Retired Lawyer Shares How to Advocate for Yourself & Loved Ones

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. I have a surprise for you today. So in this totally anomaly kind of an episode, I'm inviting a prior client, a community member of Flipping 50. She's attended retreats, but I'm actually inviting her because she is such an asset to you and me. She's really an advocate for you and I. And if you're looking at the title of this episode, That's very meta meta. So she's teaching today, or I'm asking her to, what I believe will be a little instruction about how to advocate for yourself in healthcare, whether it's you or for a loved one that you're on the front lines with, or for your instance of living, in this case her house. But I want to show you how a prior lawyer Does it so that you can not so much lawyer up as advocate up. I think you're going to like it. I'm Debra Atkinson and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve. And we usually on a Friday we'll do a solo episode, but today as we're releasing this one live, it's kind of a special episode. I've invited a friend, a community member from Flipping 50, to join me because from homes to healthcare, you and I need to advocate for ourselves. You have choices and you have power. You can take action. And what we're going to point out to you is some very unique and clever ways to bank ideas on how to do this because it's not that you wouldn't ever get there yourself, but it's that when you are in the heat of the moment of exhaustion, of mental and physical fatigue and doing this in that moment of stress, when you may not find the clarity that you will get here, if you take the next 45 minutes and listen, So, my guest today is Karen Mulroy. She is an attorney who retired at age 62 without regret to spend quality time with her parents until their death at the ages of 97 and 98. They passed away within 4 months of each other, followed by the death of her former husband with whom she'd maintained a really close relationship. And she has navigated the challenges, the rewards, and emotional aftermath of caring for loved ones through their final moments. But as I was talking with Karen about this and the fact that we needed to share this, this story and how she advocated, and really it's a glimpse behind the lines, behind the scenes of what may happen in assisted living or acute care that you may want to about so that you're watching and you're ready. But she also shared a personal experience about living, changing house, and how she then there also needed to advocate for herself. So if you're someone who feels like maybe you need a power in the corner with you, this is it. Giving you ideas at a moment when hopefully you are not facing an adverse event in your life so that when you get to that adverse event, you know that you've got choices and potentially we've planted some seeds for how you can use them. I think you're gonna like this. Karen Mulroy, thank you so much for joining me.

Hi, Debra, thank you for having me.

So we have to give a little backstory here. I don't know how much we should give, but, and it seems kind of a sad moment to be talking about this, but we've had some experiences together. So some long hikes, some hot hikes at the Grand Canyon, no less. So really a great experience there, which is why at this moment in time with the fire in the North Rim, it's a little sad to be talking about that.

That is just sad. I can't believe that we were there and now it's, you know, it was such an iconic lodge. I mean, even though we stayed on the South Rim, but still it's devastating.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to talk about the possibility of going north to south, it's like that's gone for the moment. It's so sad, but that is not why you're here. So you have such a background in really the being an advocate and knowing what legal boundaries there are. And not only that, but your law background, you work significantly in healthcare, and I think that's part of why this and what we're about to dive into in the first half— and we'll divide this into to first and second halves is so very relevant. Talk a little bit about what you did as a lawyer and how much you were actually intertwined with healthcare.

I was a partner in a regional law firm that's based in St. Louis for 28 years. And what we did was insurance defense litigation. And a lot of what I did was focused on the medical field, injuries, you know, things that happen to people that you have to work your way through. And on the defense side, we had to really know a lot of the doctors. When you're taking depositions, you've got to know a little bit more about what you're talking about in order to get your point across and be effective on cross-examination. But the thing is, I was a medical technical writer before I went to law school. And I kind of grooved on the medical stuff and the idea that I could mesh the medical and the legal really appealed to me. So, you know, I kind of wondered where does all this lead? And it turned out to be invaluable in terms of a background and a foundation for my defense work.

And just having talked to you so much kind of originally in a client and trainer relationship, you know, you, you're knowledge of the body was just so much, you know, it surpassed what general public know. I mean, it just became like, how is it that you know this? Like, you were in law. What? And that, that's how that all unraveled. But most recently, you went through an experience not just with your parents and advocating, and I think that's such an emotional trauma for anybody at the end of life, you know, and our realization, but maybe our denial of where that is or might be going, and having to deal with often what involves a fall and an injury in addition to whatever health issue might be there in the first place. And you kind of maneuvered that, manipulated it, but then it came to your ex-husband who you're still very close with. And it was that experience that really struck me as You know how to advocate, and you were like, you know, if you were gonna be somebody who was gonna age, you want Karen in your corner. I could tell you that right now. She's a bulldog. And, you know, I don't even know where to begin, but potentially talk a little about, with the ability to honor your ex-husband, you know, where he was, what happened, and what you, as, as a bystander and essentially caregiver for him, what you witnessed.

