July 1, 2025 • 34 mins
Today, Doug Pike interviews Dr. Maureen Beck about age friendly health systems.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this, Remember when social media was truly social?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey, John, how's it going today? Cool?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
This show is all about you. This is fifty plus
with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health,
and what to do for fun. Fifty plus brought to
you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging, Informed
Decisions for a healthier, happier life, and now fifty plus
(00:43):
with Doug Pike.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All Right, welcome aboard.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Glad to be back in town after a quick trip
down south. It didn't well, I take that back, It
did rain on us a little bit. Great weekend for
kite flying two blowing about twenty foot well one afternoon
and it was actually blowing so hard that you probably
couldn't have held a kite if you let it go
into the air.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
There was that.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
There was a lot of fishing attempted, none of which
was successful. That's another That's a first for where I
was and what I was doing. And to make just
to add insult to injury, on the final morning we
were there, when we really didn't have time to actually
go fishing, of course, the wind laid and the water
(01:32):
got good, and then the whipped cream on top of
that was it. On the way home, about halfway back
here to Houston, I got a phone call from one
of my friends down there to let me know that
he had some friends who fished exactly where I had
been on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, very early, like
(01:57):
as the sun came up, were there and caught some
really really nice fish. It happens, you should have been
here yesterday. That was Terry Shaughnessy, who was the original
owner of one of a really nice lodge over there
in Calcashu. That was the motto that was on the
(02:17):
wall there, you should have been here yesterday.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And that's so I've.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Grown to where I fully expect to catch at least
a couple of fish every time I walk out the door.
And it's rare that I'm disappointed with that low expectation.
But we put some time into it. We put some
time into it and just struck out and in that
(02:44):
particular venue. That's that's a first for me. It was
very disappointing. So anyway, something far less common than the
strong wind where I was, and the first time i'd
seen it in probably more than a decade. I can't
remember the last time that I had to deal with
those little tar balls that we used to get on
(03:05):
our feet as kids, those of us who are in
my range age range. They were sort of they were
gone for many, many years. And down there on the
beaches of North Padre Island Seashore were tar balls everywhere,
well all the way up and down the beach really
where we were, I don't recall being in any particular place,
(03:27):
and we got out of the car and walked in
the sand a lot, and they were everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
They're actually in case.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
You didn't know, somebody somebody told me, I believe, I
don't know where it was, but somebody during the weekend
said something about, how, oh, some ship must have purged
its some big oil tank or must have purged its tanks. Well, no,
that's not where these things come from, actually, and there
are big time laws against that.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Anyway, there are.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Actually blobs of oil that leach from the bottom of
the Gulf of Mexico America. Whichever way you want, it
doesn't matter. They leak up from the bottom and they're
extremely messy there. They boy, if you touch them they'll
stick to you. I can assure you that actually brought
in a lure at one point that had a blob
(04:17):
of that stuff about the size of a nickel hanging
off the back hook. They're not going to hurt you,
but they will stick to you. And they smell like
crude oil. They have a very distinct smell of something
that might have come out of a gas pump or
an oil can. And once they leach out of the
(04:37):
bottom of the Gulf of Mexico at a certain temperature
I can't remember what it is, they lift off the
bottom and become buoyant and come to the surface. They're
all about the size of between something between a diamond
a quarter and stickier than the lasses by the way
they come up to the surface. They float onto the
beach eventually, and lot of them kind of landing the
(05:01):
tideline too. If you walk out through the first gut somewhere,
some of those ones that aren't quite super buoyant yet
but made their way towards shore, they'll be lined up
in there and you can get a double nasty mess
on your feet down in there.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Really really just kind of a mess. Honestly.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
The only way to get it off. Is to use
something that breaks down that oil. Baby oil actually works
to help it off. And there are a couple of
other products I saw mentioned in the little piece I.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Was looking at.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
A very quick, easy, and an expensive way, by the way,
is to buy packages of makeup remover wipes at the
discount stores. Whatever's in those works very well to get
the oil off of anything it touches. I determinedly. I
(05:51):
was determined to catch a fish without getting my feet
wet this weekend. That I don't think that had any
any difference in whether I caught a fish or not.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I was want of you do.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
That, because it works that way usually down there, But
it didn't. But anyway, that tennis shoes that I wore
so that I would remind myself not to wade out
ended up with so much tar on the bottom of
them that when I got back home and went through
the car wash and was cleaning out everything, I just
looked at the bottom of those.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Shoes and just tossed them. I just had to throw
the shoes away. I think that would have been far easier.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Certainly less time consuming than trying to pressure wash that
stuff off of them. Looking around the Gulf there's a
yellow spot on the you know what map overall Florida,
over a kind of a coast to coast chunk of
the northern half of that state. There's no development expected
over the next couple of days, but then thirty percent
chance within a week. So if you planned on going
(06:48):
over there, maybe maybe keep an eye on things down
the Nasdaq kept investors guessing earlier. Today, Dow was up
a full point and NASDAK down almost the same. Oil
was up a little, just like it is off the
Gulf of America bottom, but still only around sixty five
dollars in change of barrel, So that's.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Not going to hurt anybody. Break time it is.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And on the way out, I'll tell you about a
late health This is doctor Andrew Doe and his team
in a vascular clinic that can help with a very
long list of conditions that can be remedied by such procedures. Actually,
but the thing they do most often is called prostate
artery embolization, where it they go in and they shut
(07:29):
off the blood supply to an enlarged, non cancerous prostate,
which is relatively common actually and unfortunately among men fifty
five ish and older and if you have any of
the symptoms of one of those, you probably recognize exactly
what they are and you wish you could get rid
of it, but you weren't aware of this procedure That
(07:52):
would certainly merit a phone call over to a late
health Same with fibroids for women, same with ugly veins,
same with some head pains even and most of what
they do is covered by Medicare and Medicaid too, so
I would strongly encourage making that call if that would
qualify you. Seven one, three, five eight, eight thirty eight
(08:12):
eighty eight is the phone number.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Give them a call.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
They also do regenerative medicine, by the way, which is
super helpful. As we talked about with chronic pain.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Seven to one, three, five, eight, eight thirty eight eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
What's life without a NET? I suggest you to go
to bed, sleep it off, just wait until the show's over. Sleepy.
