Michael Mackniak: Right.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, never if it's God's waiting room, then guess what?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a luxury waiting room when you come over to my type of facility because I want them to be so happy and it's just it's such a passion.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: I want every resident, I want every family to be just elated and proud to be at a facility at all.
• 20:21
  Michael Mackniak: And and that's one of the things that you are really striving for with Armada is to excuse me, really go high-end luxury for these folks, right?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm doing so much research.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Even now that I'm back here in America, went and looked at some of the communities, what they have in to offer.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're often still a little more, but it's still even like an interior design idea, how they do lights in different places, different aspects I see in different parts.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like India is now starting to become a good leading representation of luxury assisted living.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: India, like I what?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: So am I gonna plan a trip to go there to even do market research and see how things, what practices they have, what you know, because it's the details, even the lighting, how it can help with sunpounding for Alzheimer's, the colors of the walls, the flooring, all these things matter and smells, helps, everything, all these things, you know, helps at work.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm trying to implement in all these technologies I can get from everywhere.
• 21:31
  Michael Mackniak: We'll get back to our conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a second to talk about something that many of us in this community deal with every single day, and that's the mental load of caregiving.
• 21:43
  Michael Mackniak: If you're like me, your brain is probably filled with appointment dates, medication schedules, and a never-ending list of questions for doctors.
• 21:50
  Michael Mackniak: It's exhausting trying to keep it all in your head while also trying to show up emotionally for the person you love.
• 21:56
  Michael Mackniak: That's exactly why the team at the Care Coalition created the Care Navigator Journal.
• 22:02
  Michael Mackniak: This is not just another notebook.
• 22:05
  Michael Mackniak: It's a tool specifically designed to help you to stay organized and more importantly, to help you feel a little more in control when things start feeling really chaotic.
• 22:17
  Michael Mackniak: It gives you a dedicated space to track medical updates, manage daily tasks, and even process your own thoughts.
• 22:24
  Michael Mackniak: Imagine such a thing.
• 22:25
  Michael Mackniak: Your well-being matters just as much as the person that you're caring for.
• 22:31
  Michael Mackniak: If you're feeling overwhelmed and looking for a way to stay organized, I highly recommend picking one up.
• 22:37
  Michael Mackniak: You can find it right now at www.carecoalition.org slash holding it together.
• 22:44
  Michael Mackniak: Again, that's carecoalition.org slash holding it together.
• 22:51
  Michael Mackniak: It's a small way to start holding it all together, one page at a time.
• 22:55
  Michael Mackniak: All right, let's get back to the show.
• 22:59
  Michael Mackniak: Yeah, that's that's fantastic.
• 23:01
  Michael Mackniak: And you're right.
• 23:01
  Michael Mackniak: I mean, all those little things add up.
• 23:03
  Michael Mackniak: It's that feng shui concept, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely feng shui.
• 23:07
  Michael Mackniak: But so from your perspective, the and and I agree with you.
• 23:12
  Michael Mackniak: thousand percent that we need to get proactive about this.
• 23:15
  Michael Mackniak: I think I think the the boomers now are the generation where they are much more open to talk about these types of things.
• 23:22
  Michael Mackniak: Again it's cultural of course, but they're much more open to talk about this type of planning than than any generation before.
• 23:31
  Michael Mackniak: And I have experience both professionally and personally with with that.
• 23:36
  Michael Mackniak: So I thousand percent agree with you about being proactive because if you have to respond at the at the last minute in a moment of crisis, it is ineffective, it's inefficient, and you wind up settling.
• 23:48
  Michael Mackniak: And in this type of thing we don't want to settle.
• 23:52
  Michael Mackniak: So rather than looking at this as a necessary evil which you know I I think that's how a lot of us couch it I really like your your take that we're being proactive in creating the choice for a better life for mom and the rest of the family.
