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47- Family caregivers and dementia, Beth Fauth's research on late life

March 09, 2021 Utah State University Office of Research Episode 47
Instead
47- Family caregivers and dementia, Beth Fauth's research on late life
Show Notes Transcript

“When someone begins to take care of older parents, spouses, or siblings, they don’t usually think of themselves as a caregiver; it’s just what you do for family. But people doing these tasks take on a significant emotional and physical load,” says Dr. Beth Fauth, Professor in the department of Human Development and Family Studies. The problem is that when caregivers don’t think of themselves as filling that role, they are less likely to reach out and find the resources they need.

Dr. Fauth talks us through her research and efforts to provide and communicate resources for caregivers of family members with dementia or other needs. She reminds us that the health of caregiver and the care receiver are equally important.  When new parents have a baby, they are expected to reach outside of themselves for help and resources; we consider it essential to care for both the parents and the infant. However, we have not yet normalized the same act of reaching out for late life caregivers, and we need to. Fauth’s research has shown that caregiver interventions work – they reduce stress and improve well-being of caregivers that utilize them.  They are available face-to-face, online, and in other formats.

https://www.alz.org/help-support/caregiving/caregiver-health

https://daas.utah.gov


Wyatt: [00:00:00] So there's lots of things that could be improved with money, are there things that could be improved with just changing how people are thinking about stuff?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:00:07] 90 percent of people who need assistance in life are cared for by their family. But the majority of the caregiver education materials, they're online, completely free a solution without throwing money at it, with the marketing and with me to say the stuff is here. And so there's no reason to do this alone. And we know you can do it because you are doing it and you're doing a really good job.But why not give yourself a little help and give yourself a little bit of, like, connection to other people going through this?

 

Wyatt: [00:00:38] In today's episode, you're going to be hearing from Beth Fauth. 

 

Beth Fauth: [00:00:42] I'm Beth, Fauth I'm an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Utah State University. So I do gerontology, which is like the study of late life, do some stuff with middle aged adults, but mostly it's with people with dementia and their family caregivers.

 

Wyatt: [00:00:58] My name is Wyatt and you could be trying to go it alone, but you are listening to this instead, a podcast from the Office of Research at Utah State University.In this episode, you'll hear Beth talk about dementia and the people who care for people with dementia. She'll also talk about her research into programs to help caregivers. There are links to some of those programs and the episode description, and you'll learn what you can do to help any dementia caregivers in your life. Here's my conversation with Beth Fauth.

 

Wyatt: [00:01:38] So a lot of your work focuses on dementia and Alzheimer's.What is the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:01:45] That's a great question.A lot of people use those terms interchangeably. Dementia is like a figure. We call it like an umbrella term. There's a lot of different kinds of dementia. Alzheimer's is the most common kind, about 60 to 80 percent of all dementia or Alzheimer's.So it's kind of like, you know, can you get me a Kleenex or can you get me a tissue? Kleenex is one brand of tissues. There's a lot of tissues out there. They didn't used to medically, didn't used to make a lot of distinction often into what kind of dementia a person had. So they just sort of presumed if somebody had dementia, that it was probably Alzheimer's. The next most common kind is called vascular dementia. That's, again, just a different mechanism going on inside the brain. But it's leading to the same outcome, which is somebody is going to have lots of memory loss of function and it's going to accumulate over time.

 

Wyatt: [00:02:30] Are there more treatment options if you have vascular dementia versus Alzheimer's, or is it all kind of not the best news everywher

 

Beth Fauth: [00:02:38] Most dementias are not treatable. And some would say that by definition they're not treatable because they're a degenerative. So they're going to get worse over time. There are some really kind of rare exceptions where the damage is caused by some underlying mechanism that they can stop the process. But that's not common. Most dementias are not curable with Alzheimer's disease. There's some medications that can give that can help boost the neurotransmitters in the brain a little bit longer. So give people a little bit more sort of activity and quality of life a little bit longer. They don't they don't gain any brain cells back that have been lost. Most of the damage is caused by like poor cardiovascular health. So if you have, say, diabetes and high blood pressure and sort of all these common cardiovascular symptoms, if you can control those symptoms, you could potentially slow the damage of vascular dementia. Probably couldn't stop it entirely at that point, but you could potentially have less damage being done over time if you could get the vascular system to be healthier.

