April 11, 2025 • 36 mins
Today, Doug Pike interviews Dr. Barbara Sunderland Manousso about elder care mediation. Pike also speaks with Cy-Fair FD Assstant Chief Mike Clements about carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember what 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?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
This show is all about you, the good. 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
(00:43):
fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Ahi. Welcome to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Master's Week, and very specifically at fifty plus, welcome to
those of you who are still enjoying what you do
for a living or just working because you like to
eat and keep the lights on. That's motivation for some people.
It's something motivates every one of us to get up
every morning. And that's something is different for us. All
(01:10):
it really is. I watched, actually I watched a video
yesterday evening about.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
About this.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I can tie this together, I promise about college incoming
college kids and how they should pick their majors in college.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And the most interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
My wife and I were watching this yesterday afternoon because
our son will be going off to college in the
not too terribly distant future.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
He's a junior.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And what it said was the interesting thing from a
parent's perspective, was that the single greatest factor on which
incoming freshmen to college based their selection of a major,
the single greatest influence, was their parents. They wanted to
(02:03):
do what their parents wanted them to do. We come
from a family of doctors, You're going to be a doctor.
We come from a family of forest rangers. You're going
to be a forest ranger. That's a great influence. And
then there are other There were all kinds of things,
social pressure, peer pressure, money, money comes up in.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
All of those. But what this guy was talking about is.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
That money can't be the primary motivator because if you
truly look inside yourself and find something that you like
to do and that you want to do and that
will make you happy to get up and go to
work every day, kind of like I've had for myself
for many, many years now. If you're motivated, the money
(02:47):
will come because you'll be good at what you do.
You'll devote yourself to what you do, and it'll work
out well.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And so I hope most of you.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Are in that position where you you didn't take a
job just because somebody else told told you you should
take it. You maybe at some point, and he said,
he sees a ton of kids come to him and say, look,
I've been here two months now, and this major that
I'm in is just horrible. It's just not for me.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what
i'd be good at. And he's got a great little
(03:17):
formula on how how to figure that out. And there
are some applications with that thing, even to you and
me and anybody else who's at a point where they're thinking,
you know, now that I'm retired, or now that I'm
nearing retirement, or wherever you are in your life, or
maybe just for whatever reason, at any point, you know
it's time to do something different. But what do I
(03:39):
want to do? How much time do I want to
spend doing it? All those things matter, and not necessarily
in the order. You might think, I'll drum up that
guy's name. I have it somewhere, I'll drum it up,
and I will try to get back to you with
that name next week during.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Sometime next week, I'm not sure when.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So anyway, more five star weather predicted, and so get
out and grab yourself a bucket of sunshine. No rain
in the forecast for almost a week, so run the sprinklers.
Number one, grass is trying really hard to choke out
whatever weeds are in your yard right now, but they're
gonna need water to stay strong. Good heavens, how many
(04:22):
I'm gonna put this over here? I don't want to
answer the phone right now, It's unnecessary. The markets up
to their usual tricks again, only this time, at least
so far, the movement pretty slight, still a mix of
colors in the indicators and gasoline and gold, gold, gold
doing its thing and jumping higher and higher. It wasn't
(04:42):
that long ago that I sold a little, tiny, little
palm full of gold that my wife and I weren't
dealing with and needing or there were just no use
for it. The stuff had been in the dark for
gosh the better part of ten, twelve, fifteen years, I
don't know, So we decided.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
To sell it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
What the heck goal was over two thousand dollars an ounce,
then almost twenty four hundred, a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
We didn't make a lot of money off of.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It, but still at that budging ounce, and that was
the highest it had been in a long time. It
looked pretty good today, thirty one hundred and something dollars
probably to say, I believe it was in that same
range yesterday, probably be in the same range tomorrow if
it doesn't go higher than that. Good news is that
gasoline is down. Well oil's down, which will mean gasoline
(05:28):
will be down. I'm gonna strategically do what I'm going
to do this for the next few days here and
try to do it on what I have in my
tank now, which is should be doable. It's not like
I'm gonna have to run the tank dry. But I
suspect that in a day or two max. The cost
of gasoline's going to drop dramatically because it's still at
(05:50):
the price it was when oil was about ten dollars
higher than it is right now.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And that'll be fixed.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Speaking of oh man, good, I've got a couple of
minutes here the post Office.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I didn't put this from a particular desk. We'll call
it the I'm not sure exactly which way to go.
I'll just tell you the story.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So the US post Office, which certainly has had its
share of troubles lately, especially around Houston, all the thieving
of mail and just backlogs of undelivered mail. Warehouse is
full of this stuff, and now they want to raise
their rates again. They want to raise the price of
a first class stamp from seventy three cents, which is outrageous.
(06:35):
It was only a few pennies when I was a
little boy. That tells you how old I am. Seventy
three cents to seventy eight cents, that's a lot of
money for a stamp.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
They keep it up.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm guessing someday a first class stamp will cost about
the same as a first class plane ticket.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I get that prices go up. I do.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I understand rising prices. Eggs are a good example, but
until the post Office can convince us that the increase
will bring better service across the board, including top of
the list, there is the service you get actually inside
the post office. It's rare that someone behind the counter
(07:18):
looks like they're in a good mood and can't wait
to help you. They all seem like they're just watching
the clock, looking for five if that's when they get
out of there.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I don't know that. I'm a little.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Hesitant to sign on for seventy eight cents to mail
a letter. And it's still pretty amazing that for less
than a dollar you can write a letter. If you
still write letters, most of us are using email.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Now you can write a letter.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You can write a check and drop it in the
envelope to pay a bill, and you can ship that
thing across the entire country. You can ship it to
Alaska for seventy eight cent, well, seventy three cents now
seventy eight soon to come.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I don't know whether dolls you'll get deep enough into
the postal system to see where the waste is there,
But there's gotta be someng.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
They're bat in a thousand.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
So far everything they've touched has turned to money that
shouldn't have been spent. We'll see how it goes. All right,
we need to take a little break here. We'll go
ahead and go to it. When we get back, I
will be talking with Barbara Minuso, a woman who hasn't
been on the show in quite some time. But I'm
really glad to have her back, and I know you
(08:36):
will enjoy I think.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
It'll be a good conversation.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Either to take advantage of right away or to tuck
away just in case you need it. Down the line,
more fifty plus coming up, what's life without a nap?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
If I suggest you go to bed, sleep it off.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Just wait until the show's over, sleepy back that Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
That's another good song. Will you're batting. I'm not going
to say you're bout in a thousand this week on songs,
but you're probably about a seven hundred clip.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
That's pretty good. That's all of Fame numbers. Yeah, I
mean that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
That's way better than the zero you just licking the
tar off the bat last week.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Welcome back to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Thanks as always well talking this segment about help that's
available to seniors that a lot of seniors likely don't
know exists, and that is something called elder Care mediation.