Back to Doug Pike as fifty plus continues.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Welcome back to fifty plus. Thanks for listening to do,
appreciate it, Thanks yet again for your time. We'll talk
in this segment about something else out of the world
of medicine, about which you know I can't say, I
don't know anything about it because I'm not sure. It'll
depend on how a very early question in this gets answered.
All these different things cross my desk and I'm I'm
(08:56):
fascinated by all of this.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Honestly.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
This thing I mentioned is called age friendly health systems,
which I think might include UT Health Institute on Aging.
And to dive deeper into this medical specialty as it's
coming on board, I'll bring in doctor Maureen Beck, a
gerontological nurse practitioner and Assistant Professor of Geriatric Compalliative Medicine
(09:18):
at Mcgovernment Medical School.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Welcome back to fifty.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Plus, Doc, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
So up front, when did this designation of age friendly
health systems come about?
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Well, we joined around twenty nineteen, and of course it
started prior to that with several big major health organizations
trying to improve geriatrics across the country, particularly the John A.
Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
We'd be moving into more medical type stuff right.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
For seeing this has to do with trying to connect
the patient's goals with the care that we provide. Okay,
so that we aren't the master of the ships totally.
That we listen to the patient and we find out
what their priorities are, what's important for them, and that
(10:16):
helps the guide the care that we provide. And the
goal of all of this was to use really evidence
based components that these organizations decided were very important for
geriatrics and make sure that we're doing a better job
taking care of people over sixty five, which is a
(10:37):
growing population.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, it's a hugely growing population. And you're exactly right.
If you asked one hundred seniors to define a quality life,
you'd get a hundred different answers, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
That is so true. That is so true. It's different
for everyone, and sometimes people can't define it one thing
that's most important to them, but we do ask them.
We ask them at least once a year, and then
we assess a couple other things for age friendly mentation,
sell their mental status, depression, anxiety, memory. We assess their
(11:14):
ability to walk and if they need assistance with us
providing them with things like a walker or wheelchair. And
also we review their medicines to make this sure there's
nothing dangerous on that list that could impact the rest
of their life, like cross falls.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, I think I've done several interviews on the fact
that a lot of seniors see a lot of doctors,
and if they're not very careful about sharing everything they
take with these doctors, suddenly you end up with some
dangerous cocktail.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Don't you that?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
It's very true?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
How often would you say that comes around?
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Well, almost every day I have based medicine confusion in
an appointment with a patient. Are their discharge summary doesn't
match what the patient thinks they're supposed to take from
the hospital time and other doctors might have prescribed something
that interacts with a drug they're on, and we can't
always see each other's med list. But that's improved a
(12:15):
lot lately, But there are problems like this every day.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Room for improvement, as they say. And if you would
tell me about the new Center for Healthy Aging, what
exactly is that.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Well, the Center for Healthy Aging started actually in twenty ten,
the bel Air station three years ago, right there along
six ten. And we're a comprehensive geriatric clinic focusing on
people sixty five and older. That's the age to get in.
But we have a varied set of patients from the
(12:48):
sixties to the hundreds. Some are driving in their nineties
and working and some are barely walking in the sixties,
so it's a varied age group. And we also evaluate
patients for memory loss.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Exactly like we talked about at the onset of this.
Everybody's different and everybody's got a different end game for
their lives, so to speak. So what are the qualifications
to get designation? If we're looking at health systems across
the country, how are what do they need to do
to be qualified as age friendly?
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Well, the organization has a process that initially they applied
to be part of it, and then they go through
several cycles of quality improvement to get to the point
where they've actually touched or asked sixty percent of their
patients what matters most and completed the four MS which
I mentioned was what matters, medication, mobility, and mentation. But
(13:46):
level one is just getting started and having a plan,
and level two, which is what we are, is called
committed to care excellence. So about five thousands organizations I
think have been touched by this and are involved in it.
It's growing across the world. It's not just the US,
(14:08):
and the goal is to spread it to improve geriatrics
because it has to happen. Yeah, really need it, you
don't have enough provider. So we need to have clinics
that are more aware and aware of the needs and
the goals of the patient.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
And that really it changes everything that happens in the
exam room behind the closed doors with the doctor as
opposed to just routine medical visits would have been five, ten, fifteen,
twenty years ago right.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
Right and still today. If there's only ten minutes for
an appointment, it's hard to find out what really matters
to the patient. You've got to build that into their
appointment and the routine in a clinic. That's the challenge.
We do that easily in a geriatric clinic because we're
focused on that. We've had to improve what we do
(15:02):
also so that we do a better job of it.
But your average clinic doesn't have a lot of time
to get to know their patient. I would imaginally go
ahead initially, they can ask what's most important to you.
If a patient doesn't want a lot of medications or
goals to try to cut them down, if they never
want to go to the emergency room because they had
(15:23):
bad experiences, then then that's something to talk about because
it's not always avoidable. But you want to try to
gear what you do to their goals.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Doctor Morrinbeck on fifty plus. Here on the flip side
of that coin, what's the incentive for the doctors to
become part of this growing interest in the health of seniors.
Where do they come out other than just doing the
right thing?
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Well, I think that if a patient knows that the
clinic and the environment is geared towards people who are
sixty five and older, that population is going to go
towards them the good and want to be seen there.
And yes, it's doing the right thing, and yes, that's
the Really, that's almost what.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
It needs to be. Is doing the right thing, isn't it? Yes,
So tell me about this house call program. I don't
want to run out of time before that.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
So we have a house call program. I primarily do
it to assisted living facilities, and our other nurse practitioner
is a varied practice in people's private homes and assisted
living facilities. We might see the patient every three months
where they live because it's too difficult for them to
come into the office. There's only two of us. We
(16:38):
are a little geographically and manpower constrained, but we do
our best. We bring an office visit to the patient,
and whenever possible, we try to get any other additional
tests done through mobile X ray or a mobile lab.
If they don't live in an assisted living facility. It's
great for a family member who also be aging and
(17:01):
can't get that person in the car. Getting in the
car is really hard. Getting out of it's really hard
when you're also eighty five years old and you're helping
your spouse.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Big question on everybody's minds. We've only got about a
minute or so to go. Is there a difference in
cost with this?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Okay, that's wonderful.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
No. No, we don't get paid to do it, and
it doesn't increase the cost of the visit in any way.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Fantastic. So where do they need to go to find you?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Then?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Because that perked a lot of people's ears up.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
So we are in bel Air. We are on the
Loop and it's sixty five hundred west Loop south of
the backstreet called First. We're between Bisonette and bel Air.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Okay, I know exactly where you are. I think I
know the building.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Actually you probably do.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
It's big and white. Is there a website, yes, it's
go to ut physicians. Okay, and if you google geriatrics,
it'll likely take you right to us another clinic in
Sienna in county.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Wow, I know exactly where that is too, Doctor Moreinbeck.