It was, it was so hard. And I had the background experience of being an only child and seeing my parents through the end of their lives and advocating for them. And they passed away 2 and a half years ago now, 4 months apart from each other. And what I went through with them at the end, and then I had kind of a year to breathe, although even, you know, you're going through the estate things and you're wrapping things up. But then my ex-husband, who we were very— I was very close to always, I'd known him for over 40 years. And, you know, he was formidable. He was a healthcare CEO. He started a health— a national healthcare group purchasing company. He started the, the just so many programs for seniors. I mean, he was an advocate for people. So I learned from him. I mean, I kind of watched him and absorbed a lot just by, just by watching him. Although he let the doctors do the doctoring and he stayed on the administrative side. I kind of wanted to be the doctor. I mean, I got my medical degree from Walgreens. You know, I mean, it was just, you know, you read enough and, you know, but We kind of made a good team because I was able to talk to him about things, you know, I know he knew the hospital system inside and out. That prepared me because that showed me a lot. And I worked at a hospital for a while as a medical technical writer. So the familiarity with the hospital system and dealing with doctors and healthcare was a real help. But nothing prepares you for having to advocate for someone who was once so formidable and vibrant and a force of nature intellectually and physically, to watch the decline. He had giant cell arteritis, which within 2 days robbed him of all sight in his left eye. He was a diabetic that was— he was poorly controlled. And, you know, trying to navigate his medication with one eye, and, you know, it wasn't really successful. And he insisted on living by himself, which complicated things because he would not accept help. He would not accept defeat. He would just, I could do this, I could do this. And he found creative ways around it and he found a lot of workarounds. But, you know, he was in denial and he, you know, he thought he could do more than he could. And that's when I had to step up and realize you're not navigating this effectively. I mean, when he ultimately the fight was on and in the last 8 months of his life, he lost sight, all sight. So at the age of 86, he, he was totally blind in a world that he was never used to navigating. I mean, he could advocate for people who were blind and certainly did. But when it's him and, you know, he has to go through it, you watch him and, you know, it's, it's just hard. And so having to get him through that was, it was a learning curve for me and for him because he didn't want to accept the help at first.

Mm-hmm. And so eventually, did he go into assisted living? Was he— what was the interim? He—

it was really, um, it was a quick thing because he was living alone in the house. I was going in to check on him. I would find him on the floor in various locations in the house, and oh my gosh, he wouldn't let me pick him up. He wouldn't let me call paramedics to do an assisted lift. So it took me like an hour and a half to get him off the floor, and his skin was delicate and he wasn't strong. And so, you know, lifting, it was sort of a— it became a situation.

And if you're watching the video, you know this, but Karen is like a size 2, so you get the idea.

Okay, that's strong and determined.

That's wrong.

Amazing what you could do with leverage. And a chair. But, you know, so he would— he would— no, you'll do it, you'll do it, we can do this together. And so then it got to a point where the diabetes was affecting him cognitively. And he would sort of— he would— you could tell that he was struggling. He would say things that didn't make any sense. And, you know, I mean, I recognized the signs. And sometimes the cognition was there. He was 100% in the moment. And sometimes, you know, it's kind of like, okay, it's your world. I'm and you live in it. And I'm going with this story, but, you know, it's not making any sense. It finally got to a point where physically I had to put him in the hospital and he was diagnosed with starvation ketoacidosis. So as a diabetic, electrolytes were bad, everything was bad, and it was induced by a state of starvation because he wasn't eating properly, even though he insisted that he was. And I knew he wasn't. And I would bring food and I would bring TV dinners and I would bring nutrition shakes and water and juice and, you know, anything that you could imagine. And he'd go, "Oh yeah, I'm eating, I'm eating, I'm eating." But then, you know, you knew he wasn't. And so that's really what brought about his final hospitalization. And then once we got in there, he was too weak to get to go home. He needed to go into a rehab situation before we figured anything else out. The day he was discharged from the hospital, he called me and he goes, "Well, it finally happened." I lost the sight in my right eye. I've got nothing now. And he was incredibly sanguine about it. I mean, if it were me, I would— I don't know how I would react to that. But, you know, he said, well, this is the hand I'm dealt. This is what I got to do. And we'll figure it out. And so he was figuring out how to count clicks on his insulin to like dispenser, and I said, well, you can't, you can't read the medication. How do you know that you're not putting an empty cartridge into the dispenser and you're counting clicks when you don't know if you've got a short-acting insulin or a long-acting insulin in the cartridge? You don't know if it's full or empty, you know, you can't read the prescription bottle, you can't figure out where, you know, where did you put the needles, where did you put your replacement needles. I mean, you can't read the glucose monitor because it's on it. Yeah, it was just a lot of things that he just was not ready to accept that he couldn't do.