And with that, I'll just go straight into welcoming back
to the show. Barbara Manuso from NUSAU Mediation right here
in Houston.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Welcome back, Thank.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
You, Dougs, thank you for inviting me today.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I cannot believe it's been nine years since you were
first on this show. You were in the early early
stages of the show. It's ten and change now, so
I guess fifty plus was still in diapers the first
time we talked.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, it's now a real senior helping seniors.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So congratulations, welcome to me.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
There you go, there you go.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So here, here's what we need to do. What you
do and correct me if I'm wrong. Is you have
a service that keeps little family issues from becoming maybe
big family issues?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Does that boil it down pretty well?
Speaker 4 (10:23):
You did an excellent job defining it. Yes, thank you.
Our elder and adult care mediation is not something that
everybody needs every day, but once in a lifetime they
need to. The family might need to make a decision
for a senior in the family. Sometimes the siblings don't
get along. It's shocking. I know, you're shocked that there
(10:45):
are families that are dysfunctional.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
No, I didn't have no idea.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You had no idea. I know. And the siblings don't
know each other. They know that their brothers a CPA.
They don't know where we works, how he works, or
the sister the lawyer, and they have no idea what
she knows. But because she's the girl in the family,
what could she know?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh gosh, does that still out there?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
It's still out there. And so the people that are
at the table in elder and adult care mediation are
often in their fifties and sixties themselves as they're helping
the senior in the family that's probably late seventies, eighties
or nineties and helping them transition often to their next
(11:31):
phase of life.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Talk about some of the more common squabbles that cross
your desk between elderly people and their younger maybe children,
a younger sibling, whatever. What are the most common things
that cross your desk.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
The biggest thing is usually there are new housing, so
the safety people can't a senior gets to a certain point,
they don't realize how uncomfortable they are in a home. Now.
They might have stairs and of course they've fallen down
the stairs, or they could maybe they've got Parkinson's and
(12:10):
they don't have the agility and they don't have one
of those chairs, even the chairs people fall out of,
the darned chairs that go off the elevators. And then
the other one is so being in the home people
need to transition. They're not being able to take care
of their hygiene. They can't take care of the house,
perhaps as they used to. They might put a pan
(12:32):
on the stove and somebody will come in and notice
that the flame is going but there is no pan,
but the stove is on, and so all the children
might not recognize some might see it more than others,
but they need a conversation because they are legally responsible
to take care of their parents. People don't realize that
(12:54):
when you're a parent, you're legally responsible to take care
of your children until they're eighteen, when your parents are elderly,
and elderly can be defined anybody over the age of fifty.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh my.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yes, And the children are responsible for their parents, legally responsible.
So they've have to make sure they're in a safe environment,
that they're able to have proper hygiene, that they're being fed.
And then the second issue is taking the car keys away. Yeah,
that's a very big deal. Where somebody we had one
(13:29):
person laugh. They said, well, as my husband was pulling
out of the grocery store, he ran over a guy's
foot and they thought it was funny. It was like, oh, boy,
that isn't funny because they can't see well, or we're
only driving at two o'clock in the afternoon, when there's
no traffic and it's still light, and that's a red
(13:49):
flag you get, that's a red flag.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Do you get any calls, barbar from seniors asking you
to help keep their kids from fighting over a future inheritance.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Absolutely, that's a large one that we have and the
and we have had in the reverse where we had
some people called two daughters and they were there were
two other siblings that they were not mentioning where they
wanted to divvy up there they told me deceased mother's
(14:22):
belongings and money, and then we found out the mother
was down the street in a nursing home. Oh she
died yet, And they were trying to modify the will
before the other people got to it. And that is
that is not uncommon that that's played out in different
ways a few times.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
That is just so, said family mediator Barbara Manuso on
fifty plus.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Here again, thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
What are the odds of people who come to you
solving their problem in a single session?
Speaker 4 (14:53):
It usually is one session. Wow, I'm not a therapist.
I'm not there to fix them. I'm not an attorney.
I Am not there to give them legal advice. But
when they come to the session, or when I speak
to whoever's called on the phone. If I feel I
need to have a lawyer come in, they will bring
in a lawyer as a resource where they can talk
(15:15):
to the whole family. But we are there to help
them where they are and to help them make a
plan a blueprint. They work together as a business arrangement
so that they come to a solution. And that's what
we are skilled to do. And we have a lot
of backgrounds, so it's not just we're not just talking
(15:39):
to them. We have Vice statue forty hours of training,
and basic mediation we have thirty hours, and family mediation
and domestic violence four hours, and then they have another
twenty hour training for just understanding resources for seniors and
they're in their needs and these subtleties. But it's usually
(16:00):
one session. It's maybe five to seven hours that they
will the family will gather either on zoom or hybrid
of zoom and in person or in person and with
a senior present, usually if they are capable.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
How often, Barbara, would you say that people come to
you with just these petty little spats, and as soon
as they sit down and you hear them start talking,
you just be quiet, just go home.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
You ever do that?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
No, No, we don't do that at all. When we're
trained professional and this is not just the conversation. We
have a process and we have skills that we use
at every stage of this process. That's what we train
people in. And a lot of people come in and say, oh,
I'm a mediator and I've been doing this. No you're not.
(16:46):
We're professional mediators. And there is a particular They start
with an agreement to mediate a confidentiality and it ends
in a mediated settlement agreement, which is a legally binding document. Wow,
and if the family doesn't follow it, then they can
sue each other for a breach of contract. That's very interesting,
(17:07):
very specific process. It's very interesting, and too many people
don't know about us, and they always say, oh, gee,
I wish i'd known that, so so thank you so
much for having me on the show. So we have
this opportunity to tee people informed.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, we're gonna have to keep talking. We may have
to bring you back on pretty soon, because, believe it
or not, we're already out of time.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Hate to do it to you. Barbara Manuso here.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Uh m A N O U S S O dot
U S MANUSO m A n O U S s
O dot us I have another half page questions here.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We're gonna have to get you back on pretty soon. Okay,
we'll look forward to it.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Thank you so much for today.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Thank you, Barbara.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, great, thanks by all right, good heavens, we've done
it again. We made it to another break. We're going
to take that break. On the way out, I'll tell
you about ut Health. Ut health is a collaborative effort
among more than a thousand people in this great city
of ours. It's right here in Houston where it started.
This is where it stayed. There are somewhat similar programs
(18:10):
around the country in a few cities, but I haven't
found one yet that really compares to all the resources
and all the opportunity that UT Health Institute on Aging
gives anyone who.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Accesses the website.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
What it is is, in part, at least, a collaborative
effort among more than a thousand people, all different facets.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Of the medical field.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And they have, in addition to the training it took
to get the diploma on the wall in their office
or in their clinic or wherever they've gotten additional training,
they spent additional time learning how to apply how to
apply their knowledge to seniors very specifically, and that's not
something most healthcare providers get. They get their education, they
(18:55):
get their diploma, and they get to work. These people
have done all of that and then said no, we
were happy to learn more. Most of them in the
medical center for most of their time. However, there are
plenty of providers who are part of this Institute on
Aging who will work at least sometime out in outlying
(19:16):
hospitals and clinics and offices so that anybody who needs
their services can get to them. Maybe if they don't
like to go to the med center and would rather
be seen somewhere a little closer to home, the fantastic opportunity.