• 24:11
  Michael Mackniak: Is that right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah so the necessary evil I we it's such a a a bad thing to say but it's what a lot of families feel.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: They feel yeah so I think it's just changing dynamic of that perspective.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it comes with communication we have to talk we have to talk to the families and be open about it and create a a place of when I say luxury people think okay I'm talking about gold toilets and whatever no the things that I'm calling luxury is a luxury it should be standard you know having places where it's sound rooms and places of relaxation places where you can all religions can go pray or enjoy that or activities having a hair salon having all these things should be standard but it's not a standard those are luxury items so I'm just creating a place where you can be able to talk to mom be like hey let's go check this place out let's see what it can offer maybe you'll be more happy here and we still it's close by we can still hang out the kids can come and see you after school you can hang out with new friends and it's it's introducing them to a a I guess a better retirement a better retirement I just for whatever reason the idea just popped in my head of that that young adult that's living in the house that's excited to get out of the house and have their first place right and we're trying to get mom excited to get out of your house to go and have her own place you know with with like minded people Jesus I'm thinking it's like going back to college but you know I know I know it's not but but you know but I mean it's almost like that it's almost like going to college or when I was a military I was in a in the barracks you know where you just have your own space and then you like you it it's almost just like that you have your own space you're in a community where you can have this activity you can go to lunch hey Bob meet me at lunch at six o'clock or you know dinner at six o'clock and let's go have this it that's that's the community that's that's what we're creating a place where they have their freedom it's freedom they're not dependent on you as a child or their sister or brother to take them places no they can make a decision like oh this is available let me go do this I want to schedule for me to go to the shopping mall okay let me schedule a ride through the facility I want to go play you know cards with my friends in the activity room or I want to go to the library they don't need you for that they can literally go and have access to themselves which makes them more happy makes has them more pride yeah I otherwise maybe they're well I can't have the girls over to play canasta today because this isn't my house this is my daughter's house and we got three kids running around the play you know so I I totally agree with that but I I I'm curious about the well I want to get back to the memory care thing first because one of the ways that that I think it works really well for families is you have mom and dad that are still living they both know that the that the house is just too much it's just too much and they decide we can't handle the house we're gonna sell the house we're gonna take the money we're gonna go to this assistive care facility near you guys well and and that's another thing I'll talk about too let me make a note to myself but we're gonna go there because you know if case you haven't noticed mom's mom's memory and whatnot is failing a little bit so one of the things that's attracted to a lot of people about the facility is we're living in this apartment now if dementia Alzheimer's or whatever neurological disorder kicks in stronger later mom can then go to the memory behavior unit and dad could stay in the facility or vice versa whatever the case may be and they're still right next to each other they could spend all day every day together like they're used to and that's that's a really attractive component for a lot of people yeah it so I was one of the directors in a facility up in New Jersey before I moved over to Egypt and we had a resident there who was married they've been married for like 60 years and they're from Italy and the wife ended up having dementia the the the the husband still spunky and everything and they still shared the room together in the dementia floor but the husband got to go up and down and do whatever he wanted to do and all the activities but the wife was right there and he'll come down there and spend lunch with his wife but she was in the memory care already and he still slept with her every night that is what these facilities offer it offers that type of care where they still together they've been together forever so they're still together but you're able to supply the care that each one of me tailor to them.
• 29:37
  Michael Mackniak: So and it keeps them with dignity it's dignity sure is sure is and it's and it's it's relieving some guilt probably you know and it's it's like you say I mean we have an aging culture right now and these types of little tweaks to what we're used to are what make this level of care that much more palatable to all of us especially the people who are the quote unquote patients right yeah you brought up another thing one one thing I think that that we have to consider as well is that and you you started talking about it and we were talking about it for a second and kind of jumped off of it but not only is our is our population aging and but we're also transient.
