And just being able to listen more than anything else. I mean, that’s probably the biggest single thing a caregiver who’s in the support role can do is just listen cause they just want someone to talk to, you know, because they can’t talk to the patient, you know, there may not be anyone else, so they just want someone to talk to.

Are you caring for others while working and trying to live your own life? Wondering how to find the time for your own health and happiness? Well, you’re in the right place. The Happy Healthy caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole Care Network, is the show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others.

Hello and welcome. I’m your host, Elizabeth Miller. I’m a fellow family caregiver, a care advocate, a professional speaker, author, certified caregiving consultant, and certified. Senior advisor. If this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self-care and caregiving into their lives. Each episode has an accompanying show notes page.

If you’d like more detail about the topics, products, and resources we speak about, or you want to see any of the related photos, you’ll find the show notes by going to the website happyhealthycagiver. com and underneath the pod. menu, click the image or episode number for today’s show. The link for the show notes will also be in your podcast platform’s episode description. Now, let’s get to it. Let’s jump into this episode. 

Before we dive into this episode with Jim Cooper, I have a couple of announcements I’d like to share. One is, I want to know, do you have a favorite social media platform? I certainly do, and mine is Instagram. I love the photos, I love the videos. I find it Easy to check out and mark my favorite accounts. And I am consistently posting through Happy Healthy caregiver to Instagram on the weekdays, and then I enjoy sharing stories and reels as I, as I have the opportunity to do so. So if you are on Instagram, I invite you to follow Happy Healthy caregiver and save us to your favorites.

And if you like what you see, consider sharing this account with others through a My favorite post you can put to your story, comment and engage on our posts and definitely tell your friends about it. That’s how our caregiver community grows. I’d also like to thank our episode sponsor, Crazy Comression. So if you ever feel like your feet and legs are exhausted at the end of the day, or you’ve noticed that there’s swelling after sitting or standing for a period of time, you may be a candidate for compression socks.

 

And I want to introduce you to crazy compression socks. which is a fun solution to keeping your legs feeling fresh and energized, and they’re just not like any socks. These have a great personality where you can pick out fabulous designs that complement the things that you enjoy and you care about. Crazy compression, it has this top-notch support with these bold fun patterns, lets you express your personality, whether you’re a nurse, a traveler, an athlete, or a caregiver who’s on their feet all day. I think that you will find that these socks will change the way that you’re thinking about comfort and energy.

We head over to Crazycompression. com, use the code HHC20 for 153% off of your order. I want to share a series of books that I really enjoyed. I listened to three of the series. The fourth book is coming out any day now, and I’m excited to get my hands on that, but it’s a series called The M Shepherd books, and they’re written by Charles Martin. These books sucked me in, especially when I was doing a ton of car driving, and my sister Anne is the one who said that I needed to read these.

She also told me that they were in the category of Christian fiction, which isn’t really a genre that I read a lot of books in, but I was curious at why she was so into all of these books. And I was surprised. To learn that much of the series is based on finding sex trafficking criminals. So this series of books is going to keep you on the edge of your seat with all of the action and adventure, and there’s a fun motley crew of characters that you’re gonna fall in love with throughout the series.

The audio narrator took some getting used to, took me several chapters to kind of get into the story. Too. I want you to stick with it, and you’re not going to be disappointed. This is considered again, Christian fiction, which kind of surprised me considering the subject matter, and the Christian references are subtle and more about, you know, right and wrong and morality. I love the intercoastal setting as I have spent much time in my life in parts of the Florida intercoastal waterways, and I can certainly visualize.

What those scenes look like. And the main character, Murf, is a broken vigilante with problems of his own. There’s lots of twists and turns, and I immediately dove into book 2 and then into book 3, and now I’m awaiting book 4. All of these books in the series that I’ve read so far, 4 out of 5 stars, and I’m going to link to it so that you can check them out. One of my favorite things just in life in general is ice cream. I get this from my mom. My mom loved ice cream.

She loved coffee ice cream, lemon ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and she always used to say, don’t be stingy when we were giving her her servings of ice cream, which was hard because she was a diabetic. It I like enjoying a pint of my own ice cream that I can keep in the freezer and hopefully kind of make it last for at least 2 sittings, if not 3. and I enjoy just kind of eating right out of the container, right? Which is just like, I don’t know, it just feels like pure joy, frankly.

So I have been cleaning up my act when it comes to food that I purchase and looking for healthier swaps. And when I find a really good one, I treasure it. So I found an ice cream, yay. That is a winner because it is delicious and has clean ingredients. So the brand that I’m liking is called Cosmic Bliss, and they offer organic plant-based and grass-fed ice cream. Now, the one that I’m enjoying are the grass-fed ice cream flavors, which are gluten-free, non-GMO and they have no artificial junk preservatives and ingredients in them.