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you're doing this
for not just my listeners, but everybody who's up in
our age group or my age group anyway, I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Know about yours. Thank you all right, by bye.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's good news, certainly good news. We've got to take
a little break here on the way out. I'll give
you some more good news. Optima Iron Doors is in
the midst now of its June and July big Summer
sale to help you get an amazingly beautiful iron door
for a discount price, and not a discount price after
(18:40):
tariffs were in conversations. This is something that the owner,
Jason Fortenberry, who also owns Primo Doors, which in the
Optima is exclusive to Primo Doors. He came up with
this sale idea a long time ago. We've been doing
it for about the third year now, I think. And
what he's done is offered up discounts off the previous prices,
(19:01):
the already low prices for either a big, bold forged
iron door or maybe one of those sleek, little modern,
narrow profile steel doors, every one of which is going
to be crafted to not only suit your family's preferences
and say a lot of good things about the people
who live behind it, but also going to be made
(19:22):
to order, made to fit your existing door space. Other
companies don't necessarily do that. They might want to just
hammer out a bunch of stuff or maybe add and
it just takes away from not only the look of
the door, but the comparison it is relative to the
(19:43):
rest of the house. Optima iron Doors is going to
get you a custom door same size as the door
you have now, unless you want something different and competitively
priced all the way through the end of June, and
by the way, steal less maintenance than wood doors too.
These are top quality made in North America iron doors
(20:03):
steel doors and their installers are second to none.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I can vouch for that.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Optima iron Doors dot Com is a website. Go there,
check it out. Optima iron Doors dot Com.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Aged to perfection. This is fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Welcome back to fifty plus. Thanks for listening. Certainly do
appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
We are fast trying to get in touch with the
man I wanted to talk to about senior scams today
who he's the.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Founder of a company that kind of works with stuff
like that and has vast knowledge.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I don't want to go out in front and kind
of talk about what we were going to talk about,
because I want him to explain it. He could do
so do so far better than I. So we'll sit
that on the side and then come back later to it.
Leading off this afternoon from the Big Macinfry's desk, by
way a Fox News comes the story of a panel
(21:04):
of millennials who were showing a McDonald's menu from nineteen
ninety one and asked what they thought about it. There's
a popular subreddit. I think that's that's pretty easy to
figure out what that is anyway. It contains eight hundred
thousand uniers user eight hundred thousand users who were born
(21:29):
between nineteen eighty one and nineteen eighty six, dropping them
in that millennial category.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Medium fries back.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Then, so you know, and the among the eight hundred thousand,
many of them responded and were just agast that back
in nineteen and eighty one, no ninety one, Excuse me,
I have to make circles around all these dates. Here
to make sure I get the right one medium fries
at McDonald's ninety nine cents, cheeseburger, a whole cheese seventy
(22:01):
nine cents, and a big mac, which by the way,
tasted better back then and was larger than it is
now one dollar and eighty five cents, which is hilarious
really to me, because I started eating at McDonald's back
in the high school days, back in the nineteen and seventies,
(22:24):
when you could get a grocery sack full of a
paper grocery sack, by the way, full of food enough
to feed four or five high school teenagers for about
ten bucks. Friends and I used to get a big
bag of stuff either from there on Fondring near fifty
nine or Jack in the Box that was kind of
(22:46):
that was fast food row. There was a Wendy's, a
Jack in the Box, a McDonald's, and maybe might have
even been a Burger King at one point, all taking
advantage of that high school and middle school crowd around there,
and my friends and I at night would get that
big bag of.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Food and then sneak onto.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
The property of that theater in the round over there
and climb up to the top of it and just
sit there and eat our food. We didn't throw the
trash in the in the grounds around the property. We
carried it off and threw it away. We weren't litterbugs.
I'm sure there was something we were doing wrong by
climbing up on top of that theater, but we did.
(23:28):
And it was a great view from up there. As
a matter of fact, it was really pretty cool from
the Fourth of July desk, which we'll celebrate here later
in the week. A reminder that if you're into fireworks,
please use them legally. That means in most municipalities around here,
in the City of Houston and Sugarland, and I'm guessing
(23:51):
almost everywhere else, there are laws against popping that stuff
just right out in your front yard or backyard or wherever.
And I wouldn't want to see anybody get in trouble.
The problem is that there are a lot of people
who don't really care about the law. They want to
pop their fireworks and shoot stuff up into the sky
and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
And I get it.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
I used to do that as well, But I also
know that the fire departments and the EMTs around town
would rather you did not, because fire wrist goes up
tremendously when there are things on fire dropping onto people's roofs,
dropping onto any other structures that might be damaged by
(24:34):
all that heat. And if I have to this week,
what I may do on Facebook is post the grizzly
picture I saw last year, and the year before that,
and the year before that, of six or eight X
rays of hands that didn't quite throw the firecracker early
enough to avoid being mangled and broken and just absolutely
(24:56):
ripped apart. If that doesn't get your attention on hotly
about fireworks, I really don't know what would. All right,
we need to take a little break here. On the
way out, I'll tell you about ut Health Institute on Aging.
This is the collaborative. It's part of all this general
move toward taking better care of seniors. The Institute on
(25:18):
Aging what we just talked with doctor Beck about. There
is a concerned effort, a concerted effort, in this country
of ours, to take care of us a little better
so we can live a little bit longer and perform
and do whatever we want to do. Whatever we want
to do, play pickleball, go with our friends to theaters,
whatever it is we keep doing a little bit longer
(25:40):
and feeling a little bit better about it. Go to
the website and see all the different things they can do.
It's more than a thousand providers, I'm confident now who
are involved, and they've all gone back and gott an
additional education, additional training into exactly how to apply their
knowledge to seniors. That's a tremendous this gift that we've
(26:01):
been given in the city of Houston. Most of them
are in the medical center, but many of them also
will see you in outlying communities and hospitals and whatnot,
So you don't have to go in there if you
don't want, to go to the website and look at
all the resources you can get there for absolutely no
money at all, and then maybe find your way to
a provider who has that credential and can see you
and take better care.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Of you than the average doctor.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Utch dot edu slash aging utch dot edu slash aging yell.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
They sure don't make them like they used to.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
That's why every few months we wash them, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh code O wax.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
This is fifty plus with Dougpike.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Hello, Welcome back. Final segment of the program starts right now.