Go to that website, take a look around, and then
see if I'm not right. You're going to spend a
good bit of time scrolling through the pages, looking at
(19:39):
the resources, looking at all these other things they offer
to you, in addition, of course, to that expert medical
care ut dot edu slash aging, utch dot edu slash aging.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Now, they sure don't make them like they used to.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
That's why every few months we wash them, check us
for and spring on a fresh coat o Wax. This
is fifty plus with Doug Pike. Welcome back to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Just stepped right on your your musical interlude there. This is,
after all, the show that helps seniors become even more
a senior, I guess, and helps young people take care
of the seniors who raised them. So we're talking this
segment about something that could impact anybody, really, and it
was in the news really actually fairly recently as a
(20:28):
possible cause of the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife. However,
that's not what killed them. But this does happen to
kill more than four hundred people in a year in
this country and sends more in one hundred thousand them
to the emergency room to find out how to avoid
becoming one of those stats. And what I'm talking about.
(20:48):
I'll bring in Assistant chief of the Safare Fire Department,
Mike Clement's welcome aboard.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Mike, Hey, good morning, Doug. How are you. I'm good.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I would bet that most people, oh that's right, it
is every time I will I start the show right
as we go into afternoon, and I slip up all
the time. I would bet that most people couldn't name
more than two or three sources of carbon monoxide if
we asked them, there are a whole lot more than that.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Aren't there.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Yeah, really anything that can be incomplete combustion. Something doesn't
burn a clean flame all the way. So you know,
if you're a hot water heater, say it's not vented
correctly and maybe that flame's not burning all the way,
or a stove, a gas heater, or a gas clothes
dryer also, so lots of different things in your home
can create in hurricane hurricane seasons coming up. The generators
(21:39):
are always a big one when we talked about a
COE poisoning, So lots of different ways we get in.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
The real problem with CEOs.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
That it's overless and it's tasteless, right, you can't smell it,
can't taste it, you can't see it. And the weight
of the CEO is also problematic because it's a slightly
lighter than air, but it doesn't go all the way
to ceilings and intermixes kind of every level of the home.
So that's why having a COEO detector is so incredibly important,
(22:06):
and anybody who listened to the show it doesn't have one.
My recommendation go to a Little Hardware store or or
get on Amazon or one today.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Is there is there nothing, Mike, that could be done
like added to gas lan er something like more captain
this put into propane and natural gas that could create
an odor like we have.
Speaker 5 (22:24):
There No, because when we burn, when we burned probe
or we burn natural gas, it's one constant source. And
because you know, you could be burning different things or
even you know, when when we had hurricanes before or
excuse me, the big freeze that happened in Houston a
couple of years ago, people were trying to heat their
homes with charcoal inside, right, and obviously we had some
(22:46):
some people pretty sick, you know, and die from using
even a fireplace in the winter time. You know, if
your flu is not cracked, it open, and if your
fireplace didn't inspected annually, if the if the CEO is
getting pushed back into the home, it's the exiting through
the through the fireplace that's a real problem also. So no,
there's not really anything we could do like that with
a natural gas.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Assistant Mike Assistant Chief Mike Clements from the Cifhare Fire
Department on fifty plus. So in case somebody's exposed to
a less than lethal dose of this gas. What would
be the early symptoms of breathing it.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, so it's really important to know the early symptoms.
And it can mimix some other things, right, so, headache, nausea, confusion,
and sometimes it's mistaken for food poisoning. Right, but we
got to be real careful. And if you feel that
way and you step outside and it gets better, the
thought of hey, maybe this is a co leak in
my home should at least be processing through your mind.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
If you go for a walk and you don't.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Feel better, you know, maybe it's something else, But you
go outside, get fresh air, those fins go away, come
back in, they come back. That's something that you should
be always thinking about. And these detectors are not very expensive.
You can go on Amazon, you get a travel one,
you can go on for your home less than one
hundred dollars, readily available. But the symptoms you know, again
(24:02):
are nausea, confusion, headache, and dizziness.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Gas powered lawn tools came up a couple of times
in the prep I got and some of the research
I did, and the risk from them I read goes
up as they get a little older and maybe not
quite so efficient, is that right?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Yeah, so really there's obviously all those tools should be
used outside. Right, If you run in the garage and
you keep it idling in the garage, it's problematic. But
anytime an engine wears out, So what causes CEO is
incomplete combustion. So whenever you know, you get too much
soot in your carburetor, in your carburetor for the we
eat or the mower when it's not running as true,
(24:41):
it's not burning all the way off. That's how COS
produces incomplete combustion. So that can also be a source
for them. But as long as we're using those things
outside the home, it's generally better, and we get in
trouble with that with smooth leaves. Idling in the garage
would be a problem with that.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, they leave it idland while they go inside to
get a drink of water or go to the bathroom.
And they come out there and stand around and look
at all the fishing lures that they're not getting to
throw right now, and all one thing, all of a sudden,
they're dizzy, and yeah that's not good. Uh. Prime camping, well, yeah,
prime camping seasons on us right now and I read
that even sitting too close to a campfire for a
(25:17):
while can cause problems.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right, it can.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
You know, generally it's not as common, but it can
if you if if the if the wind doesn't end there,
if there's not something to take the gas away from
the fire. Smoldering fire would be an example of a
time where it'd be more coo. Something that's kind of
dying out towards the end of the night. There's a
there's an incomplete burn that's happening. But as long as
the wind is blowing pretty good, you should be pretty close.
(25:42):
You should be fine, and you're not too close.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I lost a friend, his wife, and their son years
ago to carbon monoxide and poisoning. They fell asleep on
their boat, as they've done a hundred times, inside a
little cabin they had in there, and I think it
was a generator that was running in another part of
the boat. Had never been an issue, but somehow that
night the CEO was going into where they were sleeping
(26:06):
and they all died in their sleep.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Yeah, And that's that's a bad part about seal, because
it's odorless and tasteless. If you're not you can go
to sleep, feel fine and then and not make it
through the night because of that, you know, and maybe
a section that compartment that the generator was in was
just a little gap and it allowed the CEO to
not escape properly and fill up the cabs. So Cavin,
you got to be really careful of these things and
(26:30):
get it a detective. That's the best thing we can.
The best advice is for fifty two hundred bucks, less
than a hundred bucks, get something that ultimately save your
life or your families. And you're right, it's not just
sometimes when those things happen, it's not just one person.
It can be an entire you know, three people in
that scenario. So we really advocate for anybody who lives,
even by themselves or with the family, get a COEO detector.
(26:51):
They're they're inexpensive and a lot of them will plug
into the wall, you know, you about five feet up
on the wall and early outside of each living each
sleeping space, because sleeping is a time where we'd be
most vulnerable. If you feel bad during the day, you know,
you can hopefully realize what's going on, but when you're
sleeping may not. So a smoke detector outside of each
sleeping area is really what we recommend I'm sorry detector.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, and it's kind of b YO co D bring
your own CEO detector if you're going to a vacation.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Rental or something like that, because they're probably not going
to have them.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah, and those things aren't each each state and county
of the country really is regulated differently, and so they are.