Hmm. So hard.

So I got him into assisted living, and I knew this was the same place that both of my parents were. And so I knew, I knew the facility, and I knew the administrators. And I just kind of picked up where I left off with them. And they remembered my parents really fondly and, and me and You know, so I just kind of got Joe in, and he had a small studio apartment because he didn't need a big apartment to rattle around in. He couldn't see anything. But, you know, I figured keep it simple. And, you know, we went from there. But even then, it was hard because sometimes— I'll tell you, it's kind of a weird story. When they— some people are trying to be politically correct, and he was he was totally blind. Now, to me, blindness is just that— you're blind. Well, they use the term vision impaired. In my view, if I said impaired, I'm thinking there's still something there, but it's not optimal. And they wouldn't call him blind. So they said vision impaired. So they would walk into the room and they would hand him a cup and hold the medication out and say, here's your medication. And, you know, he's going, where? And then they would go, you know, to the bathroom and they'd say, okay, there's the toilet. And he's like, where do I shoot? Because like he, he didn't know where he was in relation to the toilet. And I finally had to sit them down and say, look, you know, he's blind. Well, yeah, he's vision impaired. I said, no. I said, he is stare into the sun and not see anything blind. He really can't see anything? No. Can he distinguish color?

No.

Can, can he distinguish light from dark? No. Could he distinguish shapes? No. Well, you really mean he's blind? And I'm like, I mean, I was about ready to lose my mind. Um, it's like, yeah. And so we, we got to a point where— and anybody who's dealt with, with vision, vision impaired or blind people know that You know, routine is key. You can't just put him into a room and not give him some sort of point of reference. So I got him these dishes and they had dividers in them and they had suction that you could put on the table. I mean, I kind of found these out and it was like, and I told the staff, when you put his food down, use the clock as a point of reference. Your meat is always going to be at 6 o'clock, your vegetable is going to be at 3 o'clock. Your starch is going to be at 9 o'clock and your dessert could be at 12 o'clock, but always put it down in the same way. And, you know, then he'll groove a pattern and then he understands where everything is and he doesn't have to fumble around with it, even though, I mean, there was a lot of fumbling. But I mean, at least he knew a general vicinity of where to look on the plate for what he was— what he wanted.

Wow. And yet you had to— you had to be the intermittent to do this. Or had you not been there, you know, knowing this had to happen? I— hard for you to say, but there are a lot of people here who there isn't somebody, or the realization isn't there that this could be going on behind the scenes. You assume someone's caring for your loved one.

And in a situation like that, I mean, you know, my parents' generation, for example, I mean, you know, they're of the generation that when you go to a doctor's office, you dress up as a sign of respect to go to the doctor. And if the doctor says something, it's like, if the doctor wanted me to know that, he would tell me. And, and, you know, you didn't You didn't ask questions. You didn't, you didn't, you didn't have those questions. You didn't have that dialogue. And I'll never forget the hospital that I used to work at. They had a family practice residency program, and I still remember Dr. Skip Ruth was the head of the family practice residency program. And his motto is medicine is something that you do with people, not to people. And that always stuck with me. And, you know, it's like my parents weren't going to ask the question. Even my husband, who was 18 years older than me— and I'm, I'm 68 right now— uh, he, he just passed away in February at the age of 86. He knew medicine, he knew doctors, he dealt with doctors on his medical staff, um, but he deferred to them. And, you know, it's like, if they wanted me to know, well, they know what they're talking about. Well, what did they say? Well, I don't know, they, you know, they said something. And it's like You know, and then he went in there and I remember going into his endocrinologist and the endocrinologist said, you know, and Joe will tell you everything that he had and he had like 9 of everything because he knew what he needed, like walkers, wheelchairs, you know, rollators, you know, anything like that. So he had like triplicate of everything, but would he use them? No. So when he went into his endocrinologist, they said, you're doing finger sticks, right? And he goes, oh yeah. And, um, he's like, well, you know, so you're going to check your blood sugars, you know, religiously now. You've got to check it several times a day because you're going to be on insulin, injectable insulin. Oh yeah, I'm looking at the doctor, I'm looking at him, and I'm like, no. And, and the doctor just looked at me and I said, he has never done a finger stick. He will never do a finger stick. Don't ever expect him to do a finger stick. And he has no equipment. His only hope is to have a subcutaneous glucose monitor that you could like stick on, you know, and change the thing every 2 weeks, because he's not going to do that. And yeah, you know, and his own doctor— I mean, he was trying to snow his own doctor, and he would have, and he would have, and he would have.