They have 4 flavors and I’m just like always hoping they’re coming out with more flavors, but there’s gooey caramel pecan pie, which I have I have not tried yet. Twisted cookie dough, peanut butter blitz, and then my current go to is one called All the Good Things, which has caramel ice cream, chocolate ribbons throughout it, and then chunks of fudge and peanut butter chips in it. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I get mine at the Sprouts store, but I found on the website where you can put in your zip code and see where you can buy Cosmic Bliss ice cream in a store near you.

Let’s meet today’s caregiver in the spotlight. In this episode of the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast. I want to introduce you to Jim Cooper, who has been married for 40+ years and cared for his wife, who had brain cancer. Jim is a man of many talents and experiences, and I can tell that he likes to try new things. He’s been a radio DJ, a real estate broker, IT consultant, an author, a podcaster, and currently is a voiceover professional who narrates audiobooks. In this episode, Jim and I discussed the value.

Of staying connected to friends, family, health professionals, and other caregivers, whether you’re in your caregiving journey or beyond it. We talk about his self-care strategies and the passions that helped him during his intense caregiving years, and now as a human who lives his life without regret. You’re also going to want to stay tuned into this episode to learn about the special giveaway that Jim is offering to some of our listeners. I hope you enjoy the show.

Hello, Jim. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Thanks, Elizabeth. I appreciate being here. I’m excited to chat with you today, and you know, we start our episodes off with a little bit of inspiration, motivation, whatever kind of struck me that I collected have, you know, over those early years of caregiving. And put it in the caregiver jar. So I wanted to get your thoughts on this, Jim, before we get rolling here. It says there’s no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections. Are you perfect, Jim?

Oh God, no. And that’s, you know, I’ve seen that, you know, people trying to be perfect in their, in their caregiving and it’s like feel like you have to be on 353/7 and on guard the whole time and it’s just physically and mentally and emotionally impossible to do. I mean, one of the, one of the biggest lessons I learned in my caregiving experience was. It’s OK to ask for help and you almost have to ask for help because you really can’t do it by yourself. It’s really not a solo venture.

It’s a team venture and the bigger team you can surround yourself with, the more help you’re gonna get. Yeah, I know it takes a minute, I know it took a minute for me to get there, you know, in a way we feel like it’s a sign of weakness to ask for help, but honestly, like from where I’m sitting now and probably from where you’re sitting now, like That’s a big, a big um sign of strength for me is when you’re vulnerable enough to really realize like, this is a, this is a team effort.

Especially when those, those wonderful feelings of guilt arise, which will arise at some point or other that you feel like you’re not doing enough and you are doing enough and it’s normal to feel guilty about a lot of different things, but it’s, it’s, if you’re in there full force and you’re taking breaks for yourself when you need to to keep yourself healthy. That’s the best you can do. Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing when I do my speaking events with groups of people. I always tell them like there’s nothing I can say that is gonna make, you know, the feelings of guilt not come up.

Like they’re gonna come up. So over time, as a caregiver, Jim, what did you do to kind of dissipate or try to self-talk through those, those feelings of guilt that were coming up? One of the things that I, I realized and didn’t think of it beforehand because I was thrown into this ever even having thought about caregiving before, is that uh the, the patient is going to have good days and bad days. The caregiver is going to have good days and bad days. It’s just part of the deal.

And this is where having something to lean on. Becomes, it became very important for me. I mean, I, I, I have a higher power and I don’t care if you worship turquoise penguins in Nebraska dancing the merengue. I mean, that’s fine as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else and it gives you some peace, go for it. Um, so I relied on that strength a lot when things weren’t going real well and I was able to, to turn things over to say, you know what, I’m not in control here.

I’m just along for the ride, so this is completely up to you and I put the whole thing in your hands, whatever that happens to be for you. Yeah, I think once we get to that spot, we feel, we feel a lot lighter. Right, right, you can unload that off your shoulders. You, you do get a feeling of, of lightness and, and you’re gonna have bad days. I mean, my, my wife spent a lot of time in the hospital. Because all her patients, all her, uh, uh, treatments were 3 to 4 days inpatient.

So we spent a lot of time in the hospital and I was trying to work an 8 hour a day job at the same time and so I’d go up to the recreation center with my laptop and try to do 8 hours worth of work and then come down and see what was going on. And there was one day that it was just like, I was in a just a horrible mood. I was, I’d had enough, you know, work was probably going crazy, which was not unusual, but it was just, I was just grumbling and nasty and just get out of my way because I’m gonna hurt somebody.