They have some COO detectors that you can clip on
your backpack. They can stay on the outside of your luggage,
you know, and you turn it on when you get there.
They've got things they can sit in your nightstand. There's
really you can make sure that you're safe if you
if you have a situation like that. I know some
(27:44):
of our crews in a different organization I work in
the pass we had a clip back that we would
clip that to the to the EMS bag because when
people are calling us they have those symptoms, we going
to make sure we're not walking into it, you know.
So definitely a lot of things you can do be
proactive when you're travel especially outside the country because again
a lot of regulations are different by county, state, and country.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Assistant Chief Mike Clements from the Scifare Fire Department on
fifty plus here. Thank you so much, Mike del that's
good stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Thank you, Doug, Yes, sir, thank you you guys. Have
a safe weekend you too, by bye. All right, we
got to take this final break of the program.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
When we get back, Will and I will wrap her
up and see what's I'll see what's on Will's mind,
see if he's found anything else fun you could do
over the next few days. More fifty plus. I'm Doug
pie Keith, Will Melbourne. We will be back old guys
rule and of course women never get old. If you
(28:41):
want to avoid sleeping on the couch.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Hell, I think that sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Fifty plus continues. Here's more with Doug. All right, welcome back.
Final segment of the program starts right now. Thank you
all very much for listening from the say No to
Everything they want Desk House to represent this morning got
actually they got more than enough representatives to vote yes
in passage of the Save Act, which requires states to
(29:13):
obtain proof of citizenship in person to register somebody for
the vote. The vote passed two twenty and that's for
federal elections. The vote passed two twenty to two oh
eight yes votes even included four Democrats who value the
vote in this country, which they should, But two hundred
(29:38):
and eight Democrats voted against making sure that the people
who vote for president are citizens of the United States.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
That I don't understand that, even I mean even the
Blue States. They they should better than to allow foreigners
to change the outcome of our elections. We don't want
who any other citizens of any other country want to
(30:13):
lead our country. We shouldn't, but that's what they're shooting for, unfortunately,
and it just boggles the mind.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
It just boggles the mind.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Obtained proof of citizenship in person before granting the right
to vote in federal elections.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's pretty simple. But they said no.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
The Democrats did, all but four of them. No respect
whatsoever for this country or for us its citizens. From
the taste this is kind of funny. From the taste
of your own medicine desk comes word that cnn X
Anderson Cooper was corrected for using the wrong pronoun when
(30:50):
identifying a local civil rights attorney during a town hall
meeting with Bernie Sanders. The person was called to the
podium because that person is a civil rights attorney like
I said, and Cooper introduced that person as she, to
(31:12):
which the person then immediately responded, it's today them.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Actually.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Cooper's response to that was, Oh, Bernie's on the road
knocking Democrats for failing to represent the working class. He's
absolutely right. He's a little late to the party, but
he's absolutely right. They are not representative of the working
class anymore, haven't been in years.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
What they're trying to do is what they believe.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I think is that the working class doesn't realize how
much harm is being done to them by current Democrat policy.
And what they found out in November was that they
were wrong about Democrats because so many of them came
over to the other side from the only the beginning desk,
(32:05):
and then we will go to some lighter stuff to
wrap up this episode. Word that March inflation was just
two point four percent, actually the lowest since this past September,
and way lower than it was for about three and
a half years going back. Contrary to prior to predictions
from the left, it's down in spite of tariff fears
(32:28):
fueled mostly by the way by mainstream President Trump hating
media forever, They're they're just gonna stick to their mantra,
stick to their talking points about how horrible he is
and how wonderful they are. And it's just I hope
it doesn't work out for them ever. Again, history says
(32:48):
it'll turn someday, but that side will have to turn
back a long waist toward the middle I think before
that'll happen, much of the cooling involves actually just involves
low or fuel prices, which makes it cheaper to move
goods locally, nationally internationally. These tariff woes, I guarantee you're
going to be settled out, probably sooner rather than later,
(33:11):
as countries continue to see the long term benefit from
just a more realistic balance in trade. China is the
stubborn one, the hold out, which the biggest bully on
the block. Why would they not want to flex their muscles.
But we're not scared to do that. And even that one,
even China, I believe is going to become a little
(33:32):
bit more reasonable and realistic about tariffs fairly soon. They've
got a lot to lose, so do we if we
can't sort this out. I saw a story this morning
about the hooties over there in the Middle East actually
doing damage this time in a barrage of attacks on
(33:53):
the Eisenhower. I believe it was the aircraft carrier. And
the response I can pretty much guarantee you is going
to be swift and it's going to be severe, and
hopefully those people will see the light before it hits them.
(34:14):
See the light and then maybe reconsider trying to cause
so much trouble, and the people who are funding them
probably need to reconsider all of what they're.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Doing as well. All right, will put down your keyboard,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Unless you want to hear something about the view you
want that first, or you want to no or oh no? Today,
by the way, will is national?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
What day is it up there? Nope? National? What day?
Will national? April eleven day? Something? No? No, stop? It's
national pet Day? You have one? I have two?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well on it's not yours though, you're just dog sitting, correct.
I mean it's pretty much all answer the question, witness,
it's pretty much all is Now, have you just taken
this dog?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
No, they live in another country. Ship it back.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
You can't. That dog would have to go through a quarantine.
Well that means you can. You just don't want to
bother putting it through the quarantine. Yeah, because he's old. Honestly,
I think he's in better hands. Just stick it around here,
I do, I understand the story of that dog. Tomorrow
will is not National pet Day.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
That's today.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Tomorrow is National grilled Cheese Day. So how do you
build a grilled cheese two pieces of bread and some
cheese and butter on the pan? Butter on the pan?
Do you put butter in and slap it on one
side and get some of that and then put more
butter in for the other side, or just one enough?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Just one's it? Huh Oh? I double butter it and
you know what I'll put on it. Sometimes.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I actually love this as a kid, and still to
this day would do it if I made a grilled.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Cheese sandwich tomorrow, but I can't because I'll be out
of town. So here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
You got butter on both sides of the bread. You
put in a little a pad of butter. Let it
kind of melt down and shake it around, Slap the
bread in there, nice hot stove, mash it down with
a spatulis so it just gets absorbed into the bread.
Then you pick it up with the spacially you drop
another pad of butter in there, shake it all around
one until it wells and it flop that thing in
(36:25):
there on the clean side and dirty it.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Up with a bunch of butter.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
And in between it's going to be a couple of
slices of American cheese, the real stuff, and will a
little miracle whip.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Wire? Your eyes up in there, eyebrows in there? Do
you not like that? It's not fine, it's fine, but
we got ten seconds, doug. Oh, the worst food in
the world so far.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
This is it s'mores with oysters. They're calling them some moisters.