 

Wyatt: [00:03:36] Yeah, yeah. So when there's some kind of, like, walkathon or something to, like, find a cure for Alzheimer's, is that foolish marketing?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:03:43] Like, that's not quite it. I have chaired that walk. I have been the boss of that walk. And Logan, you know, I mean, they know a lot about the mechanisms of what's going on in the brain with Alzheimer's. I mean, they sort of know what's what's not working. The question or the issue that they're trying to tap into it. Like, how do you stop that or how do you prevent that process from happening? So I am I'm an optimist by personality, but I'm I'm I'm very optimistic that they're going to be able to find something that's going to either slow or stop that process. It might take a while because it's a it's a very complicated, but because we know so much about it, I think there's ways that we're going to be able to help combat it.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:04:22] Maybe 10, 15 years ago, the federal government put a lot of money towards cancer research and they made huge growth in how we could treat cancer. Lately, over the last few years, they've been sending similar amounts of money towards Alzheimer's research. Not to say if you throw money at it, you'll fix it, but you're certainly going to get a lot better chance of identifying how to fix it if there's really good research going on. So I'm an optimist.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:04:45] I think that there's some kind of treatment to either slow or I don't know about reversing. I mean, I think what's the brain cells are dead. I'm not sure you're going to be able to get a whole lot back. But I think if you could identify it early, stop the process earlier, I think you have many more years of quality of life. I think that's on the horizon.

 

Wyatt: [00:05:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the people coming up with those drugs and those treatments are slicing brains and looking in microscopes and putting people through MRI and stuff. But that's not really your area of research, at least as far as I know. Tell me about what you do and how government research that would be above my pay grade.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:05:21] My research is more like looking at the social health of people. So the social and psychological health as opposed to the medical health. And so the the fact is, when you have a disease like Alzheimer's that's not curable, all you can do is try to give people the highest quality of life possible. There are ways to give people better days, better moments. On the on the flipside of that is the caregivers health, right.So you often have a family caregiver. In most cases, you have a family caregiver, family member who's doing the majority of the care for that person. And they're doing it willingly.They're not getting paid and they're taking a lot of the stress on themselves. And so that's also sort of where a lot of my interest in a lot of my research is, is how do we alleviate that stress? So they're also in a role. It's very difficult to get out of the house. They want to do it. They want the person home. They don't want them in assisted living. Even when that person transfers to an assisted living, they often still are a caregiver. They still go and they still do a lot of the kind of Hands-On activities with their with their family member. So, yeah, my my research is generally about either trying to identify ways to reduce the stress or improve the quality of life for somebody with dementia, or maybe more specifically is to look at the programs that are. They're either ones that I've been asked to evaluate or ones that I've worked on creating to say, do these programs work?

 

Wyatt: [00:06:43] Yeah, yeah. Tell me more about one of these programs. And can you also tell me how you figure it out, whether it worked or didn't work?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:06:52] So there's been two I've done smaller projects, but the two larger projects, one was an existing caregiver intervention that was developed in New York City. So this one in particular was involving a counselor. So a caregiver would would be referred to the program because their family member had dementia. They were taking them to a medical center in Manhattan. And so they would say, you're a caregiver, you're eligible for this program. They would meet with a counselor once face to face and then four times with their family members present or around the phone and then once more with the counselor. And the plan was to try to kind of identify what the caregiver stressors are and to try to get the family involved in offering additional support beyond what they were already doing.And so because that program had worked in Manhattan, we tested it in Utah through other states that tested it as well.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:07:43] And so the evaluation is really let's measure what's the caregivers levels of stress before they start the program. How many depressive symptoms do they report in the last week? How much family conflict do they report? How satisfied are their are they with their social support network, like how much help they're getting? And you measure those things before they start the intervention and then after they end the intervention and then about four months after that to see if the effects of the intervention have sustained themselves over time so that you can compare basically the levels of depressive symptoms before and after the program.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:08:17] And if you can show, statistically speaking, that somebody is depressive, symptoms have gone down and their level of family conflict has gone down, then you can show that there's something about being in this program that's helping these caregivers. Mm hmm. Yeah. Did it work? It did, yeah. So the main ones for for that project were family conflict, which makes sense. Right? You're bringing family members and family members might be kind of unaware of all of this. One individual is doing caring for their parent or caring for their spouse. And so when you bring family members on board and you let them know like this is really what the caregiver needs, how can you help me set up a plan of the calendar, something like that? Then family conflict went down and their satisfaction with their overall social support went up. We measure something called Bourdon, which doesn't have a very positive sounding name, but it's something like how overwhelmed are you by this role that you have? So it's very specific to caregiving. And we saw that burden decreased over the timeline. So that's how we sort of show that something works.