And I remember getting on the elevator. And uh this voice called out, Hold the elevator, please, and I was like, uh, are you kidding me? OK, fine. I hold the elevator, you know, whatever you want me to do. And uh in walked this woman early 30s, pushing a wheelchair with a 12 year old, 10 12-year-old kid bald and hooked up to an IV bag, and I just kind of looked at the, the kid and I said, how you doing? She goes, I’ve got one more treatment left and I said, Well, you stay tough.

And then I looked at mom and mom’s got that glazed look that caregivers get after the time is just like, so I was like, just stay strong and um. Realizing that things could be a lot worse the rest of the day, I was fine. Like all, all my petty little quibbling things just seemed to dissipate because there’s so many people fighting so many other battles that are far beyond what I would think that I would encounter. Yeah, yeah, I think it’s important to kind of see the bigger picture and that’s why I like need to get out of my house to kind of see that sometimes or the hospital situation.

Um, and yet I also feel like as caregivers, we get to feel bad. We get to feel like we’re human beings, we’re not robots. Right? I mean, the, the, while there’s a lot of physical things to do between making sure, you know, medications are taken and the shopping is done and this is done, the emotional toil is just as heavy. And and if you don’t pay attention to that and give yourself emotional breaks, um, it’s, it’s gonna wipe you out. Yeah, yeah. Well, you’re speaking like a man who knows what he’s talking about from caregiving perspective and, you know, I’d love for you to back up a little bit and just, you know, you mentioned that you you you weren’t kind of prepared for this caregiving role, um, but share with us a little bit about your caregiving journey, Jim.

I was in complete denial about everything. That’s where I started. Uh, my wife, uh, started showing some, some very bizarre symptoms. She was having trouble coming up with words. Um, she would send a text and it would be like hieroglyphics. It would make no sense whatsoever. Um, her, her motions, her arms started moving on their own. She’d go to grab something and the arm would go here, there and everywhere, um, and she’d be talking to you and in the middle. She just stopped, and because she couldn’t come up with anything else, so.

But, but I was avoiding the C word because I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. And we went through. 19603 months of tests and trying to figure out what was going on and when we finally got the lymphoma diagnosis, um, you know, everything changes when you hear you have cancer and everything changes in that moment. Everything you like, you thought your life was gonna be, it’s gonna change because you’ve got a new normal now, you’ve got cancer involved in it. So I was just kind of along for the ride for the most part, but in the beginning, I was kind of the patient’s eyes and ears and speech because doctors would ask her what’s going on and she couldn’t come up with the words to do it.

So I would give them the backstory and tell them what was going on and, and that lasted through like the 1st 4 or 5 treatments when she started to get her speech back and starting to, to get better. So there was a lot of saying the same story over and over and over and over and over again. And uh so I really didn’t, I wasn’t paying too much attention to myself. I was just like, OK, what needs to be done next? You know, what do I have to do here?

What do I have to do there? Um, I realized that I was not gonna make it through this if I didn’t get organized and that meant, you know, putting up a wall calendar, just, you know, for medications and for appointments and And just everything else that had to be done. So, it was Her first treatment. Which was Thanksgiving week. Um, uh, yeah, that’s a joy being in the hospital and we’re at Sloan Kettering in New York and we’re watching the Thanksgiving Day parade on TV and I’m like this is so surreal because the parade is 215 avenues over.

I mean, it’s right over there and we’re watching it on TV. This is very bizarre, but um. The day after Thanksgiving, her uncle and her brother and sister and my daughter, uh, came up to visit her and her uncle came up to me and said, come on, I’m taking you out to lunch, you need a break. And I thought, break. What the hell is he talking about? Break? I’m not allowed to take breaks, but he dragged me out of the hospital and we went to lunch, nice little restaurant on the east side and I was like, oh.

So this is what it’s like not to eat out of Styrofoam clamshells with plastic utensils. I mean, you know, it’s just all of a sudden it hit me. It’s like, yeah, breaks, gotta take them. A breakdown yeah. It’s true, and I mean like, I mean, getting out of the hospital, like the hospital gives me like some PTSD now. I don’t know if you have that feeling sometimes you’ve been like just the smell of the soap and like all of it. I just, it’s. See, I kind of took the other tack where I was always afraid of, of doctors and hospitals because I had a hideous experience with a lot of different doctors.

But through this journey, the hospital is where I could relax because I didn’t have to be in charge anymore when we were home, yeah, I had to keep track of everything and keep them, but once we were in the hospital, she was getting care from the nurses, the doctors. I could step back a little bit. That’s a great point. That’s a great way to reframe it. It’s like you’ve got a, you’ve got a dedicated team right there that’s focused on her. So give, give yourself those opportunities to. Right.

And, but even though you’re at home and you’re in charge, you still need to do the breaks. You, I can remember there was one day I just needed to get out of the house and Sally, my wife, still wasn’t, uh, she still wasn’t getting the words and the arms were still moving a little bit, and I called her sister who fortunately lived 220 minutes away. I said, can you come sit with her for an hour? I just need to get out of the house. And she was gracious and she was always willing to help.