Gosh where do I want to go from.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
The gator desk? This is an easy one.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
It's been talked about ad nauseam almost now, but I
still because I'm fascinated by it. What they're calling Alligator
Alcatraz in Florida, there's a prison where illegal immigrants are
going to be housed for whatever time is necessary. I
suppose for them to either be deported or just until
(27:13):
they run out of whatever reason they're there and the
duration of the stay. But rather than putting a fence
around the place, they just got this big wide moat
in which live many, many, many alligators, and in Florida,
that could be pretty much any body of water. We've
all heard the stories about what happens when you try
to swim with the alligators down there in Florida, and
(27:35):
it's not a good thing. It's not a good outcome.
And I honestly believe that that will be detern enough.
You won't need a fence. You really won't, because once
they get in that water, and once the alligators feel
the vibration of anybody trying to swim across it, unless
it's unless it's a six inch deep ditch that's only
(27:55):
ten feet wide, there's a good chance one of those
gators might catch up to him. I suspect they won't
be feeding those alligators either, which would kind of defeat
the cause of having him in there. That's something that
occurs not alligator attacks, not frequently around here, but it
still does. One of the young men who worked out
at the golf club I played most often, Blackhawk, wasn't
(28:19):
at the club when it happened, but just a short
distance from there in a little neighborhood lake. He was
reaching down to pick up a bass about two months
ago now maybe, and a little alligator five or six footer,
he said, came up trying to grab that fish away
from him and ended up grabbing his forearm and putting
eight or ten I think it was stitches in there.
(28:42):
That would not be fun. And he's lucky that thing
wasn't about two feet longer and started didn't start rolling.
Otherwise there would have been a much worse outcome to
that story, and I'm glad it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
He's pretty good kid. He's moving. He's moved to.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
A different club now, and I'll bet you, just knowing him,
I'll bet you he's still fishing that same lake.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Where that alligator tried to get him.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
But I also bet that he's he's looking twice before
he reaches into the water to pick that fish up
from the I'll have another desk. Gen Z getting grief
from bartenders for buying their drinks one at a time
rather than running a tab throughout the evening, which as
a former bartender, I can tell you it was so
(29:25):
much easier to run a tab. You get somebody's credit
card back then, you had to swipe it on that
big roller machine that used just pressure to transfer the
numbers on the card to the little receipts, and then
you use kept a running tab of whatever they were
buying and or they'd given somebody else permission to buy,
(29:46):
and at the end of the at the end of
the night, you get rid of it. Now, if these
gen Zers were paying cash, it wouldn't be that big
a deal. You just make a single transaction, a single
cash transaction, and you give them their change and you
hope you get a good tip off of it. But
if they're buying drink by drink and still paying with
credit cards, that's a lot of wasted time. That's a
(30:09):
lot of wasted time for that bartender who's already probably
working pretty hard in a good club.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I haven't been in a light nightclub in about a
one hundred years, it seems like. But if you're gonna
pay drink by drink, at least carry a little cash
in there with you and don't do that to the bartender.
That's just it's just not cool. We had a lot
of people who paid cash back in the day when
(30:34):
I was slinging whiskey at some of the busiest clubs
in the city. We had a lot of people pay
that way, and it worked out just fine. You buy
a drink, you pay cash. You buy a drinking, pay cash.
In fact, the management of the clubs actually kind of
set drink prices where the bartenders would get a little
bit better tip typically than maybe not by adjusting prices
(30:58):
where if you didn't just round up or whatever you
would get back there would be a bunch.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Of change coming back to you and not a whole dollar.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And that always filled the jars up very quickly with quarters,
which over the course of a night and moving about
a thousand drinks at two dollars a drink, that was
a lot of quarters, and that thousand, by the way,
sometimes was a busy night.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
For each bartender and a couple of clubs where I worked.
It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
I worked at Cowboy in the Cowboy days. I worked
at Elon for a long time, and a couple of
other places, and it was high, fast paced, and it
also enabled me and several of my friends who were
in the same business back then to work all night
and closed the club at two, and then after that
(31:50):
we would go someplace and get breakfast.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
There was an I Hoop down the street.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
I think there might have been a Denny's somewhere close
by too, But we'd go get breakfast at a twenty
four hour place and then drive straight to the beach
to be in the water to go fishing at first light.
It made for some pretty pretty tired driving home most
of the time, being up since about noon or whatever,
and not getting back home until close to noon again
(32:18):
the next day. But it was a lot of fun
and we caught a lot of fish. It was an incentive,
it really was. The fishing was an incentive to take
that late shift instead of getting in there early and
usually paid off. We picked our days for that. Oh Mercy,
Let's go to. I got that taken care of. If
(32:40):
you're wondering how long a long time is, consider that
a million seconds. This is just off the little sheet
that I work off of. A million seconds is twelve days.
A billion seconds, which you would think would be pretty close.
A billion seconds, though, is actually thirty one years. Thirty
(33:01):
one years, and from the movie industry something just a
conversation starter. The movie Eyes Wide Shut. A lot of
us maybe smile just a teeny bit when you heard
the title, because you've seen the movie and it's it's
got some risky stuff in it. Say the Least have
the Most has the record for the most consecutive days
(33:26):
of filming, not a single day off. They filmed for
four hundred straight days. I can't imagine. I honestly can't
imagine no breaks at all in four hundred straight days.
But that's what it took them to make that movie in.
I hope they made enough money to pay for all
(33:47):
of that. A look at what makes people cool. I
found this very interesting because in our day it was
a little bit different. Being cool comes down to. There
was a sixth trade. I took it out because I
really didn't think that was true, but According to the
new study, being cool means you're an extrovert, you're adventurous,
(34:10):
you're open, you're autonomous, and you are powerful. Those are
the five core things they say here that make you
cool to the average person, and a lot of people
have at least three or four of those traits. I
think three or four would qualify you for pretty cool.
(34:31):
And I don't know a whole lot of people.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Who have all of that.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Interesting thing. It must a title this, It must be nice.