That is nasty.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Do not eat one. We'll see u later. Audios.
Remember what 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?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
This show is all about you, the good. 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
(00:43):
fifty plus with Doug Pike.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Ahi. Welcome to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Master's Week, and very specifically at fifty plus, welcome to
those of you who are still enjoying what you do
for a living or just working because you like to
eat and keep the lights on. That's motivation for some people.
It's something motivates every one of us to get up
every morning. And that's something is different for us. All
(01:10):
it really is. I watched, actually I watched a video
yesterday evening about.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
About this.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I can tie this together, I promise about college incoming
college kids and how they should pick their majors in college.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And the most interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
My wife and I were watching this yesterday afternoon because
our son will be going off to college in the
not too terribly distant future.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
He's a junior.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And what it said was the interesting thing from a
parent's perspective, was that the single greatest factor on which
incoming freshmen to college based their selection of a major,
the single greatest influence, was their parents. They wanted to
(02:03):
do what their parents wanted them to do. We come
from a family of doctors, You're going to be a doctor.
We come from a family of forest rangers. You're going
to be a forest ranger. That's a great influence. And
then there are other There were all kinds of things,
social pressure, peer pressure, money, money comes up in.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
All of those. But what this guy was talking about is.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
That money can't be the primary motivator because if you
truly look inside yourself and find something that you like
to do and that you want to do and that
will make you happy to get up and go to
work every day, kind of like I've had for myself
for many, many years now. If you're motivated, the money
(02:47):
will come because you'll be good at what you do.
You'll devote yourself to what you do, and it'll work
out well.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And so I hope most of you.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Are in that position where you you didn't take a
job just because somebody else told told you you should
take it. You maybe at some point, and he said,
he sees a ton of kids come to him and say, look,
I've been here two months now, and this major that
I'm in is just horrible. It's just not for me.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what
i'd be good at. And he's got a great little
(03:17):
formula on how how to figure that out. And there
are some applications with that thing, even to you and
me and anybody else who's at a point where they're thinking,
you know, now that I'm retired, or now that I'm
nearing retirement, or wherever you are in your life, or
maybe just for whatever reason, at any point, you know
it's time to do something different. But what do I
(03:39):
want to do? How much time do I want to
spend doing it? All those things matter, and not necessarily
in the order. You might think, I'll drum up that
guy's name. I have it somewhere, I'll drum it up,
and I will try to get back to you with
that name next week during.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Sometime next week, I'm not sure when.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So anyway, more five star weather predicted, and so get
out and grab yourself a bucket of sunshine. No rain
in the forecast for almost a week, so run the sprinklers.
Number one, grass is trying really hard to choke out
whatever weeds are in your yard right now, but they're
gonna need water to stay strong. Good heavens, how many
(04:22):
I'm gonna put this over here? I don't want to
answer the phone right now, It's unnecessary. The markets up
to their usual tricks again, only this time, at least
so far, the movement pretty slight, still a mix of
colors in the indicators and gasoline and gold, gold, gold
doing its thing and jumping higher and higher. It wasn't
(04:42):
that long ago that I sold a little, tiny, little
palm full of gold that my wife and I weren't
dealing with and needing or there were just no use
for it. The stuff had been in the dark for
gosh the better part of ten, twelve, fifteen years, I
don't know, So we decided.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
To sell it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
What the heck goal was over two thousand dollars an ounce,
then almost twenty four hundred, a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
We didn't make a lot of money off of.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It, but still at that budging ounce, and that was
the highest it had been in a long time. It
looked pretty good today, thirty one hundred and something dollars
probably to say, I believe it was in that same
range yesterday, probably be in the same range tomorrow if
it doesn't go higher than that. Good news is that
gasoline is down. Well oil's down, which will mean gasoline
(05:28):
will be down. I'm gonna strategically do what I'm going
to do this for the next few days here and
try to do it on what I have in my
tank now, which is should be doable. It's not like
I'm gonna have to run the tank dry. But I
suspect that in a day or two max. The cost
of gasoline's going to drop dramatically because it's still at
(05:50):
the price it was when oil was about ten dollars
higher than it is right now.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And that'll be fixed.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Speaking of oh man, good, I've got a couple of
minutes here the post Office.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I didn't put this from a particular desk. We'll call
it the I'm not sure exactly which way to go.
I'll just tell you the story.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So the US post Office, which certainly has had its
share of troubles lately, especially around Houston, all the thieving
of mail and just backlogs of undelivered mail. Warehouse is
full of this stuff, and now they want to raise
their rates again. They want to raise the price of
a first class stamp from seventy three cents, which is outrageous.
(06:35):
It was only a few pennies when I was a
little boy. That tells you how old I am. Seventy
three cents to seventy eight cents, that's a lot of
money for a stamp.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
They keep it up.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm guessing someday a first class stamp will cost about
the same as a first class plane ticket.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I get that prices go up. I do.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I understand rising prices. Eggs are a good example, but
until the post Office can convince us that the increase
will bring better service across the board, including top of
the list, there is the service you get actually inside
the post office. It's rare that someone behind the counter
(07:18):
looks like they're in a good mood and can't wait
to help you. They all seem like they're just watching
the clock, looking for five if that's when they get
out of there.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I don't know that. I'm a little.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Hesitant to sign on for seventy eight cents to mail
a letter. And it's still pretty amazing that for less
than a dollar you can write a letter. If you
still write letters, most of us are using email.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Now you can write a letter.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You can write a check and drop it in the
envelope to pay a bill, and you can ship that
thing across the entire country. You can ship it to
Alaska for seventy eight cent, well, seventy three cents now
seventy eight soon to come.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I don't know whether dolls you'll get deep enough into
the postal system to see where the waste is there,
But there's gotta be someng.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
They're bat in a thousand.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
So far everything they've touched has turned to money that
shouldn't have been spent. We'll see how it goes. All right,
we need to take a little break here. We'll go
ahead and go to it. When we get back, I
will be talking with Barbara Minuso, a woman who hasn't
been on the show in quite some time. But I'm
really glad to have her back, and I know you
(08:36):
will enjoy I think.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
It'll be a good conversation.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Either to take advantage of right away or to tuck
away just in case you need it. Down the line,
more fifty plus coming up, what's life without a nap?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
If I suggest you go to bed, sleep it off.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Just wait until the show's over, sleepy back that Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
That's another good song. Will you're batting. I'm not going
to say you're bout in a thousand this week on songs,
but you're probably about a seven hundred clip.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
That's pretty good. That's all of Fame numbers. Yeah, I
mean that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
That's way better than the zero you just licking the
tar off the bat last week.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Welcome back to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Thanks as always well talking this segment about help that's
available to seniors that a lot of seniors likely don't
know exists, and that is something called elder Care mediation.