So she came over and sat with her, and I just got in the car and went out, went, got a soda wah wah and just got out for an hour and just turned my brain off. And which is something I don’t do when I’m in charge. My brain is constantly moving. But if I can turn my brain off for an hour and recharge a little bit, I mean, that just meant the world to me and just helped me so much. I’m grateful that you got there, you know, that you, that you got there without, um, you know, going deep into the burnout world, or maybe you did go into the burnout world and had to learn it that way.

I did the burnout thing. Um, how did that work for you? I did the burnout thing at the very, very end. Cause my wife went through about 28 treatments and then had a stem cell transplant, which is 28 weeks solid in the hospital. And I did not take the time to decompress. After all that was done. And uh I, I had a breakdown. I lost my mind and unfortunately I lost it on the phone to my boss at the time and it was, yeah, no, it was not pretty.

You don’t get to pick the time. No, and my boss was like, I’ll call you back when you can be reasonable and just kind of hung up on me. I was like, you know, it’s probably a smart move. So, um, Yeah, you’ve got to take the time to, to decompress and, and come down with all that because the breakdowns are there. There was a woman in the hospital. whose mother was kind of on the same schedule as Sally’s. We kept running into each other, and she was from Switzerland and had come over, left her husband and her kids back in Switzerland and was come over in caregiving for her mom.

And um We got to talking and then one day I was walking down the hall and I saw her leaning up against the wall with her head down and I knew what was going on. I knew that breakdown was right there, so I went, I said, what’s going on? And she dissolved into tears and I gave her a hug and she’s like, she’s like, I can’t do this. I can’t be Superman all the time. And I was like, You’re right, you can’t be Superman all the time because even Superman became Clark Kent after a while.

So it’s like, you know, and just being able to be there for someone. As they go through that breakdown to say, hey, you’re doing OK, don’t go crazy about it, you know, I, I felt real good about that and we’re still friends, we’re still in contact with each other, so it’s amazing, amazing. The community is the best, frankly. And where, where are you now? Um, your wife. Sally had brain cancer, right? Yeah, where are, where are you now with things, both of you? She just had, uh, her 215 year MRI and she’s still clear, so things are good with that.

Things are going really well. So we’re 235 years out and, you know, knock wood, you know, everything is. Is going well. Great, great. We, we love hearing that. Well, you have, you know, learned a lot through this experience. Um, it, it’s life changing, I think, and you wrote a book, you wrote a book called The Not So Little Book of Cancer Carregiving. Um, what can people expect to find in your book? Yeah. You’ve written a couple of books, I should say. You’ve also written a mystery, a novel, yeah, so novel, caregiving book, you know, yeah, um, the book.

The book came out of a couple different things while Sally was going through treatment. I, I, I’ve always been kind of a writer. I’ve loved to write, so I just started doing daily posts in social media about what was going on and how I was feeling, which did two things. One, it was great therapy for me to be able to do it. And two, it let everyone else know what was going on without having to make 43,24 phone calls every day. So that, that had a double advantage to it.

And the third thing that that helped with is that we heard from people that we hadn’t seen in 23 years, you know, half our high school class came out and started writing comments and things like that. So it was, uh, it was just a wonderful thing to have happen. And I forget where I was going with that. I love you all are, your high school sweethearts. Yes, my husband and I, I married my prom date, so I know what that’s like. Yeah. We went to proms. We started dating in 2300th grade, so wow, that’s a lot of years.

So what can folks out in your book like why should they read it? With all those, all those posts and social media, I thought at the end I was like, I wanna put this together uh in, in some form, and I tried a couple of different things and it wasn’t working, it wasn’t working, and then finally came across the idea, why don’t you just do a guide for other caregivers, you know, here’s the things that I Experienced And here’s the things I experienced to help me get through that using Sally’s journey as a background to everything that, that I found.

So anyone opens a book, there’s like 22 tips for caregivers, um, that deal with fear and deal with bad days and money and talking about death and, you know, some of the joys that go on, some of the, the distractions that happen, you know, it’s a whole wealth of Information in there and there’s pages in there that have blank lines on them so people can use it as a, a diary if they need to put down phone numbers of doctors or, you know, want to write their own story, you know, that’s great.

So the point was to Help other caregivers as much as I possibly could. I really wanted to give back to that whole community because we, we have such gratitude. For our experience, cause we know our experience isn’t the same experience that a lot of people have. I mean, everything that went, could have gone right, went right. And we know that’s not the case at all. So I really wanted to give back to the community and to the nurses and the doctors and that kind of thing, something that would help caregivers along the way. Nice.