Warren Buffett just donated six billion more.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Dollars of his to charity.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I don't know about you, but I'd have a hard
time donating six billion dollars to charity.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
First. I would have to get six billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Thanks for listening, Audios
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this, Remember when social media was truly social?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey, John, how's it going today? Cool?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
This show is all about you. This is fifty plus
with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health,
and what to do for fun. Fifty plus brought to
you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging, Informed
Decisions for a healthier, happier life, and now fifty plus
(00:43):
with Doug Pike.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All Right, welcome aboard.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Glad to be back in town after a quick trip
down south. It didn't well, I take that back, It
did rain on us a little bit. Great weekend for
kite flying two blowing about twenty foot well one afternoon
and it was actually blowing so hard that you probably
couldn't have held a kite if you let it go
into the air.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
There was that.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
There was a lot of fishing attempted, none of which
was successful. That's another That's a first for where I
was and what I was doing. And to make just
to add insult to injury, on the final morning we
were there, when we really didn't have time to actually
go fishing, of course, the wind laid and the water
(01:32):
got good, and then the whipped cream on top of
that was it. On the way home, about halfway back
here to Houston, I got a phone call from one
of my friends down there to let me know that
he had some friends who fished exactly where I had
been on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, very early, like
(01:57):
as the sun came up, were there and caught some
really really nice fish. It happens, you should have been
here yesterday. That was Terry Shaughnessy, who was the original
owner of one of a really nice lodge over there
in Calcashu. That was the motto that was on the
(02:17):
wall there, you should have been here yesterday.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And that's so I've.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Grown to where I fully expect to catch at least
a couple of fish every time I walk out the door.
And it's rare that I'm disappointed with that low expectation.
But we put some time into it. We put some
time into it and just struck out and in that
(02:44):
particular venue. That's that's a first for me. It was
very disappointing. So anyway, something far less common than the
strong wind where I was, and the first time i'd
seen it in probably more than a decade. I can't
remember the last time that I had to deal with
those little tar balls that we used to get on
(03:05):
our feet as kids, those of us who are in
my range age range. They were sort of they were
gone for many, many years. And down there on the
beaches of North Padre Island Seashore were tar balls everywhere,
well all the way up and down the beach really
where we were, I don't recall being in any particular place,
(03:27):
and we got out of the car and walked in
the sand a lot, and they were everywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
They're actually in case.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
You didn't know, somebody somebody told me, I believe, I
don't know where it was, but somebody during the weekend
said something about, how, oh, some ship must have purged
its some big oil tank or must have purged its tanks. Well, no,
that's not where these things come from, actually, and there
are big time laws against that.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Anyway, there are.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Actually blobs of oil that leach from the bottom of
the Gulf of Mexico America. Whichever way you want, it
doesn't matter. They leak up from the bottom and they're
extremely messy there. They boy, if you touch them they'll
stick to you. I can assure you that actually brought
in a lure at one point that had a blob
(04:17):
of that stuff about the size of a nickel hanging
off the back hook. They're not going to hurt you,
but they will stick to you. And they smell like
crude oil. They have a very distinct smell of something
that might have come out of a gas pump or
an oil can. And once they leach out of the
(04:37):
bottom of the Gulf of Mexico at a certain temperature
I can't remember what it is, they lift off the
bottom and become buoyant and come to the surface. They're
all about the size of between something between a diamond
a quarter and stickier than the lasses by the way
they come up to the surface. They float onto the
beach eventually, and lot of them kind of landing the
(05:01):
tideline too. If you walk out through the first gut somewhere,
some of those ones that aren't quite super buoyant yet
but made their way towards shore, they'll be lined up
in there and you can get a double nasty mess
on your feet down in there.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Really really just kind of a mess. Honestly.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
The only way to get it off. Is to use
something that breaks down that oil. Baby oil actually works
to help it off. And there are a couple of
other products I saw mentioned in the little piece I.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Was looking at.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
A very quick, easy, and an expensive way, by the way,
is to buy packages of makeup remover wipes at the
discount stores. Whatever's in those works very well to get
the oil off of anything it touches. I determinedly. I
(05:51):
was determined to catch a fish without getting my feet
wet this weekend. That I don't think that had any
any difference in whether I caught a fish or not.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I was want of you do.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
That, because it works that way usually down there, But
it didn't. But anyway, that tennis shoes that I wore
so that I would remind myself not to wade out
ended up with so much tar on the bottom of
them that when I got back home and went through
the car wash and was cleaning out everything, I just
looked at the bottom of those.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Shoes and just tossed them. I just had to throw
the shoes away. I think that would have been far easier.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Certainly less time consuming than trying to pressure wash that
stuff off of them. Looking around the Gulf there's a
yellow spot on the you know what map overall Florida,
over a kind of a coast to coast chunk of
the northern half of that state. There's no development expected
over the next couple of days, but then thirty percent
chance within a week. So if you planned on going
(06:48):
over there, maybe maybe keep an eye on things down
the Nasdaq kept investors guessing earlier. Today, Dow was up
a full point and NASDAK down almost the same. Oil
was up a little, just like it is off the
Gulf of America bottom, but still only around sixty five
dollars in change of barrel, So that's.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Not going to hurt anybody. Break time it is.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And on the way out, I'll tell you about a
late health This is doctor Andrew Doe and his team
in a vascular clinic that can help with a very
long list of conditions that can be remedied by such procedures. Actually,
but the thing they do most often is called prostate
artery embolization, where it they go in and they shut
(07:29):
off the blood supply to an enlarged, non cancerous prostate,
which is relatively common actually and unfortunately among men fifty
five ish and older and if you have any of
the symptoms of one of those, you probably recognize exactly
what they are and you wish you could get rid
of it, but you weren't aware of this procedure That
(07:52):
would certainly merit a phone call over to a late
health Same with fibroids for women, same with ugly veins,
same with some head pains even and most of what
they do is covered by Medicare and Medicaid too, so
I would strongly encourage making that call if that would
qualify you. Seven one, three, five eight, eight thirty eight
(08:12):
eighty eight is the phone number.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Give them a call.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
They also do regenerative medicine, by the way, which is
super helpful. As we talked about with chronic pain.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Seven to one, three, five, eight, eight thirty eight eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
What's life without a NET? I suggest you to go
to bed, sleep it off, just wait until the show's over. Sleepy.
Back to Doug Pike as fifty plus continues.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Welcome back to fifty plus. Thanks for listening to do,
appreciate it, Thanks yet again for your time. We'll talk
in this segment about something else out of the world
of medicine, about which you know I can't say, I
don't know anything about it because I'm not sure. It'll
depend on how a very early question in this gets answered.