And with that, I'll just go straight into welcoming back
to the show. Barbara Manuso from NUSAU Mediation right here
in Houston.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Welcome back, Thank.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
You, Dougs, thank you for inviting me today.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I cannot believe it's been nine years since you were
first on this show. You were in the early early
stages of the show. It's ten and change now, so
I guess fifty plus was still in diapers the first
time we talked.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, it's now a real senior helping seniors.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So congratulations, welcome to me.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
There you go, there you go.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So here, here's what we need to do. What you
do and correct me if I'm wrong. Is you have
a service that keeps little family issues from becoming maybe
big family issues?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Does that boil it down pretty well?
Speaker 4 (10:23):
You did an excellent job defining it. Yes, thank you.
Our elder and adult care mediation is not something that
everybody needs every day, but once in a lifetime they
need to. The family might need to make a decision
for a senior in the family. Sometimes the siblings don't
get along. It's shocking. I know, you're shocked that there
(10:45):
are families that are dysfunctional.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
No, I didn't have no idea.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You had no idea. I know. And the siblings don't
know each other. They know that their brothers a CPA.
They don't know where we works, how he works, or
the sister the lawyer, and they have no idea what
she knows. But because she's the girl in the family,
what could she know?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh gosh, does that still out there?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
It's still out there. And so the people that are
at the table in elder and adult care mediation are
often in their fifties and sixties themselves as they're helping
the senior in the family that's probably late seventies, eighties
or nineties and helping them transition often to their next
(11:31):
phase of life.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Talk about some of the more common squabbles that cross
your desk between elderly people and their younger maybe children,
a younger sibling, whatever. What are the most common things
that cross your desk.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
The biggest thing is usually there are new housing, so
the safety people can't a senior gets to a certain point,
they don't realize how uncomfortable they are in a home. Now.
They might have stairs and of course they've fallen down
the stairs, or they could maybe they've got Parkinson's and
(12:10):
they don't have the agility and they don't have one
of those chairs, even the chairs people fall out of,
the darned chairs that go off the elevators. And then
the other one is so being in the home people
need to transition. They're not being able to take care
of their hygiene. They can't take care of the house,
perhaps as they used to. They might put a pan
(12:32):
on the stove and somebody will come in and notice
that the flame is going but there is no pan,
but the stove is on, and so all the children
might not recognize some might see it more than others,
but they need a conversation because they are legally responsible
to take care of their parents. People don't realize that
(12:54):
when you're a parent, you're legally responsible to take care
of your children until they're eighteen, when your parents are elderly,
and elderly can be defined anybody over the age of fifty.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh my.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yes, And the children are responsible for their parents, legally responsible.
So they've have to make sure they're in a safe environment,
that they're able to have proper hygiene, that they're being fed.
And then the second issue is taking the car keys away. Yeah,
that's a very big deal. Where somebody we had one
(13:29):
person laugh. They said, well, as my husband was pulling
out of the grocery store, he ran over a guy's
foot and they thought it was funny. It was like, oh, boy,
that isn't funny because they can't see well, or we're
only driving at two o'clock in the afternoon, when there's
no traffic and it's still light, and that's a red
(13:49):
flag you get, that's a red flag.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Do you get any calls, barbar from seniors asking you
to help keep their kids from fighting over a future inheritance.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Absolutely, that's a large one that we have and the
and we have had in the reverse where we had
some people called two daughters and they were there were
two other siblings that they were not mentioning where they
wanted to divvy up there they told me deceased mother's
(14:22):
belongings and money, and then we found out the mother
was down the street in a nursing home. Oh she
died yet, And they were trying to modify the will
before the other people got to it. And that is
that is not uncommon that that's played out in different
ways a few times.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
That is just so, said family mediator Barbara Manuso on
fifty plus.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Here again, thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
What are the odds of people who come to you
solving their problem in a single session?
Speaker 4 (14:53):
It usually is one session. Wow, I'm not a therapist.
I'm not there to fix them. I'm not an attorney.
I Am not there to give them legal advice. But
when they come to the session, or when I speak
to whoever's called on the phone. If I feel I
need to have a lawyer come in, they will bring
in a lawyer as a resource where they can talk
(15:15):
to the whole family. But we are there to help
them where they are and to help them make a
plan a blueprint. They work together as a business arrangement
so that they come to a solution. And that's what
we are skilled to do. And we have a lot
of backgrounds, so it's not just we're not just talking
(15:39):
to them. We have Vice statue forty hours of training,
and basic mediation we have thirty hours, and family mediation
and domestic violence four hours, and then they have another
twenty hour training for just understanding resources for seniors and
they're in their needs and these subtleties. But it's usually
(16:00):
one session. It's maybe five to seven hours that they
will the family will gather either on zoom or hybrid
of zoom and in person or in person and with
a senior present, usually if they are capable.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
How often, Barbara, would you say that people come to
you with just these petty little spats, and as soon
as they sit down and you hear them start talking,
you just be quiet, just go home.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
You ever do that?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
No, No, we don't do that at all. When we're
trained professional and this is not just the conversation. We
have a process and we have skills that we use
at every stage of this process. That's what we train
people in. And a lot of people come in and say, oh,
I'm a mediator and I've been doing this. No you're not.
(16:46):
We're professional mediators. And there is a particular They start
with an agreement to mediate a confidentiality and it ends
in a mediated settlement agreement, which is a legally binding document. Wow,
and if the family doesn't follow it, then they can
sue each other for a breach of contract. That's very interesting,
(17:07):
very specific process. It's very interesting, and too many people
don't know about us, and they always say, oh, gee,
I wish i'd known that, so so thank you so
much for having me on the show. So we have
this opportunity to tee people informed.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, we're gonna have to keep talking. We may have
to bring you back on pretty soon, because, believe it
or not, we're already out of time.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Hate to do it to you. Barbara Manuso here.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Uh m A N O U S S O dot
U S MANUSO m A n O U S s
O dot us I have another half page questions here.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We're gonna have to get you back on pretty soon. Okay,
we'll look forward to it.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Thank you so much for today.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Thank you, Barbara.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, great, thanks by all right, good heavens, we've done
it again. We made it to another break. We're going
to take that break. On the way out, I'll tell
you about ut Health. Ut health is a collaborative effort
among more than a thousand people in this great city
of ours. It's right here in Houston where it started.
This is where it stayed. There are somewhat similar programs
(18:10):
around the country in a few cities, but I haven't
found one yet that really compares to all the resources
and all the opportunity that UT Health Institute on Aging
gives anyone who.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Accesses the website.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
What it is is, in part, at least, a collaborative
effort among more than a thousand people, all different facets.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Of the medical field.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And they have, in addition to the training it took
to get the diploma on the wall in their office
or in their clinic or wherever they've gotten additional training,
they spent additional time learning how to apply how to
apply their knowledge to seniors very specifically, and that's not
something most healthcare providers get. They get their education, they
(18:55):
get their diploma, and they get to work. These people
have done all of that and then said no, we
were happy to learn more. Most of them in the
medical center for most of their time. However, there are
plenty of providers who are part of this Institute on
Aging who will work at least sometime out in outlying
(19:16):
hospitals and clinics and offices so that anybody who needs
their services can get to them. Maybe if they don't
like to go to the med center and would rather
be seen somewhere a little closer to home, the fantastic opportunity.