And you know, even when you say everything that went right went right, it’s really hard. Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m not trying to diminish the even when it goes right, it’s, it’s still trying, it’s emotional, it’s draining. It’s all those things, but we got lucky not having to approach some of the, the bigger topics and the bigger considerations. Yeah, yes, gratitude is a, is a huge tool to have in a caregiver’s toolbox, um, and I’m grateful, Jim, because you said that you would be willing to give away 5 copies of your book to the first people who emailed you.

And the email, um, we’ll put it in the show notes too, but it’s Jim at face plantbooks LLC.com. Yeah, it’s an awful email address and I’m working to try to change it, but, but yes, that is the email address. Yes, well, that’s so, so nice of you to do that. And it sounds like actually that um while it does say cancer caregiving, I think that many types of caregivers could benefit from your book. I’ve done a couple podcasts for people that center on dementia and, and listening to their experiences and my experiences, and there’s so much overlap.

Between the two. I think it’s, it’s kind of a universal caregiving thing where there’s so much that overlaps regardless of what disease or condition you’re talking about. Yeah, the emotions, the overwhelm, the isolation, the fear, the guilt, there’s a lot of, um, you know, we have very similar feelings, and then of course there’s some nuances for everybody’s everybody’s kind of different disease or condition or or whether they’re rural, and in the city, like male, female, or different cultures, like there’s a lot some other nuances there. I know that you, um, well, first of all, what, what were some of the vital resources that helped you during this time?

Well, that’s another reason I wrote the book because there weren’t a lot of resources to help us at that time. That’s because this was back in 2014. That was my year too, my spiral year I call it. We were spiraling at the same time, yeah, and there weren’t a lot of caregiver resources. The medical community was just starting to come to grips with the fact that, hey, the wear and tear on caregivers is just as significant as the wear and tear on the patient. We need to start paying attention to these people.

Um, we got lucky in that where we were in the hospital, there was a social worker on every floor and I got to know him pretty well. And even if Sally was having a bad day, I could pop into his office and say, hey, can you go see Sally? She’s just having a rough time, and he’d go see her and talk to her and it’d be good. Um, so that, that was a, a big resource. The other resource, uh, was family. I mean, You know, I mentioned, you know, my sister-in-law coming over and sitting with, with Sally, um, when we went through the, the stem cell treatment, I asked my daughter and my sister-in-law to just make me some dinners that I can put in Tupperware and freeze them and stick them in the freezer because I can’t spend my life savings going out to dinner in New York every night and I can only eat so much pizza, so.

Which they did, and it was wonderful. I could stick it in the microwave and sit down and have a really nice meal, um, with some really good food. So that was a big help. You know, learning to ask for help again, um, is a big thing. Another resource, besides all the people at the hospital. And um My wife went into the hospital and I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Uh, every nurse in the place, she became the surrogate mom. I mean, she would show up, come off the elevator, and every nurse in the place would surround her and say, how you doing, you know, it’s like, hey, I’m over here too, you know, but, uh, she got to know so many of them, and we’ve been to a couple of weddings and we’ve watched them, you know, have kids and, and that kind of thing, and that crew, that community, even to this day.

Um, are still very vital to us and check up on us. When we went for the one-year MRI, um, a couple of weeks ago, we ran into a couple of the nurses that Sally had, and they, you know, happy to see her and want to know what’s going on, so. Being able to make those connections in the medical and nursing community because nurses are completely out of their mind anyway, but it’s just, it’s, it was wonderful and it was such a great group of people and again, here’s another area that we feel so grateful to have stumbled into because everything was just perfect from that standpoint and we couldn’t have asked for better.

Is there like a skill like how do if people aren’t really kind of tapping into the Nurses and getting to know people, like, is that, it sounds like you all are just personable people too, but you know, what would you tell somebody who maybe doesn’t have that like innate, like, what are some ways that you feel like they could really show up for that and make a difference there? And it’s a win-win, frankly. Right. The biggest thing that I saw that, that impacted me is that there’s really two ways to approach this whole thing.

You can do it with a positive outlook and be optimistic, or you can be bitter and angry and go through it that way. And I noticed the people that were bitter and angry really didn’t Give much credence to the nursing staff or the doctors or who just were angry about everything. So, you know, my take is if you go in as best you can, as my wife likes to say, she walks in the hospital, hands them her car keys and says, you people do whatever you need to do.

And if you can keep that positive attitude and make those connections, if you’re positive with the nurses or the doctors, even the wait staff, there was a a guy that used to bring Sally your meals. And uh I pulled him aside one side and said, you know, you’re doing a great job. We really appreciate it. And he said to me, look, you need anything, even if it’s not on the menu, you tell me, I’ll go get it for you. So, so if you’re good to these people, they will be good back to you, you know, you’re gonna get back what you give out.