All these different things cross my desk and I'm I'm
(08:56):
fascinated by all of this.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Honestly.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
This thing I mentioned is called age friendly health systems,
which I think might include UT Health Institute on Aging.
And to dive deeper into this medical specialty as it's
coming on board, I'll bring in doctor Maureen Beck, a
gerontological nurse practitioner and Assistant Professor of Geriatric Compalliative Medicine
(09:18):
at Mcgovernment Medical School.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Welcome back to fifty.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Plus, Doc, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
So up front, when did this designation of age friendly
health systems come about?
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Well, we joined around twenty nineteen, and of course it
started prior to that with several big major health organizations
trying to improve geriatrics across the country, particularly the John A.
Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
We'd be moving into more medical type stuff right.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
For seeing this has to do with trying to connect
the patient's goals with the care that we provide. Okay,
so that we aren't the master of the ships totally.
That we listen to the patient and we find out
what their priorities are, what's important for them, and that
(10:16):
helps the guide the care that we provide. And the
goal of all of this was to use really evidence
based components that these organizations decided were very important for
geriatrics and make sure that we're doing a better job
taking care of people over sixty five, which is a
(10:37):
growing population.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, it's a hugely growing population. And you're exactly right.
If you asked one hundred seniors to define a quality life,
you'd get a hundred different answers, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
That is so true. That is so true. It's different
for everyone, and sometimes people can't define it one thing
that's most important to them, but we do ask them.
We ask them at least once a year, and then
we assess a couple other things for age friendly mentation,
sell their mental status, depression, anxiety, memory. We assess their
(11:14):
ability to walk and if they need assistance with us
providing them with things like a walker or wheelchair. And
also we review their medicines to make this sure there's
nothing dangerous on that list that could impact the rest
of their life, like cross falls.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, I think I've done several interviews on the fact
that a lot of seniors see a lot of doctors,
and if they're not very careful about sharing everything they
take with these doctors, suddenly you end up with some
dangerous cocktail.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Don't you that?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
It's very true?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
How often would you say that comes around?
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Well, almost every day I have based medicine confusion in
an appointment with a patient. Are their discharge summary doesn't
match what the patient thinks they're supposed to take from
the hospital time and other doctors might have prescribed something
that interacts with a drug they're on, and we can't
always see each other's med list. But that's improved a
(12:15):
lot lately, But there are problems like this every day.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Room for improvement, as they say. And if you would
tell me about the new Center for Healthy Aging, what
exactly is that.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Well, the Center for Healthy Aging started actually in twenty ten,
the bel Air station three years ago, right there along
six ten. And we're a comprehensive geriatric clinic focusing on
people sixty five and older. That's the age to get in.
But we have a varied set of patients from the
(12:48):
sixties to the hundreds. Some are driving in their nineties
and working and some are barely walking in the sixties,
so it's a varied age group. And we also evaluate
patients for memory loss.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Exactly like we talked about at the onset of this.
Everybody's different and everybody's got a different end game for
their lives, so to speak. So what are the qualifications
to get designation? If we're looking at health systems across
the country, how are what do they need to do
to be qualified as age friendly?
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Well, the organization has a process that initially they applied
to be part of it, and then they go through
several cycles of quality improvement to get to the point
where they've actually touched or asked sixty percent of their
patients what matters most and completed the four MS which
I mentioned was what matters, medication, mobility, and mentation. But
(13:46):
level one is just getting started and having a plan,
and level two, which is what we are, is called
committed to care excellence. So about five thousands organizations I
think have been touched by this and are involved in it.
It's growing across the world. It's not just the US,
(14:08):
and the goal is to spread it to improve geriatrics
because it has to happen. Yeah, really need it, you
don't have enough provider. So we need to have clinics
that are more aware and aware of the needs and
the goals of the patient.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
And that really it changes everything that happens in the
exam room behind the closed doors with the doctor as
opposed to just routine medical visits would have been five, ten, fifteen,
twenty years ago right.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
Right and still today. If there's only ten minutes for
an appointment, it's hard to find out what really matters
to the patient. You've got to build that into their
appointment and the routine in a clinic. That's the challenge.
We do that easily in a geriatric clinic because we're
focused on that. We've had to improve what we do
(15:02):
also so that we do a better job of it.
But your average clinic doesn't have a lot of time
to get to know their patient. I would imaginally go
ahead initially, they can ask what's most important to you.
If a patient doesn't want a lot of medications or
goals to try to cut them down, if they never
want to go to the emergency room because they had
(15:23):
bad experiences, then then that's something to talk about because
it's not always avoidable. But you want to try to
gear what you do to their goals.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Doctor Morrinbeck on fifty plus. Here on the flip side
of that coin, what's the incentive for the doctors to
become part of this growing interest in the health of seniors.
Where do they come out other than just doing the
right thing?
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Well, I think that if a patient knows that the
clinic and the environment is geared towards people who are
sixty five and older, that population is going to go
towards them the good and want to be seen there.
And yes, it's doing the right thing, and yes, that's
the Really, that's almost what.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
It needs to be. Is doing the right thing, isn't it? Yes,
So tell me about this house call program. I don't
want to run out of time before that.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
So we have a house call program. I primarily do
it to assisted living facilities, and our other nurse practitioner
is a varied practice in people's private homes and assisted
living facilities. We might see the patient every three months
where they live because it's too difficult for them to
come into the office. There's only two of us. We
(16:38):
are a little geographically and manpower constrained, but we do
our best. We bring an office visit to the patient,
and whenever possible, we try to get any other additional
tests done through mobile X ray or a mobile lab.
If they don't live in an assisted living facility. It's
great for a family member who also be aging and
(17:01):
can't get that person in the car. Getting in the
car is really hard. Getting out of it's really hard
when you're also eighty five years old and you're helping
your spouse.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Big question on everybody's minds. We've only got about a
minute or so to go. Is there a difference in
cost with this?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Okay, that's wonderful.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
No. No, we don't get paid to do it, and
it doesn't increase the cost of the visit in any way.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Fantastic. So where do they need to go to find you?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Then?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Because that perked a lot of people's ears up.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
So we are in bel Air. We are on the
Loop and it's sixty five hundred west Loop south of
the backstreet called First. We're between Bisonette and bel Air.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Okay, I know exactly where you are. I think I
know the building.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Actually you probably do.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
It's big and white. Is there a website, yes, it's
go to ut physicians. Okay, and if you google geriatrics,
it'll likely take you right to us another clinic in
Sienna in county.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Wow, I know exactly where that is too, Doctor Moreinbeck.