 

Wyatt: [00:09:24] I'm just curious if part of the problem is not even recognizing how much of a burden it is and how much time it costs them. Yeah, it's like a thing that happens that is absolutely a thing.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:09:36] So a lot of times, even if you want to advertise like I'm doing a study on caregivers, you don't get a lot of people that identify as being a caregiver. They're just a kid caring for their parent. Well, they're not a kid anymore. They're an adult caring for their older parent or their spouse. And they're caring for their they don't see themselves as a caregiver. They're doing what you do as a family member. So, you know, it doesn't really matter what they call themselves. But to us, it's like, yeah, that that's the first step is that people don't really notice that there is a role. They're just doing what they do. But then the issue is that maybe that makes them more reluctant to go feel like they need resources, that they can get support. So there's so many people come to me and say my sister in law is a caregiver. Oh, my gosh, she's so stressed out. Like, I have no idea how to help her, like, what should I do? And she's so alone, she feels like she's the only person going through this. And you're kind of like, well, there's a lot of people going through it. Right. But but there there's very few people that know that they can ask for help or that there is help available. And help could be as small as just some kind of minor education about what Alzheimer's is or how to talk to somebody with Alzheimer's. Or it might be something more significant, like managing stress in a healthy way, trying to enroll the person in some kind of program or get some kind of somebody respite care. We call in somebody to come to the house to give that caregiver a break for an hour from that role.So, yeah, I think it's a huge it's probably one of the biggest issues with dementia. Caregiving is that people. Report that they have high levels of depressive symptoms, that they're very isolated, that their life has changed and it's difficult and many it's also positive they talk about feeling very rewarded by that role, but they don't then see that there is maybe resources available that can help them to get through this in a more comfortable way.

 

Wyatt: [00:11:29] What are some of the reasons that one person kind of takes on the primary caregiver role? And then what are some of the reasons that the other siblings kind of like fade into the background?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:11:40] That's a good question. So, like, the common predictor of becoming a caregiver is being female and living geographically close. So, you know, there that I'm not trying to be sexist here, but the caregiving role often gets taken on by the daughter and not the son. And that's socialized into us. I think the the other. Condition that might contribute to that is the flexibility of a woman's work schedule might be different than her brother's right. It's easier for her to be a caregiver because maybe she's a teacher and she gets off of work at 3:00. And so it's easier for her to go over to her parents house after work than her brother. So the part of it is sort of the gender roles thing, and then the geographic distance is really key. So, you know, if if someone needs to go and check in on the parents, it's going to be the kid that can just as over there really fast and the kid that lives an hour away can do that. So it's kind of practical. The other thing could happen is like if there's a child that like it's gone through a divorce or they've had some financial difficulties or something like that, they may like it may be like a really practical solution to have, like the adult child go live with parents. Like, it's like don't pay rent. I see that mom and dad need help. You're the one that goes and lives with them and helps. So like kind of part of a just opportunistic kind of negative way, like a like a good fit, like you need a place to stay and they need a helper. So that's it does usually kind of fall fall to one person. And I think it's a lot of day to day management of stuff. The primary caregiver becomes the one who does all the doctor's appointments and knows the preferences for food, knows what agitates the person, knows like what their schedule is. And so then I think it just does kind of narrow down to that one person because they've just become the expert. And then the other people feel like, I don't know, like I don't know, doesn't like pulping or orange juice. Like, how am I supposed to know that? Right. So there's like a little bit of a I guess you'll do it because you're better at it and, you know, more kind of difficult to that. But I don't think that's always the case. I mean, there are families to do it really well and like balanced and say you go over on Thursday. I go over on Friday. I do all the driving. I'll do the financial stuff. I live out of state. I can't do anything, but I'll throw money at it. Right. Like there's there are ways for families to feel very, like, egalitarian about it. But it's just one of those triggers of like old wounds of the brother that blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

 