It’s so true. I love that. It’s those little things, you know, just like. This little tiny little phrases or just a smile. You talked about how you and your wife, Sally, are, you know, how giving back now is important to you and um I know you do some work um in a caregiver support group. talk a little bit about that and how people can tap into that. At the time that that we were in, which is back, I said 2014, 2015, um, the hospital was starting a caregiver to caregiver.

Uh, support group. They’d had a patient to patient where, you know, patients who’d been through it can talk to patients who were going through it and, you know, give them some support, and they realized that it would be good for caregivers to do that. So I joined that group, um, which was wonderful, you know, I got to talk to so many people going through the caregiving experience on the phone, and we would meet every so often in New York, but most of it was done on the phone.

Um, and just being able to listen more than anything else. I mean, that’s probably the biggest single thing a caregiver who’s in the support role can do is just listen cause they just want someone to talk to, you know, because they can’t talk to the patient, you know, there may not be anyone else, so they just want someone to talk to. Uh I ended up volunteering at, uh, one of the branches of Sloan Kettering for a while. Talking to the, uh, caregivers that were coming in, it was an inpatient, uh, outpatient facility.

So I got to talk to some caregivers there and people that had questions and were looking for support and that kind of thing, you know, I’d be there just to again listen to them or direct them if they had a specific question or that kind of thing. So, you know, that’s real important. We went back, we went back one time and I forget where we were going back for a checkup of some sort. And there was a woman who was going through the stem cell transplant. Process and was kind of halfway through it was really struggling and we walked onto the floor and the nurse came up and said, hey, you know, she’s really struggling with this, can you come talk to her?

And so I was like, sure, you know, and she gowns up, masks up, gloves up and goes in and talks to this woman for 2025 minutes and, you know, That’s what we do. That’s, that’s just the way it is. It’s the it it makes them feel good and it makes us feel good at the same time. It’s so true, and I, you know, what you’re saying about sometimes they need, sometimes they need people to listen, sometimes they need to be validated and, you know, share that their emotions are valid and um and then sometimes they do need help with resources, um, and I know, you know, I became a certified caregiving consultant back in 33 and it honestly, it helped me as much as it helped other people when you talk talk about that because, and I was so worried, I was like, how can I be a Coach for caregivers.

I don’t have all the answers myself, but so much of it is, you know, you’re, it’s a spectrum, right? And so you’ve, you have lived experience, you know, or, you know, certifications, you’ve authored a book and so somebody who’s way back here, you can help kind of pull up, um, and just make their life a teeny tiny bit easier or yeah, share, share a smile or a laugh or can make a lot of difference. Well, we’re gonna link to the, the Sloan Kettering. I hope I’m saying that right, um, support group, the MSC MSKC.

org, yeah, perfect, perfect. Well, you, um, are more than a caregiver as well, Jim. You’ve got, you know, you’ve you’ve talked about how you’ve asked for help for self. Care. You’ve talked about, you know, the resources that you’ve tapped into with gratitude and some spiritual self-care and how you dealt with guilt. Um, but you’ve got a lot of passions too. I know, you know, what is, what is your self-care routine and passions look like now? Oh, I was afraid you’re gonna ask me that. Um. You know, right now I’ve got, uh, I’ve been involved in the voiceover industry for a few years.

I’ve kind of stumbled into podcasting, um, and I have a, a podcast. It’s just it’s a podcast called It’s called the Hydrant podcast. We don’t talk about the point it was initially when I first started it, I just wanted to ask, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Inside the Actors Studio by James Lipton on TV where he, he brings in celebrity actors and actresses, and at the very end he asks them 10 really strange questions, things like what’s your favorite curse word, you know, what’s your favorite color, that kind of thing.

So I was like, all right, let me do that with some of the voiceover people. And it started out as just a series of about 15 or so questions of like that uh with these people and it’s kind of grown since then into now the 1st 15 minutes is, is, and I’ve been talking to authors a lot lately, uh, talking about their books and their experiences, and then I ask them 20 bizarre questions at the end. So it’s, it’s primarily to have some fun. Um, and that’s the feedback I get from people.

We need more fun. It’s just like, caregivers more fun too. Yeah, this is, this is so much fun and I had so much fun. It’s the most fun podcast I’ve ever been on. So it’s like it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. Is it burning down the, the airwaves with the, you know, subscribers? No, but that’s OK. I’m having fun doing it and I get to meet all these people that I normally would not get to meet like yourself. And it’s that in and of itself to me is, is worth its weight in gold because it’s just being able to reach out and connect with people that.