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you're doing this
for not just my listeners, but everybody who's up in
our age group or my age group anyway, I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Know about yours. Thank you all right, by bye.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's good news, certainly good news. We've got to take
a little break here on the way out. I'll give
you some more good news. Optima Iron Doors is in
the midst now of its June and July big Summer
sale to help you get an amazingly beautiful iron door
for a discount price, and not a discount price after
(18:40):
tariffs were in conversations. This is something that the owner,
Jason Fortenberry, who also owns Primo Doors, which in the
Optima is exclusive to Primo Doors. He came up with
this sale idea a long time ago. We've been doing
it for about the third year now, I think. And
what he's done is offered up discounts off the previous prices,
(19:01):
the already low prices for either a big, bold forged
iron door or maybe one of those sleek, little modern,
narrow profile steel doors, every one of which is going
to be crafted to not only suit your family's preferences
and say a lot of good things about the people
who live behind it, but also going to be made
(19:22):
to order, made to fit your existing door space. Other
companies don't necessarily do that. They might want to just
hammer out a bunch of stuff or maybe add and
it just takes away from not only the look of
the door, but the comparison it is relative to the
(19:43):
rest of the house. Optima iron Doors is going to
get you a custom door same size as the door
you have now, unless you want something different and competitively
priced all the way through the end of June, and
by the way, steal less maintenance than wood doors too.
These are top quality made in North America iron doors
(20:03):
steel doors and their installers are second to none.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I can vouch for that.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Optima iron Doors dot Com is a website. Go there,
check it out. Optima iron Doors dot Com.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Aged to perfection. This is fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Welcome back to fifty plus. Thanks for listening. Certainly do
appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
We are fast trying to get in touch with the
man I wanted to talk to about senior scams today
who he's the.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Founder of a company that kind of works with stuff
like that and has vast knowledge.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I don't want to go out in front and kind
of talk about what we were going to talk about,
because I want him to explain it. He could do
so do so far better than I. So we'll sit
that on the side and then come back later to it.
Leading off this afternoon from the Big Macinfry's desk, by
way a Fox News comes the story of a panel
(21:04):
of millennials who were showing a McDonald's menu from nineteen
ninety one and asked what they thought about it. There's
a popular subreddit. I think that's that's pretty easy to
figure out what that is anyway. It contains eight hundred
thousand uniers user eight hundred thousand users who were born
(21:29):
between nineteen eighty one and nineteen eighty six, dropping them
in that millennial category.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Medium fries back.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Then, so you know, and the among the eight hundred thousand,
many of them responded and were just agast that back
in nineteen and eighty one, no ninety one, Excuse me,
I have to make circles around all these dates. Here
to make sure I get the right one medium fries
at McDonald's ninety nine cents, cheeseburger, a whole cheese seventy
(22:01):
nine cents, and a big mac, which by the way,
tasted better back then and was larger than it is
now one dollar and eighty five cents, which is hilarious
really to me, because I started eating at McDonald's back
in the high school days, back in the nineteen and seventies,
(22:24):
when you could get a grocery sack full of a
paper grocery sack, by the way, full of food enough
to feed four or five high school teenagers for about
ten bucks. Friends and I used to get a big
bag of stuff either from there on Fondring near fifty
nine or Jack in the Box that was kind of
(22:46):
that was fast food row. There was a Wendy's, a
Jack in the Box, a McDonald's, and maybe might have
even been a Burger King at one point, all taking
advantage of that high school and middle school crowd around there,
and my friends and I at night would get that
big bag of.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Food and then sneak onto.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
The property of that theater in the round over there
and climb up to the top of it and just
sit there and eat our food. We didn't throw the
trash in the in the grounds around the property. We
carried it off and threw it away. We weren't litterbugs.
I'm sure there was something we were doing wrong by
climbing up on top of that theater, but we did.
(23:28):
And it was a great view from up there. As
a matter of fact, it was really pretty cool from
the Fourth of July desk, which we'll celebrate here later
in the week. A reminder that if you're into fireworks,
please use them legally. That means in most municipalities around here,
in the City of Houston and Sugarland, and I'm guessing
(23:51):
almost everywhere else, there are laws against popping that stuff
just right out in your front yard or backyard or wherever.
And I wouldn't want to see anybody get in trouble.
The problem is that there are a lot of people
who don't really care about the law. They want to
pop their fireworks and shoot stuff up into the sky
and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
And I get it.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
I used to do that as well, But I also
know that the fire departments and the EMTs around town
would rather you did not, because fire wrist goes up
tremendously when there are things on fire dropping onto people's roofs,
dropping onto any other structures that might be damaged by
(24:34):
all that heat. And if I have to this week,
what I may do on Facebook is post the grizzly
picture I saw last year, and the year before that,
and the year before that, of six or eight X
rays of hands that didn't quite throw the firecracker early
enough to avoid being mangled and broken and just absolutely
(24:56):
ripped apart. If that doesn't get your attention on hotly
about fireworks, I really don't know what would. All right,
we need to take a little break here. On the
way out, I'll tell you about ut Health Institute on Aging.
This is the collaborative. It's part of all this general
move toward taking better care of seniors. The Institute on
(25:18):
Aging what we just talked with doctor Beck about. There
is a concerned effort, a concerted effort, in this country
of ours, to take care of us a little better
so we can live a little bit longer and perform
and do whatever we want to do. Whatever we want
to do, play pickleball, go with our friends to theaters,
whatever it is we keep doing a little bit longer
(25:40):
and feeling a little bit better about it. Go to
the website and see all the different things they can do.
It's more than a thousand providers, I'm confident now who
are involved, and they've all gone back and gott an
additional education, additional training into exactly how to apply their
knowledge to seniors. That's a tremendous this gift that we've
(26:01):
been given in the city of Houston. Most of them
are in the medical center, but many of them also
will see you in outlying communities and hospitals and whatnot,
So you don't have to go in there if you
don't want, to go to the website and look at
all the resources you can get there for absolutely no
money at all, and then maybe find your way to
a provider who has that credential and can see you
and take better care.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Of you than the average doctor.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Utch dot edu slash aging utch dot edu slash aging yell.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
They sure don't make them like they used to.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
That's why every few months we wash them, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh code O wax.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
This is fifty plus with Dougpike.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Hello, Welcome back. Final segment of the program starts right now.