Tell me this, and, and I think for any listener this might be relevant, maybe it's not, but a point of curiosity certainly. Was he in denial himself or was he just to the point of, I'm just gonna pacify this doctor because I'm kind of done?

He was sort of done, although he would never tell you that. I mean, Joe would never, you know, he would never unalive himself. But I mean, when it came to doing things that he needed to do to really manage his condition, really all he wanted to do is fall asleep peacefully and be left alone until the end came. He, he was not about the fuss. He wasn't— I mean, he wasn't going to throw in the towel and he wasn't going to tell you that he wanted to, you know, and it, you know, I mean, we gave him the choice. And this is another thing, when we put him on assisted living, you know, and making decisions for himself, he could still refuse treatment because he was cognitively able to do it. He was mentally capable and he had enough. There were times when, when his blood sugars went high, his mental cognition was not there and he would say things that made absolutely no sense. But yet, I'll give you an example. He, he could come in and tell you a story. He would say, Debra, I— did you have a call from my, my former company? Because I just had it out with one of my vice presidents. And they might call you to tell you that things just went really bad in the meeting. And, you know, it's like, and it's just the way it is. And, you know, he'll tell you the name of the company, he'll tell you the name of the person. And to somebody that's uninitiated, if you just met him or if you were a caregiver, you'd say, gee, that's unfortunate, you know. But it's only through knowing him I know that he was relating a situation for a company that he worked at, last worked at, in 1999.

Wow.

But it was totally plausible. I mean, the plot, the delivery, the logic, it was all there except that it was like 30-some years remote from today. And that was hard for people to understand because they said, well, he sounds like he knows what he's doing and he sounds good. And I'm like, you know, and there was an episode where he got violent and he got violent because it was a, well, it was, it was sort of a medication error and part of the diabetes, but he, he became belligerent and combative. And the first thought that they had the house physician had at the assisted living facility. I mean, not to take anything away from him, he didn't do anything wrong, but they were going to put him on a psychotropic drug to calm him down and basically sedate him through the, you know, and, and I, I, I went in and I said, don't treat him as a psychiatric patient. I said, he's not that. This isn't a psychiatric episode. It's, it's not, it's not a, it's a medical episode and it's caused by the, the dosage of prednisone that he's on and his uncontrolled diabetes. And it was a perfect storm and this is what happened. And you get him back to normal and you monitor this really closely and he's going to be back to baseline. But, you know, I mean, it's like, don't, don't write him off as just, oh, he's just a combative elderly person, and they, they kind of put him into a, um, you know, a different category, like you need full nursing home instead of assisted living because we can't take care of all that here, or, you know, you're a psych patient, or you're a dementia patient, which, I mean, all of those are legitimate and there are places to care for that and that's fine, but that wasn't his problem and I knew it. And the idea was that I had to convince everybody else that this was like medically what was going on. And thank God I had his niece who is a nurse practitioner in Pittsburgh, and she was— she's his godchild. And Diane and I have an extraordinary relationship, and Diane and I would double team everybody. And what I didn't know, Diane did. And, you know, thank goodness I had her in my corner, although, I mean, I knew a lot. She knew she had more street cred than I did because she had the credentials. I mean, I'm just a stupid lawyer, you know. But, um, but Diane knew what she— I mean, she could talk the talk. And then, you know, and she was, you know, she would talk about different tests and the results. And well, this is— and, and she has a specialty in geriatrics. So, you know, now it's like, well, you can't give this if you're not familiar with it. You can't give this medication to a geriatric patient because it rela— you know, it— they react to it differently, you know, even if it is, is something benign like, like a laxative. I mean, you know, it's not the same. She was watching that like a hawk.

Which, you know, brings me to— I know in a part of our conversation that, that actually made me say we need to go live with this— there was an issue there with his blood sugars and with something they were feeding him, and then the issue of what that—

what effect that was having on him.