It’s social self-care, frankly. And you know, I’m, I’m, I’ve been in the, this is my 8th season of podcasting, um, or 8 year, uh, but my husband and his buddy has started a podcast called The Cobb Fathers, like, like godfathers, but Cobb is. County is where we live in Atlanta and they talk about snacks, sports, and then, you know, their heater moments, something that’s, you know, but they’re just having a lot of fun with it. They tease, they tease that maybe they’ve got like 15 subscribers now on Spotify.

Um, but I, I’ve been enjoying watching their journey and, um, and having, having fun with it. So yeah, I think it’s and trying new things like we’re, you know, still learning and still evolving, um, and meeting new people is, is amazing. You’re also an avid reader, I think. Uh, yeah, you can see just the edge of the bookshelf over there, but that goes for a while. Um, I like a traditional book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m, I’m a book nerd. I narrate audio books. Um, I’ve done about 35 or so audiobooks so far.

All kinds of yeah, a lot of nonfiction, some, a couple of fiction, a couple of cowboy romance things that were kind of fun to do and a couple other pieces of fiction, but a lot of nonfiction stuff, a lot of business stuff, real estate stuff, um, but there again, you know, it’s, it’s fun to meet the authors and talk to them and, you know, get their perspective on writing and that kind of thing and, and work with them, you know, it’s just, it’s a It’s a relationship business and that’s, that’s kind of the, the cool thing about it.

I love that. How did you get into the voiceover business? By accident. Um, I was, I spent a lot of years in radio coming out of college, went to a lot of radio stations and always kinda had Voice over in kind of the back of my mind and. Never really pursued it until. I quit my job, um, not too long after I exploded at my boss. And uh we’re sitting around going, what am I gonna do now? And uh got an email about uh webinar with about voiceover and I said, well, let me go to that and see what that’s all about and hooked up with the guy who was presenting and we talked offline and he said, well, let’s, let’s have a session and see if I can work with you.

And he said, yeah, let’s, let’s do this. I think you’re, you’d be good at it. And I had to unlearn all the things I’d learned in radio. Like what? Well, when you’re, you’re in radio, you’re, you’re just announcing things. You know, where with audiobooks, you’re acting. And you have to connect emotionally with the reader. You have to be able to give that emotion, and commercials have, have gotten more of that lately, but, but it’s, you don’t hear the 1960s, wow, here we go again, boys and girls, you know, it just doesn’t happen anymore. Yeah.

How do you do all the voices? That’s, that’s what always fascinate. I’m an audiobook listener and I’m a, I read traditional books, Kindle books, audio books, like they’re first situations, they’re different for me, but I’m always impressed with the voices. You know, and a lot of times it’s just perception. Because you can change your voice just a hair. It doesn’t have to be a radical. You don’t have to sound like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, you know, it’s, it’s not a radical change, you know. I can go up like this another and, you know, for a female voice or even a little bit softer and do a female voice.

So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s it’s all these subtle tricks you can do to, to change voices. Yeah, if I was doing it, I’d be like, what voice did I use again? Like I, I would get myself lost. You know, that’s, that’s one of the things people never realize is that when you start to do an audiobook project, I’ve got a spreadsheet that’s got a list of every character in the book and all their different character traits and personalities and that kind of thing and just so you’ve got your Grid ready to go.

So trying to remember what the character was is is fairly simple at that point. Yeah, it’s so fascinating. I study broadcast journalism at Penn State, so I never really used it. I fell into IT and different kind of storytelling, but um now I’m a podcaster, so I guess I have, I am using it. Yeah. Yeah, so interesting. Well, you ready, Jim, for the lightning round. We’re gonna talk about some of the questions and prompts from the Just For You Daily self-care journal. I wrote this to help care, um, with caregivers in mind, but anybody to help prioritize their own health and happiness because we put so much focus on others, right?

Right. Um, OK, so. Um, what’s, what’s one thing you’re saving for a rainy day? You’re a sunshiny person, but are you Saving something up for a rainy day. Um, I’m really not. I’m, I’m, I’m at the point in my life where it’s just day to day to day to day, and you know, sure there’s stuff I want to do, but, but, uh. I think it says a lot like live life without regrets. Yeah, it’s, I’m old enough that it’s like I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore, so I’m, I’m at that point too.

I get that. Um, what, what is your favorite character trait? Of mine or uh oh about myself. Sense of humor Yeah, I’m very fluent in sarcasm, so it, it’s, it’s my sense of humor. I love that. I love that. Um, if your best friend asked you what to do to relieve stress, what would you tell them to do? Um, I’m not gonna say what popped into my mind. Um, there’s no rules. The first thing that popped into my mind was John Belushi and Animal House. That’s great.

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily, um, and watch Animal House and watch Animal House. You know, it would be very similar to what I would tell, you know, caregivers, you know, find something you’re passionate about and take a break, you know, just, just put everything aside for the moment and And take care of yourself because if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not gonna be able to take care of anybody else either. Yeah, and you know, I know for me like I, I struggled with that a little bit, but I just would try things on.