Wyatt: [00:13:58] What are some of the things that the siblings who live like an hour or two away can do that are most helpful?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:14:05] I guess so. I think for sure offering those respite opportunities is really important. Let's say there's an adult child that's taking care of the parents like, you know, Monday through Friday. Maybe nobody has dementia, but they're going over there and they're checking they're checking their mail and they're helping them with the food preparation or whatever. It's smaller kind of tasks that need to be done that maybe the tablets lives an hour away, needs to see like Saturdays.I come up like you do not need to do anything on Saturdays. Saturdays are your day. Do not worry about a thing. There's something like that where, again, they feel like, thank you for doing everything you're doing. And I know it takes a lot of time and I will take this chunk away from you. I think that would be really helpful, even offering to help pay for some things like house cleaning instead of you going over to clean mom and Dad's house, like would they be OK if we had a cleaner come over? And if so, could I help pay for that? So you do all the daily tasks, but I'll pay the X amount of dollars over two weeks to have the house cleaned. So things like that I think can be helpful. So again, it's not like it's helping the parents, but it's also helping their sibling so that you don't have to be the one to do this. Like I will pay for that. So, yeah, but I think I think the biggest thing would be offering to come come do some of the tasks on a regular schedule to get their sibling a break.

 

Wyatt: [00:15:24] So obviously you can be caring for somebody with dementia or you can be caring for somebody who just like can't really walk or can't really take care of themself physically. What are some of the differences there?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:15:38] I think the main thing is that somebody that has dementia, it's difficult to engage with them in conversation and they may not recognize you and there's a lot of loss in that role. I think that the person is kind of cognitively intact, like if they're if they have physical difficulties, but they don't have a lot of cognitive impairment. I don't think there's as much change in the relationship either as much sense of loss as there is with dementia.So either way, it involves physical tasks, driving, driving your parents or driving your spouse or helping them with heavy housework, helping prepare a meal like a few days a week, whatever that is, that might not change. But I think the difference is really kind of the emotional toll the dementia can take in terms of that additional loss that's going on.

 

Wyatt: [00:16:23] What's the most exciting part of your research?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:16:26] I think the most exciting thing about my research is that we can show that these programs work. And I think that that's helpful because I think. People are more likely to sign up for something if they know that it works. I mean, I think that they may say, well, it might be helpful, but I'm so busy, I'm overwhelmed. Like, that's the whole role that a caregiver has, is that they're caring for their parent and they're still have teenagers at home and they still have to work. And they're balancing a lot of these roles. So they're overwhelmed. They don't seek any kind of resources or support. But I think if they knew, first of all, that these are out there, we've shown that they can improve people's quality of life by their own self, report that they reduce these symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety burden. I mean, those kinds of things that are kind of weigh heavily on people that we can show that after they learn some skills that you can feel better about the experience. McCommon Something I can I've made this comparison before is when you're a new parent, you have a baby, you're a brand new brand new mom or dad. You're completely overwhelmed. I mean, it's it's beautiful. It's exciting, but it's it's a lot of hard work and you've no idea what you're doing. And so, you know, you ask for help, you talk to your pediatrician and you talk to your friends and you talk to your siblings and read books. You go online and you say, what should I do in this situation?My baby's doing this. I don't know what to do. Right. So we we just routinely accept that help is available and it works for parents. And so we encourage new parents. Go ask, go talk to somebody, go go online, go on this blog or whatever. We always tell people and the people do it. They're happy to do that at that stage. For some reason, it's completely acceptable to do that. And then if people know that they can do that when they're caring for a parent, then I think it's also like that. To me, that's also very encouraging. Like you should be doing the same things. You should be talking to your friends who've gone through the same experience. You should be talking to other caregivers, maybe in a support group, should be talking to the physicians and talking about the trajectory of the disease and what to expect and learning about how to talk to somebody with dementia, how to interact with them in a way that doesn't agitate them.And then learning about the.Ways to really manage your own emotions. I mean, if you think about what caregivers are doing, like they're going through what they're doing, they're giving a lot of their own time and energy. And it's can be physically taxing. It's certainly as emotionally taxing. Right.They have to be engaged in answering the same question over and over again or, you know, coming up with an activity that's safe and age appropriate. And so so there's sort of a lot that they have to tackle. And so at the same time, they're they're grieving the relationship. Right. This is their parent or their partner. And the relationships change. I mean, they miss that person. They miss that relationship that they have. So, yeah, if they if they knew that there were things out there that could help that, I mean, it's not going to stop that. It's not going to change the scenario, but it's going to change the way they react to find that. I find that very encouraging, that there's it's not this sort of thing. You just have to slog through and get through. It's like you get through it just like those first few months of having a newborn, which are enjoyable as well.