• 30:26
  Michael Mackniak: So there's a lot of people who do not live near their parents anymore and mom and dad don't want to leave where they know and where they've always been to go wherever those kids are and frankly the kids probably don't want them coming you know either i you know it's that's and I don't mean that to be a a negative statement it's this is how we live and this is what we need to do.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's an important aspect as to why your business model is so important especially the luxury end where people feel like they are being treated with the dignity that they've earned just by virtue of being on the planet for this long right yeah so when I had thought okay am I gonna be able to do private pay people in Egypt how many are actually gonna want this because it's a cultural difference as we we talked earlier a lot of families feel guilty or it's almost ashamed or it's frowned upon to put your loved ones into these type of facilities but I mean I haven't done any real marketing I get so many calls from actual residents potential residents saying hey I'm in Canada I want to move to Egypt and I'm looking for a facility like yours or I'm in I'm in California and I want to come back to Egypt or I'm like Europeans it's I I'm getting inquiries from people all over the world and I'm like wow this is just it's it's just mind blowing to me it's like amazing exciting I'm like oh my god usually in these local facilities it's everybody's from Jersey everybody's from the whatever area you're in like I'm creating a facility that it could have people who lived all over the world and just imagine what this like community like the the car games are gonna look like just imagine what lunch is going to look like it's gonna be so exciting.
• 32:30
  Michael Mackniak: I'm excited I'm just excited you know that's that's a really excellent excellent point and let me tell you why my parents were living up in Vermont and you know in Vermont it's the weather's pretty crummy for at least where they were you know for nine months out of the year the weather's pretty crummy so you get isolated and locked in they decided one day that's it we're up and moving we're going down to Florida and they they settled in this really outgoing active community in Florida their lives have been extended by 10 15 years no doubt about it in my mind and the community down there is all transplants right they're all all over the country all over the world so everybody has that in common so you're not trying to fight through you're not trying to make bonds where other people don't want to necessarily bond and that sounds like exciting about what you're describing with your facility because people are coming from all over the world they're looking to make friends they're looking to make a new community and just that alone like you said the card games are certainly going to be interesting.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah I'm excited I'm super excited and then another reason of course with the economy in the Western world is just going up up even in the facilities are costing way more now it's because you know we got to pay the employees more we got it's so many aspects food is more electricity bills is more in Egypt it's a cheaper cost for me of course the the dollar amount to the Egyptian pounds is is you know significant difference.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm able to make our facility half the price of what you would pay in the US so you'll be able to get a luxury service for half that price and and it your your retirement is going to last a little longer versus what what you were going to talk about when mom and dad retire and they need to look in these facilities they got to sell the house to be able to put the money into the trust so that the trust can pay for the assisted living and that money only lasts so much because the assisted living for mom and dad is eight thousand each sixteen thousand dollars a month that money will dwindle in like two years so fast.
• 34:54
  Michael Mackniak: Yeah yeah and now they're on Medicaid Medicaid and you know one thing that I have seen I brought this up in another discussion with another nurse who does in-home care we were talking about the bad old days when there was a lot of fraud in the long-term care industry for insurance insurance policies I had an aunt an uncle who had a great great policy that they'd they'd paid into for years and years and years and it wound up paying just about every penny of their long-term care for the however many years they were there including when they were getting you know on and they needed a little bit more care we managed to to uh structure it with using some of their money and the insurance money so that they can get that little bit of more care to keep them where they were so I highly advise people to look into long-term care.
• 35:53
  Michael Mackniak: I'm not an insurance man and I don't know much about how that all works but I know it could be expensive but it but it may be it may be worth worth your while to look into because of what we're talking about the increasing costs here in in the states and in the western side of the hemispheres right um how do you what one of the things that that you wind up seeing uh as people get get aging become you know aged is uh let's say they get ill they have an illness they have a fall whatever the case may be they're brought when they go from the hospital uh it from acute care step down to a let's say rehab acute rehab facility sometimes it's a nightmare experience sometimes it's a wonderful experience and do you think that that that facilities such as yours and the one you you're designing and are looking to to kind of mass I don't want to say mass produce but hopefully replicate for other other places and other people do you think it it makes sense to have folks have sort of a a tryout period where they can go and see and and see if they like it and and oh test it out give it a test run?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of a lot of companies already do it especially the luxury ones in the US so you can find a lot in Jersey I know some private ones in in Wisconsin that does it where it we call it respite respite care.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's basically you can be two weeks a week depends on what their minimum standard is at the facility where you can try it out like what is it called try before you buy type of situation buyer beware yeah buyer beware but I think this is a if a facility is confident in their product just as anyone any entrepreneur any business owner any doctor if you're if you're confident in your product you should you should promote this this situation of respite care because that can lead to long-term clients which leads to them referring someone else to the rehab or the hospital saying oh they did great with them try this you have to you have to have that standard of care and it has to be repetitive for every resident all the time so it's not that you're putting on for the first week or just because a family member is coming in to visit you want to gain a sale no this needs to be an ongoing thing 365 days a year so I know a lot of facilities are offering which I will have contracted PTOT at my facility so if somebody comes out the hospital and they don't need like 24 hour nursing care but they just need PTOT they can be able to be in the facility and have PTOT on you know on campus right there.