Gosh where do I want to go from.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
The gator desk? This is an easy one.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
It's been talked about ad nauseam almost now, but I
still because I'm fascinated by it. What they're calling Alligator
Alcatraz in Florida, there's a prison where illegal immigrants are
going to be housed for whatever time is necessary. I
suppose for them to either be deported or just until
(27:13):
they run out of whatever reason they're there and the
duration of the stay. But rather than putting a fence
around the place, they just got this big wide moat
in which live many, many, many alligators, and in Florida,
that could be pretty much any body of water. We've
all heard the stories about what happens when you try
to swim with the alligators down there in Florida, and
(27:35):
it's not a good thing. It's not a good outcome.
And I honestly believe that that will be detern enough.
You won't need a fence. You really won't, because once
they get in that water, and once the alligators feel
the vibration of anybody trying to swim across it, unless
it's unless it's a six inch deep ditch that's only
(27:55):
ten feet wide, there's a good chance one of those
gators might catch up to him. I suspect they won't
be feeding those alligators either, which would kind of defeat
the cause of having him in there. That's something that
occurs not alligator attacks, not frequently around here, but it
still does. One of the young men who worked out
at the golf club I played most often, Blackhawk, wasn't
(28:19):
at the club when it happened, but just a short
distance from there in a little neighborhood lake. He was
reaching down to pick up a bass about two months
ago now maybe, and a little alligator five or six footer,
he said, came up trying to grab that fish away
from him and ended up grabbing his forearm and putting
eight or ten I think it was stitches in there.
(28:42):
That would not be fun. And he's lucky that thing
wasn't about two feet longer and started didn't start rolling.
Otherwise there would have been a much worse outcome to
that story, and I'm glad it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
He's pretty good kid. He's moving. He's moved to.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
A different club now, and I'll bet you, just knowing him,
I'll bet you he's still fishing that same lake.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Where that alligator tried to get him.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
But I also bet that he's he's looking twice before
he reaches into the water to pick that fish up
from the I'll have another desk. Gen Z getting grief
from bartenders for buying their drinks one at a time
rather than running a tab throughout the evening, which as
a former bartender, I can tell you it was so
(29:25):
much easier to run a tab. You get somebody's credit
card back then, you had to swipe it on that
big roller machine that used just pressure to transfer the
numbers on the card to the little receipts, and then
you use kept a running tab of whatever they were
buying and or they'd given somebody else permission to buy,
(29:46):
and at the end of the at the end of
the night, you get rid of it. Now, if these
gen Zers were paying cash, it wouldn't be that big
a deal. You just make a single transaction, a single
cash transaction, and you give them their change and you
hope you get a good tip off of it. But
if they're buying drink by drink and still paying with
credit cards, that's a lot of wasted time. That's a
(30:09):
lot of wasted time for that bartender who's already probably
working pretty hard in a good club.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I haven't been in a light nightclub in about a
one hundred years, it seems like. But if you're gonna
pay drink by drink, at least carry a little cash
in there with you and don't do that to the bartender.
That's just it's just not cool. We had a lot
of people who paid cash back in the day when
(30:34):
I was slinging whiskey at some of the busiest clubs
in the city. We had a lot of people pay
that way, and it worked out just fine. You buy
a drink, you pay cash. You buy a drinking, pay cash.
In fact, the management of the clubs actually kind of
set drink prices where the bartenders would get a little
bit better tip typically than maybe not by adjusting prices
(30:58):
where if you didn't just round up or whatever you
would get back there would be a bunch.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Of change coming back to you and not a whole dollar.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And that always filled the jars up very quickly with quarters,
which over the course of a night and moving about
a thousand drinks at two dollars a drink, that was
a lot of quarters, and that thousand, by the way,
sometimes was a busy night.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
For each bartender and a couple of clubs where I worked.
It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
I worked at Cowboy in the Cowboy days. I worked
at Elon for a long time, and a couple of
other places, and it was high, fast paced, and it
also enabled me and several of my friends who were
in the same business back then to work all night
and closed the club at two, and then after that
(31:50):
we would go someplace and get breakfast.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
There was an I Hoop down the street.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
I think there might have been a Denny's somewhere close
by too, But we'd go get breakfast at a twenty
four hour place and then drive straight to the beach
to be in the water to go fishing at first light.
It made for some pretty pretty tired driving home most
of the time, being up since about noon or whatever,
and not getting back home until close to noon again
(32:18):
the next day. But it was a lot of fun
and we caught a lot of fish. It was an incentive,
it really was. The fishing was an incentive to take
that late shift instead of getting in there early and
usually paid off. We picked our days for that. Oh Mercy,
Let's go to. I got that taken care of. If
(32:40):
you're wondering how long a long time is, consider that
a million seconds. This is just off the little sheet
that I work off of. A million seconds is twelve days.
A billion seconds, which you would think would be pretty close.
A billion seconds, though, is actually thirty one years. Thirty
(33:01):
one years, and from the movie industry something just a
conversation starter. The movie Eyes Wide Shut. A lot of
us maybe smile just a teeny bit when you heard
the title, because you've seen the movie and it's it's
got some risky stuff in it. Say the Least have
the Most has the record for the most consecutive days
(33:26):
of filming, not a single day off. They filmed for
four hundred straight days. I can't imagine. I honestly can't
imagine no breaks at all in four hundred straight days.
But that's what it took them to make that movie in.
I hope they made enough money to pay for all
(33:47):
of that. A look at what makes people cool. I
found this very interesting because in our day it was
a little bit different. Being cool comes down to. There
was a sixth trade. I took it out because I
really didn't think that was true, but According to the
new study, being cool means you're an extrovert, you're adventurous,
(34:10):
you're open, you're autonomous, and you are powerful. Those are
the five core things they say here that make you
cool to the average person, and a lot of people
have at least three or four of those traits. I
think three or four would qualify you for pretty cool.
(34:31):
And I don't know a whole lot of people.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Who have all of that.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
Interesting thing. It must a title this, It must be nice.
Warren Buffett just donated six billion more.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Dollars of his to charity.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I don't know about you, but I'd have a hard
time donating six billion dollars to charity.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
First. I would have to get six billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Thanks for listening, Audios
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