And then bedsores. And, you know, the whole— I mean, it really just sounded like this is, you know, not abuse, but it was certainly like, is this not neglect? I mean, where do we draw the line here where this is problematic? Can you describe what you saw? And hopefully you know what I'm referring to. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions, or tell your story, would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year. Join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook.

Joe was not really active toward the end because he, he had no muscle strength. I mean, he had a lot of muscle wasting. And so even if he wanted to, it was really hard for him to get himself up. And then toward the, toward the very end, he had an exacerbation of congestive heart failure, which was proceeding pretty quickly, and that complicated things even more. But when, when he went into hospice, we had a discussion with him, Diane and I did. And it's like, what do you want? I mean, what is enough? What is too much? And I remember when I was in law school, I took a seminar in bioethics and they went around the room and they asked everybody in the seminar, What would you consider if you lost an arm? What would, you know, what would you consider an acceptable quality of life? What if you lost an arm? And there were a couple of people that said, I'm out. I don't, you know, I don't want to not have an arm. And then there was, you know, then they went around again. Well, what if you lost both arms? No. You know, other people said, yeah, I can still, you know, work out with it, work worked myself through things with it. What about a leg? What about both legs? And, you know, as you saw people drop off— but the thing is, what you realize is, as you go through life, what you might have thought was an unacceptable quality of life when you were 20 or 25, when you're 68, 50, 90, you know, you might accept limitations that you would have never thought that you would accept back then. So it was important to find out what's enough, what's too much, and, you know, and let him, you know, and what I learned from his niece in the geriatric field and, you know, kind of working with people like that is making a decision to discontinue treatment is a medical decision in and of itself. And that doesn't mean that you can't accept palliative care to keep you comfortable. And we finally got to a point where Joe said, when we asked him, we had this conversation, he said, if I've got something wrong with me that's curable, if it's an infection and you can give me an antibiotic to cure it, do it. You know, if I get a urinary tract infection, you know, give me what I need to get through that, do it. You know, if I'm anemic, you know, give me some you know, some iron, make that better. But if he's going to be a perfused cadaver laying there with, you know, respirators and breathing tubes and feeding tubes, and he didn't want any part of it. And so, you know, he said, so we did what we discontinued things that weren't going to make any difference, like vitamin supplements. You know, I mean, you know, does it really matter if he has B12 Probably not, you know, but, you know, but we, we kept up the insulin, we kept up the prednisone that he needed to keep the inflammation at bay. We kept up things that he needed for the blood pressure, you know, things like that. Now, what you're circling back to what you were talking about, Joe, toward the end, his only joy in life is if somebody came to visit him, going to eat and sleeping. Those are the only things in his world. His world was shrinking by the day. And so the only thing that gave him pleasure is to go in and, and to the dining room and, and like have a couple of glasses of orange juice and, you know, and maybe have a breakfast roll or a donut or a, you know, all things that aren't good. But I wasn't going to sit there and tell the staff Well, they were assisted living. They don't give you a therapeutic diet anyway. You're assisted living. You're supposed to, like, make your own choices. Well, his choices were, I'm going to eat what I want. And so Diane and I said, well, all right, doctor, your job then is to check his blood sugars religiously and keep it within an acceptable range so that he doesn't go into a, you know, an insulin-induced coma. And, you know, I mean, because eating was the only thing that he had to look forward to. I'm not going to make him eat tree bark. I mean, you know, he's got nothing else. So if he wants orange juice, give him the orange juice. You know, if he wants a donut, give him a donut. And then we'll work on the insulin thing later because that's kind of, you know, that was what was good for him. But the bedsores, I mean, checking him and the staff was great. I mean, they did check him. You know, we tried to get everything possible. I got, I got incontinence pads for the bed. I, you know, we had pull-up— we had pull-ups. We had, you know, he had the world's largest collection of urinals, bedside urinals. But I found urinal liners. It's actually a thing. And to those of you who might be dealing with somebody that is incontinent and needs that kind of a thing, there are male urinal liners that you can order and they're absorbent and they kind of turn the urine to gel and it doesn't flip out and you just cinch it up and pop it out of the urinal bag and stick another one in and everything stays dry because I can't tell you how many times, you know, he knocked the thing over or, you know, I mean, and it was huge. And so, and they have these things for toilet chairs too and for you know, female, like, yeah, I mean, look for them because they, they're out there and they will make your life so much easier and your loved one because they're not going to have to sit there and say, I've done it again, you know.

Yeah. Oh wow.