Go to that website, take a look around, and then
see if I'm not right. You're going to spend a
good bit of time scrolling through the pages, looking at
(19:39):
the resources, looking at all these other things they offer
to you, in addition, of course, to that expert medical
care ut dot edu slash aging, utch dot edu slash aging.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Now, they sure don't make them like they used to.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
That's why every few months we wash them, check us
for and spring on a fresh coat o Wax. This
is fifty plus with Doug Pike. Welcome back to fifty plus.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Just stepped right on your your musical interlude there. This is,
after all, the show that helps seniors become even more
a senior, I guess, and helps young people take care
of the seniors who raised them. So we're talking this
segment about something that could impact anybody, really, and it
was in the news really actually fairly recently as a
(20:28):
possible cause of the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife. However,
that's not what killed them. But this does happen to
kill more than four hundred people in a year in
this country and sends more in one hundred thousand them
to the emergency room to find out how to avoid
becoming one of those stats. And what I'm talking about.
(20:48):
I'll bring in Assistant chief of the Safare Fire Department,
Mike Clement's welcome aboard.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Mike, Hey, good morning, Doug. How are you. I'm good.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I would bet that most people, oh that's right, it
is every time I will I start the show right
as we go into afternoon, and I slip up all
the time. I would bet that most people couldn't name
more than two or three sources of carbon monoxide if
we asked them, there are a whole lot more than that.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Aren't there.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Yeah, really anything that can be incomplete combustion. Something doesn't
burn a clean flame all the way. So you know,
if you're a hot water heater, say it's not vented
correctly and maybe that flame's not burning all the way,
or a stove, a gas heater, or a gas clothes
dryer also, so lots of different things in your home
can create in hurricane hurricane seasons coming up. The generators
(21:39):
are always a big one when we talked about a
COE poisoning, So lots of different ways we get in.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
The real problem with CEOs.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
That it's overless and it's tasteless, right, you can't smell it,
can't taste it, you can't see it. And the weight
of the CEO is also problematic because it's a slightly
lighter than air, but it doesn't go all the way
to ceilings and intermixes kind of every level of the home.
So that's why having a COEO detector is so incredibly important,
(22:06):
and anybody who listened to the show it doesn't have one.
My recommendation go to a Little Hardware store or or
get on Amazon or one today.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Is there is there nothing, Mike, that could be done
like added to gas lan er something like more captain
this put into propane and natural gas that could create
an odor like we have.
Speaker 5 (22:24):
There No, because when we burn, when we burned probe
or we burn natural gas, it's one constant source. And
because you know, you could be burning different things or
even you know, when when we had hurricanes before or
excuse me, the big freeze that happened in Houston a
couple of years ago, people were trying to heat their
homes with charcoal inside, right, and obviously we had some
(22:46):
some people pretty sick, you know, and die from using
even a fireplace in the winter time. You know, if
your flu is not cracked, it open, and if your
fireplace didn't inspected annually, if the if the CEO is
getting pushed back into the home, it's the exiting through
the through the fireplace that's a real problem also. So no,
there's not really anything we could do like that with
a natural gas.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Assistant Mike Assistant Chief Mike Clements from the Cifhare Fire
Department on fifty plus. So in case somebody's exposed to
a less than lethal dose of this gas. What would
be the early symptoms of breathing it.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, so it's really important to know the early symptoms.
And it can mimix some other things, right, so, headache, nausea, confusion,
and sometimes it's mistaken for food poisoning. Right, but we
got to be real careful. And if you feel that
way and you step outside and it gets better, the
thought of hey, maybe this is a co leak in
my home should at least be processing through your mind.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
If you go for a walk and you don't.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Feel better, you know, maybe it's something else, But you
go outside, get fresh air, those fins go away, come
back in, they come back. That's something that you should
be always thinking about. And these detectors are not very expensive.
You can go on Amazon, you get a travel one,
you can go on for your home less than one
hundred dollars, readily available. But the symptoms you know, again
(24:02):
are nausea, confusion, headache, and dizziness.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Gas powered lawn tools came up a couple of times
in the prep I got and some of the research
I did, and the risk from them I read goes
up as they get a little older and maybe not
quite so efficient, is that right?
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Yeah, so really there's obviously all those tools should be
used outside. Right, If you run in the garage and
you keep it idling in the garage, it's problematic. But
anytime an engine wears out, So what causes CEO is
incomplete combustion. So whenever you know, you get too much
soot in your carburetor, in your carburetor for the we
eat or the mower when it's not running as true,
(24:41):
it's not burning all the way off. That's how COS
produces incomplete combustion. So that can also be a source
for them. But as long as we're using those things
outside the home, it's generally better, and we get in
trouble with that with smooth leaves. Idling in the garage
would be a problem with that.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, they leave it idland while they go inside to
get a drink of water or go to the bathroom.
And they come out there and stand around and look
at all the fishing lures that they're not getting to
throw right now, and all one thing, all of a sudden,
they're dizzy, and yeah that's not good. Uh. Prime camping, well, yeah,
prime camping seasons on us right now and I read
that even sitting too close to a campfire for a
(25:17):
while can cause problems.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right, it can.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
You know, generally it's not as common, but it can
if you if if the if the wind doesn't end there,
if there's not something to take the gas away from
the fire. Smoldering fire would be an example of a
time where it'd be more coo. Something that's kind of
dying out towards the end of the night. There's a
there's an incomplete burn that's happening. But as long as
the wind is blowing pretty good, you should be pretty close.
(25:42):
You should be fine, and you're not too close.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I lost a friend, his wife, and their son years
ago to carbon monoxide and poisoning. They fell asleep on
their boat, as they've done a hundred times, inside a
little cabin they had in there, and I think it
was a generator that was running in another part of
the boat. Had never been an issue, but somehow that
night the CEO was going into where they were sleeping
(26:06):
and they all died in their sleep.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Yeah, And that's that's a bad part about seal, because
it's odorless and tasteless. If you're not you can go
to sleep, feel fine and then and not make it
through the night because of that, you know, and maybe
a section that compartment that the generator was in was
just a little gap and it allowed the CEO to
not escape properly and fill up the cabs. So Cavin,
you got to be really careful of these things and
(26:30):
get it a detective. That's the best thing we can.
The best advice is for fifty two hundred bucks, less
than a hundred bucks, get something that ultimately save your
life or your families. And you're right, it's not just
sometimes when those things happen, it's not just one person.
It can be an entire you know, three people in
that scenario. So we really advocate for anybody who lives,
even by themselves or with the family, get a COEO detector.
(26:51):
They're they're inexpensive and a lot of them will plug
into the wall, you know, you about five feet up
on the wall and early outside of each living each
sleeping space, because sleeping is a time where we'd be
most vulnerable. If you feel bad during the day, you know,
you can hopefully realize what's going on, but when you're
sleeping may not. So a smoke detector outside of each
sleeping area is really what we recommend I'm sorry detector.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, and it's kind of b YO co D bring
your own CEO detector if you're going to a vacation.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Rental or something like that, because they're probably not going
to have them.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah, and those things aren't each each state and county
of the country really is regulated differently, and so they are.