 

Wyatt: [00:19:47] So if somebody has a newborn, there is they can generally, like, see a timeline of like, oh, this is only going to last a year or two year, two years and I won't be changing diapers anymore. I don't know. I haven't had kids. Maybe it's then they'll be able to talk and like once they can talk, they can tell you what's wrong and, you know, and then they are like an eight year old and you don't have to wipe their face anymore. And then they're like an 18 year old and they're out of the house. So there's like a timeline that you can predict kind of things happening on if you have a kid. But with if you're a caregiver, it's kind of just like, well, how long is this going to last? And also there's probably some thoughts that they have that they feel guilty about as they're looking forward to the end.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:20:32] So absolutely. Yeah. So I think that's just like something that makes it feel a little more challenging is that there is a timeline. Right. But the timeline is not going to end well.It's not going to end with you going to a wedding and you launching having grand babies. And it's it's going to it's going to end in someone's death and it's going to be sad. So, I mean, I think, first of all, I think sometimes knowing that timeline is helpful, they want to know how long do people live with us? There is some degree of predictability based on people's symptoms with the level of deterioration going on in the brain. So it's really hard to kind of tell exactly how long caregiving lasts because we don't really know the transition point of when it starts. It's really gradual. But somebody with Alzheimer's can live between maybe five years to even up to 20 years. 20 years will be really rare. But you can have dementia for that long. Right. So that that is that's a really long time to be in that role. Even if it's just two years. It's a long time. It feels like a long time.There's really nothing you can do about it except try to maximize or optimize that experience while it's there, learn to learning to live with it. I like to say sort of focus on the positive, but I don't feel like that's really fair because then that sort of makes people feel like they should be ignoring the negative thoughts they're having. I would say don't ignore the negative thoughts they're there and become comfortable with them and to make yourself feel guilty about those thoughts. But, yeah, I think that I think that that is sort of the the difficulty with that timeline is that, you know, like with any terminal condition, you know, it's not going to end. It's not going to end well,

 

Wyatt: [00:22:08] So with these programs, that kind of thing like education programs and helping people to know they're not alone, those are helpful. You can prove that some of those are helpful, but often. But to me, it kind of also just seems like it's just advice and sometimes advice isn't helpful. So I guess how is this helpful if it's not somebody coming in and giving them some time or just like actually helping them do a task.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:22:33] So let me just give you an example. In that first study that we did, we asked them about the difficult behaviors that the person with dementia does.And they do. They they get agitated. They feel they become aggressive, they're confused about the situation, and they ask a lot of questions over and over. They wonder if it's there's challenges. Right. So we asked people about their. Why do you think the person is doing this? The majority, I can remember the exact percent, but it was well over 50 percent said they're doing it on purpose, they're doing it just to get under my skin. And I think that, you know, if you're married to somebody and they're being really obnoxious, they're just asking questions over and over that is really bothering you. You know, you think they're doing this on purpose, doing this just to get under my skin. But if you can explain to somebody like that, we're beyond that. So explaining to them, like showing them pictures of the brain and saying this these brain cells are have deteriorated. There's there's not healthy connections going on here. And they're not doing that because they're trying to be difficult. They're doing it because they can't remember if they've had lunch. So they're asking you.Is lunch once lunch, what's for lunch? I keep asking that over and over again, of course, you're going to be exasperated to be able to tell somebody they're not doing that really to bother you are doing it because they literally cannot remember if they have food.And it seems like it's lunchtime. So that's just what they're talking about. So part of that kind of education works that way, because if you didn't really understand the underlying mechanism of why someone's behaving that way, it's extremely frustrating. The other one other mechanism is to make sure that the caregivers get a break. So these are for somebody with moderate to late stage dementia. They need care, supervision, at least twenty four hours a day. And so these caregivers are not leaving their house generally or they're if they leave the house than they're taking, as soon as they walk in the door, they're going back to that caregiving role. And there's a lot of really good research that's come out and said that having a few hours break once or twice a week does a tremendous amount of help for caregivers like they just feel like themselves again for a few hours, may be able to maintain some of the social relationships, go out to lunch, go feel like a human right, feel like an adult again so that the rest of the programs are very effective and have something to look forward You know, just like to say this isn't the only thing I do.I mean, it's very easy to get kind of overwhelmed with that. The only thing I do is stay home and take care of my my partner. I can't do anything else. I can't leave them alone. I can't I can't take it with me because it's too difficult. And so that that that break is really important.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:25:15] And then and then the last thing would be to to help people again, kind of become comfortable with the stress that they're experiencing instead of trying to avoid that experience or like kind of tune out from those feelings that they have becoming comfortable with those experiences. This is this is based on that program that we do with acceptance and commitment therapy that Mike Levin in psychology developed. And then we've adapted for the caregiver population, but having experiences of mindfulness where it gets kind of thrown around a lot, but it really works quite well. Like if you're feeling overwhelmed or super sad or grieving or whatever, it is great having you can still feel that way. You shouldn't try to avoid it. Right. But then sort of focusing on on that present moment as opposed to worrying about the past or worrying about the future. Those are skills that work really well with this population. They work really well with everybody, but they work really well in this kind of situation because, again, it there's no advice to be given. Like, well, you just need to know whatever it's like, you're not going anywhere. This isn't changing. So all you can do is live with it. Live with it better.