Yeah. So that, that was my tip. That's, that's one thing that I did find out that a lot of people don't know about. And, and just like, look at that if you're dealing with that situation because they are so good.

What, just final words as we wrap this up, what, what advice would you give to somebody as they're looking, you know, down the road at whether it's a spouse or a parent, some kind of loved one that, you know, is going into this situation, or fearing that you may be that loved one for somebody else? What advice would you give? You—

I can't say enough, if you don't understand something, ask. If you have a question about something, if something feels wrong, ask. Know that your loved one may or may not be willing or able to articulate their symptoms or their feelings, and you know them better than anyone that they're encountering in the wild, in the healthcare system. And if you notice something that's off, You know, like, like I mentioned with the endocrinologist, Joe was telling him, I've got this, I've got finger sticks, I do, I do it all the time. And I'm like, no, you know, don't— I mean, he, he thought I was selling him out, but really it was for his own good. I said, I'm not selling you out, I'm helping you to succeed, I'm helping you to make sure that you don't fail at this. And, you know, as long as they understand that your loved one understands that you're there not, not to sell them out, not to but you're sincerely trying to help them. And then be an advocate. Talk to the nurses, make them explain things to you. If you don't understand it, ask for a second opinion. Ask, you know, I mean, don't, don't stay silent just because you think that all doctors are equal. And, you know, I mean, I'm not knocking the medical profession by any means. I have doctors in my family. But, you know, you have to be able to discern and read. There are, you know, websites. Don't— I mean, don't trust everything. National Institutes of Health, if you're dealing with heart institute, like, you know, use accepted— like the Stroke Society or the Heart Association. I mean, they all have protocols. There are organizations that deal specifically with— and they'll help you. There are resources. Anything that you might be encountering— dementia, whatever it is, you know, Tap into those resources, do your research. And when you go into the doctor with your loved one, you can be asking informed questions. And if they're short, you know, if you're— if they're saying, well, they're old, what do you want? You know, well, you know, don't— I mean, they don't, you know, but don't accept that. You don't have to accept that. So good to be an advocate for somebody that might not have the confidence to speak for themselves in that situation.

So valuable. And I think you're, you're just such a great resource for somebody, not only because personally you've been through it not once, but, you know, 2, 3 times. Yeah. And, you know, have the legal background to really look at, you know, standing up for yourself maybe comes easier to you than to a listener who might feel, I'm just vulnerable to whatever, and I'm on this ride and, and have to go with it. But maybe not. So I want to pivot abruptly and just talk about this other way. So you're such a wealth of information, but the other thing most recently you shared about having moved into this new house and then the realization that, you know, something wasn't quite right where Many homeowners, I think particularly might be more a vulnerable single female, you know, who's living in a house and dealing with things. You know, it may be really easy to be taken advantage of and or just kind of lay down the gauntlet and say, okay, well, it's just going to cost me X, Y, and Z without really diving into, no, wait a minute, what is right here? So speak a little bit into this. You're in this new house. You are a mover and a shaker, and that'll happen like in 5 minutes. You're like, oh yeah, like this house, I'm moving. Boom. And I moved.