• 38:54
  Michael Mackniak: So which is a great way for them to check out your facility and as you said you take the test run and hey you know what if if I ever need a long-term care this is where I'm coming yeah you can if you love it you can keep your room yeah well and the thing that I like about what you're talking about is the idea that I have a place for my my my dad to go that isn't that clinical bleak antiseptic facility with the with the lights you were talking about before and that Linolite you know yeah as opposed to you know some of the luxuries that he's come to appreciate in his life and you know and and that's that's a really that's a winner from my perspective.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now when do you anticipate your your project getting up and running and and moving forward in in Egypt and uh people still in in Wisconsin right yeah so hopefully we will be fully open and ready for the first resident move in by the end of the year November time is our hitting go which is good weather is great we have amazing grand opening so that is our target opening is November of this year.
• 40:11
  Michael Mackniak: We're just handle in touch yeah well make sure you stay in touch with me so I can you know continue to look at where you're where you're at with it and next time I'm over that way I'd love to go down I've never been to Egypt I've been down at Southern Africa but I'd love to go and visit it.
• 40:28
  Michael Mackniak: Now I want to make sure that that I'm saying it right and pronouncing it right so that everybody can can check you out online.
• 40:35
  Michael Mackniak: It's ArmanaAssisted living dot com.
• 40:38
  Michael Mackniak: Yep Armana Assisted living yes arm a n a yeah yep yep yep that's and tell everybody uh that Michael sent you and that you know shanika because this is you met her right here on the holding it together kind of podcast and thanks I think I think it's an important discussion to be had I think people need to be educated about what long-term care looks like and can look like should look like yes and you're doing it and you know kudos to you you're you're chasing a dream you're living a dream and you can we got people like you we got people like you creating you know products that is gonna make it so much better.
• 41:23
  Michael Mackniak: I'm so excited that I have met you because that I'm looking for what you I want something that'd be able to connect our family members so they can feel confident when communicating I'm we need people like you so well and I appreciate that and we didn't even talk about that and the checks in the mail by the way for bringing that up I otherwise I would have not brought it up but one of the things that Shanik and I were talking about was the idea of using not only the care navigator journal that she and I were pouring over when we were together but also the app that will go along with it so that families will have a way to access and to stay on top of and be out in front of actually their loved ones care on an ongoing basis.
• 42:09
  Michael Mackniak: So again we get proactive about things we stay involved and I and it and it's just so so important.
• 42:15
  Michael Mackniak: And thank you for bringing it up because I I frankly hadn't even I forgot.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah I'm happy I'm happy for everything that's going on with elderly care and how we are all just doing our little part to try to make it better for not just the US but now everyone around the world yeah and bring you know we have some good advancements here in terms of that luxury side of things that that I think people around the world deserve and kudos to you I'm I'm really inspired by you and you are really chasing after it so thanks for being here and thanks for all you do for everybody else.
• 42:55
  Michael Mackniak: Thank you thank you it was a pleasure have a good day Shanika.
• 43:00
  Michael Mackniak: You too this discussion reminds us that the struggle to care for our elders is a universal human experience.
• 43:11
  Michael Mackniak: It's not about finding a place to put somebody it's about finding a place where they can be alive and continue to be somebody for those of you who listen who aren't currently in the thick of that caregiver guilt remember choosing a professional system isn't a sign that you've stopped caring.
• 43:28
  Michael Mackniak: God know it's often the only way to ensure you can keep caring without losing yourself in the process we're just out here holding it together kinda and we'll see you next time