 

Wyatt: [00:26:27] Yeah. Yeah. If you could. Get everybody to know just one thing about late life, what would it be?

 

Beth Fauth: [00:26:36] Well, I haven't been there myself, so, I mean, my opinion might completely change, but I feel like from where I sit now, it would be that it's it's a positive experience like. It's not something that needs to be feared or it's not going to be the worst part of your life. I mean, I think that there's like I always try to tell students this experience to like if you if you consider age sixty five. The point at which you're old is the general definition and you're going to die when you're 90. Yes, 85, 90. You're going to have a third of your life as an old person, so there's really not like any reason to like we're going to dread a third of your life. That's miserable. That's like a horrible outlook. So it's not like your greatest years are happening right now, greatest years or whatever year you're in.And so, you know, it's like the the people that think like high school is like the greatest high school glory years and everything is downhill. And then once you're past high school, you're like, no.Yeah, it's just like, thank goodness that was not the glorious.

 

Wyatt: [00:27:48] It's like I'm happy. I had a good high school experience, but I would not go back for anything.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:27:53] And so I think that's how older people see this, too, is like, yeah, it was nice when I was younger and I could go for a run and my back didn't hurt. I didn't have to pee all the time. And I, you know, I mean, I think that's there's things to appreciate about that point in life, but it's not like they necessarily think like those were the glory years. I mean, and now it's this downhill slump that I'm in. I mean, I recognize older people do have health challenges and they do experience a lot of loss. They lose their siblings and their their spouse. And I'm not trying to make it seem like it's this glorious problem free time of life either.But I just don't think that we should be focusing so much on the negative parts when in reality, if you talk to older people, they don't see it as negative. They're just like it's just another point in your life, too.

 

Wyatt: [00:28:37] How has researching late life affected your own life.

 

Beth Fauth: [00:28:42] I realize all the things I'm doing wrong, like what? Like exercise, I mean, exercise is like the most protective factor in everything. If you're going to eat well, you have to be active. And every time I skip the gym, I just think this is I'm paying for it now and I'm paying for it 40 years from now, so. Well, it's definitely made me, again, sort of reinforced, I would say, which was maybe a natural thing for me. But to be very patient, you know, other people are like, oh, he's just a grumpy old man. I'm the kind of person that would say he was probably always grumpy, there's nothing to do with aging. There's no reason why somebody who's perfectly happy transitions into being miserable. Right. I mean, this is probably somebody that you saw him in his 30s. He was grumpy.So I think that it's kind of taught me to see an older person for the person that they are. I don't know how that pertains to my own well-being and everything.I mean, I'm I'm very I'm very good at saving for retirement. I prioritize. It's a really good time when I'm retired.

 

Wyatt: [00:29:39] So Beth is the kind of person who is not afraid of aging and she's not afraid of her birthdays. And honestly, I don't know when her birthday is, but there is a birthday this week that I'm excited to celebrate. And it's the first birthday of instead podcast. We've been around a year and that's exciting. Even if that entire year has been a pandemic. You can check out the cake I made to celebrate instead of first birthday on our Instagram at instead podcast. And if you want to give us a gift, you can leave us a five star review and you can tell your friends about your favorite episode. Thanks for listening to the Instead podcast from the Office of Research at Utah State University.