It was, it was a decision. I saw the house being built. My best friend lives across the street. We watched it, and I, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't planning to move. And then all of a sudden she, she and her fiancé walked through it and she goes, you know, you really should see this house. And we walked into the house and I'm like, I must have this house. But it all circles back to what I was going through in my personal life because I loved the house that I was in. It was a metaphor for my life. I healed that house. I made that house better than it was when I bought it. It nurtured me. It— I mean, I loved that house. But the house was almost directly across the street from, from Joe's house. Every time I looked out my window, I could see his house, and I had the memory of like going over there and finding him on the floor, or breaking down his house to sell it at the end. And, and then I remembered my house, and it had so many happy memories because my parents were in it, and Joe was in it, and my friends were in and, you know, people that are no longer in my life anymore. Um, and I was half living in the past, and then I saw— then I saw Joe's struggles. He had a stairlift, but he couldn't get on it. And, you know, I saw, you know, some of the things that were happening, and I had a two-story house, and I'm thinking it's easier to move when you can move and have a choice rather than move when you don't have a choice and have to accept and settle for anything. So So I saw this house and I recognized I want a first floor master because I'm not getting any younger. I'm in a prime position to move. I can move and I'm just going to do it. And so I got this house, loved it, and it was really good, but it needed work, right? I mean, new home construction is not turnkey necessarily. I mean, there's always things that you have to tweak. We found out that my garage had a problem with— well, basically, whenever it rained really hard, um, I had a torrent of water that flowed like down my driveway and, and settled into the, into the garage. And so I documented it, I filmed it, um, you know, talked about it, talked to the builder about it, and they said, oh well, you know, we just— this was probably the line that the drainage line is clogged. And I said, well, all right. So they, they looked at it and they said, no, it's not clogged, you're fine now. It's— there was probably just some dirt in it, but you're fine. Well, I kept doing it, and I— every month, every— I mean, 9 times since I moved in here, it's, it's done it. And I have pictures of it all. So they finally said, well, you know, you had a lot of grading done on your backyard and trees removed and, and, and 'You know, you probably crushed the PVC, the pipe that is extending that carries this out. So, you know, that's really a you problem.' And, you know, I said, 'Well, first of all, I'm at the other end of the drainage thing and I'm looking at water flowing out of it during a rainstorm and I'm like, looks open to me.' And so then they, you know, they said, 'Well, you know, you could still have it crushed and still have water flow through it, but it's not coming through forcefully.' And I'm like, this is gravity drainage. You don't have a pump at the other end squirting it out. Don't, don't expect, you know, Old Faithful at the end of the yard when it rains. And so they, they said, we're going to— we'll just send somebody out to inspect the pipe. Okay. So then they, they sent a camera through the pipe and the pipe was perfect. And so therefore it's not a me problem. It's a them problem. And, you know, and I kind of— then I got somebody out because here's where my legal background— I play the chess game. You think 3 moves ahead and you always look to make a record, make a record that's going to hold up. So I have documentation of the pictures of and film of the flooding. I have— I called a waterproofing expert, had him come in prepare a report with everything that he would do to remediate, all of his recommendations to remediate, and give me a cost estimate. Because I knew if there was going to be a 1-year warranty on the home, if this was a warranty issue, if I didn't present that by the 364th day of the warranty, I'm, you know, totally out of luck if I did it the next day. So I had all this stuff ready to go, and I I sent an email to them and I said, here's what I would like. Here's the report. Please consider this my formal request that you perform the remediation recommended in the report. And at first they were offended that I had, you know, and I said, or if you're unwilling to do it, then let me know and I could take further action. Well, you know, it turned out they were offended because it's like, well, I can't believe that you took that tone. And I said, look, there wasn't a tone. I said, you know, I'm a lawyer, you know, it's what I do. But if I wanted to go nuclear, I would have called in an attorney to write the demand letter. I would have filed the suit right then. I said it's in our best interest to negotiate a settlement of this issue. To our mutual satisfaction. Let's work together on it. On it. I sent you a letter directly and I gave you an opportunity to respond to me directly. I'm sorry that you're offended, but it wasn't my intention to offend. It's just let's get this done between us. And it turned out— and then they got it, you know. But, you know, you just can't assume that it's your problem. And, you know, I mean, I wasn't going to let it go at my problem because it was a big ticket item. And yeah, I could do it, but it was the principle.

Yeah. And I so love that you did that. So let's back up a step. To somebody not a lawyer, would you recommend that they write a similar— similarly phrased letter or consult their lawyer before they sent something off like that?

You don't have to lawyer up from, from jump. I mean, yes, if you're totally uncomfortable with it, by all means, you know, this is— if this is so far out of your comfort zone that, that you need legal counsel, do it. Um, but if, if you're articulate enough, what I would say is if something's wrong, make a record, document, take pictures, and your iPhone has date timestamps on it. So, you know, I have a sequential record on my phone of all the pictures that I took over the months. Every time I would have a flood, I presented this with video because I got a good day when the rainstorm was happening during the day and you can actually see the rainfall and what was happening instead of trying to do it at night. And I got the greatest video and I sent that. And then I went a step further and engaged my own expert It cost me a little bit of money, but you look at the risk-benefit analysis or the cost-benefit analysis, and it's like, at least I have another opinion. If you disagree with my expert, then on your dime, you find an expert to challenge what my expert said. But in the meantime, I've got a plan, and I'm asking you respectfully to consider what what this expert has said and make the necessary remediation to fix the problem. And let's try to get this— it's to our mutual best interest to work it out. You could always escalate. It's hard to back down when— I mean, like, like with me, I mean, they were offended because, I mean, well, number one, they knew I was a lawyer. So, I mean, they always— they already kind of assumed that I lawyered up, even though that's just the way I am. But I didn't, you know, I wasn't going to do my own filing. I mean, I was going to go to, you know, an attorney, and I was going to go through the process of engaging a separate attorney and having them write it and, and send it certified mail. And, you know, with all the documentation. But first of all, if you don't ask, the answer is automatically no. And I remember in my remedies class in law school, um, they, they had a hypothetical: neighbor builds a fence on your property and it's 18 inches over the line. And, you know, and, you know, you, you're opposed to this, what would you do? Call the police, call a lawyer, file an injunction, you know, get a court order. And, you know, everybody was coming up like, you know, these, these second-year law students, we knew enough, we didn't know what we didn't know. And he just kind of, he just kind of stood there and he goes, did anybody ever think to call the guy? And we're all going, oh, what a concept. I mean, communication. But, you know, it doesn't hurt. You can, you can always escalate. But once you ring that bell, you can't unring it. And if you can get what you need through your own effort, you don't have to spend the money. And if it's going to get complicated, I don't recommend that you represent yourself. You know, I mean, you know, but with that said, if you can do it, And if you have the willingness to do it, just make sure that you make a record document, come in reasonable, don't come in hot, you know, ask nicely, ask politely. And if there's no response, then you can always escalate incrementally, but it doesn't have to be acrimonious from the beginning. And it's amazing, you know, how many people actually do want to work with you if you give them a little bit of a chance.

