A Heartfelt Story of Love, Caregiving, and Recovery WITH Sarah Cart | Living to 100 Club Podcast

I have my suspicions. I mean, of course the doctors don't say anything definitive, but I think it was stress. Ben has always been really easy, easygoing, a high-energy guy. He's always believed that if you make something a priority, you'll be able to handle it. But 2015 was an economically challenging time for the company that he and his business partner had founded 30 years earlier, and he was worried about his employees. And at the same time, his father, who was Ben's mother's primary caregiver, suddenly became ill and died within 3 months. So we were long distance arranging for 24/7 care for his mother and settling his father's estate. That all landed on his shoulders. And once the autoimmune took root, it took a while for us and for others to accept that it needed to be our primary focus. I've said that the congestive heart failure got our attention and the attention of our sons, but not until the doctors said heart transplant did the extended family really begin to, um, understand that we weren't just crying wolf.