They have some COO detectors that you can clip on
your backpack. They can stay on the outside of your luggage,
you know, and you turn it on when you get there.
They've got things they can sit in your nightstand. There's
really you can make sure that you're safe if you
if you have a situation like that. I know some
(27:44):
of our crews in a different organization I work in
the pass we had a clip back that we would
clip that to the to the EMS bag because when
people are calling us they have those symptoms, we going
to make sure we're not walking into it, you know.
So definitely a lot of things you can do be
proactive when you're travel especially outside the country because again
a lot of regulations are different by county, state, and country.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Assistant Chief Mike Clements from the Scifare Fire Department on
fifty plus here. Thank you so much, Mike del that's
good stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Thank you, Doug, Yes, sir, thank you you guys. Have
a safe weekend you too, by bye. All right, we
got to take this final break of the program.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
When we get back, Will and I will wrap her
up and see what's I'll see what's on Will's mind,
see if he's found anything else fun you could do
over the next few days. More fifty plus. I'm Doug
pie Keith, Will Melbourne. We will be back old guys
rule and of course women never get old. If you
(28:41):
want to avoid sleeping on the couch.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Hell, I think that sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Fifty plus continues. Here's more with Doug. All right, welcome back.
Final segment of the program starts right now. Thank you
all very much for listening from the say No to
Everything they want Desk House to represent this morning got
actually they got more than enough representatives to vote yes
in passage of the Save Act, which requires states to
(29:13):
obtain proof of citizenship in person to register somebody for
the vote. The vote passed two twenty and that's for
federal elections. The vote passed two twenty to two oh
eight yes votes even included four Democrats who value the
vote in this country, which they should, But two hundred
(29:38):
and eight Democrats voted against making sure that the people
who vote for president are citizens of the United States.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
That I don't understand that, even I mean even the
Blue States. They they should better than to allow foreigners
to change the outcome of our elections. We don't want
who any other citizens of any other country want to
(30:13):
lead our country. We shouldn't, but that's what they're shooting for, unfortunately,
and it just boggles the mind.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
It just boggles the mind.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Obtained proof of citizenship in person before granting the right
to vote in federal elections.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's pretty simple. But they said no.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
The Democrats did, all but four of them. No respect
whatsoever for this country or for us its citizens. From
the taste this is kind of funny. From the taste
of your own medicine desk comes word that cnn X
Anderson Cooper was corrected for using the wrong pronoun when
(30:50):
identifying a local civil rights attorney during a town hall
meeting with Bernie Sanders. The person was called to the
podium because that person is a civil rights attorney like
I said, and Cooper introduced that person as she, to
(31:12):
which the person then immediately responded, it's today them.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Actually.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Cooper's response to that was, Oh, Bernie's on the road
knocking Democrats for failing to represent the working class. He's
absolutely right. He's a little late to the party, but
he's absolutely right. They are not representative of the working
class anymore, haven't been in years.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
What they're trying to do is what they believe.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I think is that the working class doesn't realize how
much harm is being done to them by current Democrat policy.
And what they found out in November was that they
were wrong about Democrats because so many of them came
over to the other side from the only the beginning desk,
(32:05):
and then we will go to some lighter stuff to
wrap up this episode. Word that March inflation was just
two point four percent, actually the lowest since this past September,
and way lower than it was for about three and
a half years going back. Contrary to prior to predictions
from the left, it's down in spite of tariff fears
(32:28):
fueled mostly by the way by mainstream President Trump hating
media forever, They're they're just gonna stick to their mantra,
stick to their talking points about how horrible he is
and how wonderful they are. And it's just I hope
it doesn't work out for them ever. Again, history says
(32:48):
it'll turn someday, but that side will have to turn
back a long waist toward the middle I think before
that'll happen, much of the cooling involves actually just involves
low or fuel prices, which makes it cheaper to move
goods locally, nationally internationally. These tariff woes, I guarantee you're
going to be settled out, probably sooner rather than later,
(33:11):
as countries continue to see the long term benefit from
just a more realistic balance in trade. China is the
stubborn one, the hold out, which the biggest bully on
the block. Why would they not want to flex their muscles.
But we're not scared to do that. And even that one,
even China, I believe is going to become a little
(33:32):
bit more reasonable and realistic about tariffs fairly soon. They've
got a lot to lose, so do we if we
can't sort this out. I saw a story this morning
about the hooties over there in the Middle East actually
doing damage this time in a barrage of attacks on
(33:53):
the Eisenhower. I believe it was the aircraft carrier. And
the response I can pretty much guarantee you is going
to be swift and it's going to be severe, and
hopefully those people will see the light before it hits them.
(34:14):
See the light and then maybe reconsider trying to cause
so much trouble, and the people who are funding them
probably need to reconsider all of what they're.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Doing as well. All right, will put down your keyboard,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Unless you want to hear something about the view you
want that first, or you want to no or oh no? Today,
by the way, will is national?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
What day is it up there? Nope? National? What day?
Will national? April eleven day? Something? No? No, stop? It's
national pet Day? You have one? I have two?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well on it's not yours though, you're just dog sitting, correct.
I mean it's pretty much all answer the question, witness,
it's pretty much all is Now, have you just taken
this dog?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
No, they live in another country. Ship it back.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
You can't. That dog would have to go through a quarantine.
Well that means you can. You just don't want to
bother putting it through the quarantine. Yeah, because he's old. Honestly,
I think he's in better hands. Just stick it around here,
I do, I understand the story of that dog. Tomorrow
will is not National pet Day.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
That's today.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Tomorrow is National grilled Cheese Day. So how do you
build a grilled cheese two pieces of bread and some
cheese and butter on the pan? Butter on the pan?
Do you put butter in and slap it on one
side and get some of that and then put more
butter in for the other side, or just one enough?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Just one's it? Huh Oh? I double butter it and
you know what I'll put on it. Sometimes.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I actually love this as a kid, and still to
this day would do it if I made a grilled.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Cheese sandwich tomorrow, but I can't because I'll be out
of town. So here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
You got butter on both sides of the bread. You
put in a little a pad of butter. Let it
kind of melt down and shake it around, Slap the
bread in there, nice hot stove, mash it down with
a spatulis so it just gets absorbed into the bread.
Then you pick it up with the spacially you drop
another pad of butter in there, shake it all around
one until it wells and it flop that thing in
(36:25):
there on the clean side and dirty it.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Up with a bunch of butter.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
And in between it's going to be a couple of
slices of American cheese, the real stuff, and will a
little miracle whip.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Wire? Your eyes up in there, eyebrows in there? Do
you not like that? It's not fine, it's fine, but
we got ten seconds, doug. Oh, the worst food in
the world so far.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
This is it s'mores with oysters. They're calling them some moisters.
That is nasty.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Do not eat one. We'll see u later. Audios.
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