Such great advice all the way through. And really, I think bottom line is you have choices. You have more power than you think. Use your voice, find your words. And, you know, I think really the bottom line of what you might have just said is first believe all people are good and they want to do the right thing. Because if we don't operate on that and we think we're going to be taken advantage of all the time, we probably will be, right?

And, you know, it's like you talk to somebody and, you know, they're telling you everything that's wrong, and it's like, well, insult me and you want me to do what for you? You know, it's like, it's, it's just easier to start out. If there's a reason to escalate, if there's a reason to get tougher, you know, and, and by escalate, I don't mean anger, I don't mean vocal, I don't mean shouting, I just mean going the steps logically to the next level and to the next level. It doesn't have to be full-on litigation. It could just be enough that you have a, you know, a very professional— professionally worded letter sent via certified mail to let them know that, you know, okay, you've got somebody's attention. And maybe this will get your attention if they're not responsive. But give them a chance.

So good. It's been so great, and I so appreciate you coming in for giving non-legal, you know, advocacy advice.

I should say that none of this constitutes legal advice. Always consult an attorney or a medical professional. Um, you know, I can only just tell you what my personal experiences were with family, with loved ones. And, um, you know, it, it— and I have to just as a final aside, you know, It was so important to me that my husband, my ex-husband, and my parents did not die alone, particularly since I was the only family out here in St. Louis for Joe, and my parents moved out here because of me. And like I said, I don't have any siblings, and I was given the greatest gift because I was holding my parents' hands and Joe's hand when they passed, and I saw them take their last breath. And to me, that was so I'm so grateful for that because I feel like I, I saw everything to its conclusion and I was able to honor them and be with them in a way that, you know, I told Joe, you know, I told my parents, my parents knew it, but I told Joe, I said, I will never, I will never leave you alone. You know, you don't have to worry about that because I know. And he will tell you that my concern for his health bordered on harassment. I mean, he did not like that, you know. He's like, just, okay, now get out of the room, you know. I mean, he would be like that, but it was done out of love. I mean, it, you know, it— if he called you bitch, it was a term of endearment. I mean, the first time— yeah, yeah, it's like Diane and I walked in and one of the doctors was there, and they had never met all of us before. And, um, Diane and I were telling the doctor about Joe's medical condition, and he just looked up and he goes, those bitches. And the doctor's eyes got as big as saucers, and he goes, but I love those bitches. You know, I mean, you know, it was just— it's just the way it was. But, you know, so great.

What a tribute to you and to your loved ones too. And thank you so much for being here. So if non-lawyer-wise somebody listening wanted to go and watch you and watch your retirement, where would they find you?

If you want to share a contact Basically, you could email me at any time with any questions. I'm at MLSMulroy@icloud.com. And I just established an Instagram account and it's EarthDogs3. And there's a story behind that because I have 3 West Highland White— 2 West Highland White Terriers and a Cairn Terrier. And I never, I mean, I went from standard poodles who were sort of the intellectuals of the dog world to the terriers who are like the wingnuts of the dog world. But I mean, it's just, 3 of them's a party. And so anyway, EarthDogs3, 'cause terrier, that's where it comes from. So EarthDogs3 at Instagram.

So good. Awesome. And thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Debra. It was a pleasure.

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