And so like you mentioned writing. I was like I would try writing. I would get curious about different things that maybe, maybe I am passionate about that. Maybe that does sound interesting. Um, and so using it kind of as an exploratory way can be, can be helpful. Um, in what way did a loss of something or someone transform you? We had two friends who lived in Florida, um. That we were close with and when Sally was going through her treatment, um, the woman called us and said her husband was had stage 4 everything.

Um, he’d let it go too long and it was, um, it was not pretty, and, uh, he eventually passed away. And so she was on her own and I knew that wasn’t gonna be a good thing because she was, she was so in love with this guy and this guy was her whole world. Um, so she moved a couple of times to be closer to her kids and uh Then was gonna move back to around Florida, around Tennessee, somewhere around there, and Sally came to me one day and said, what’s going on with Rose?

That was her name. I was like, what are you talking about? And I looked at the post and she had had a uh Brain hemorrhage, um. And a stroke and she passed away like 3 days later. So it was like, you know, these two were, were kind of a rock for both of us. So we, we had visited them down in Florida. They had a house right on the Gulf in, in Bradenon Beach, which was wonderful and, you know, that, that shook me to the core as far as When cancer hits, you never know which way it’s going to go, you know, sometimes.

You know, it goes quickly and there’s nothing you can do about it and you’ve got to look at the kids and go sorry, there’s nothing we can do about this and you know that. Reinforces my gratitude of what we went through, uh, because it could have gone so many different ways at the same time. Yeah, that’s true, it’s true. Well, on that note, Jim, like last question I have for you from this is to count your blessings. Like, what are some of the, the, the few of the blessings in your life right now?

Uh I’ve got a passel of, you know, family and friends that are just, I know I can count on that are, that are always there, whether it’s my wife’s family or my family or my kids or grandkids or or all the friends I’ve made throughout the years, you know, I’m one of those people that annoys a lot of people by staying in touch with them and, you know, just trying to keep the connection. It’s a gift and uh so I consider myself very, very um. George Bailey and the fact that, you know, I have a lot of friends and you know, no man’s a failure who has friends and then I just, I live by that because that’s that’s what’s important to me. Mhm.

Yeah, you sound a lot like my husband. He’s a great connector, um, and keeps, keeps us connected to a lot of people. So I, um, I, I appreciate that as a spouse to somebody who makes that happen, who’s the George Bailey, yeah. Yeah, right, exactly. It’s amazing. Well, how do people stay in touch with you? Like, where, where can they find you? Where do you hang out on social and find out more about your books and then anything else that you’d like to add, Jim, like parting words of wisdom for caregivers, things that we didn’t talk about.

Um, people can touch base with me. I’m only on LinkedIn at the moment. Um, I kind of backed off from Facebook and Instagram. So it’s on LinkedIn. Um, there’s my website, which is Jim CooperVO.com. Um, and that has little to do with the book at this stage game. It’s more of the voiceover and, uh, the podcast stuff. Um, they can always go to face plantbooks LLC. com, which is the, you know, awful website URL and email name. Um, and they can get in touch with me there, Jim, at, you know, that awful name.

And uh that’s, that’s the best way to to do it. Thank you so much. Anything else you wanna add to, to, to wrap us up here today? Keep hope alive, and I know that’s a tried, um, saying, and, but it’s, it’s, it’s so true and it helps so much. And hope is like Shawshank Redemption. Hope is a good thing and you’ve got to keep it going and, you know, as bad as things might get sometimes, you know, there’s always hope that, you know, something will positive will come out of whatever situation you’re in.

Yeah, I think I believe that too for sure. Um, it, it does take intention, right, to kind of, you know, gratitude, hope, like, put these, some of these things in place and it takes practice. I think all of it takes practice. Well, I appreciate you sharing your story. Um, about your, your, your hobbies and your interests today and about the things that have helped you in your caregiving journey. I know this is, is gonna meet somebody kind of right land right where they need it today and, and, um, I just appreciate, appreciate you.

Thank you so much, Jim. I appreciate it, Elizabeth. This has been fun and I’m, I’m, I feel very honored to be able to share with you. Oh, thank you so much.

Hello podcast listener. If you’re caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia, you don’t want to miss all’s Authors podcasts Untangling Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’m your host, Mary Anne Schuko, a registered nurse, author, and dementia daughter. In each episode, I interview one of our 300+ authors about their personal dementia story and why they chose to write about it, sharing intimate details and painfully obtained.

Knowledge to help you on your own journey. We share a variety of stories across all diagnoses and from a range of caregiving experiences. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform in the whole Care Network. Remember, you are not alone. One can sing a lonely song, but we chose to form a choir and create harmony. Find us at alls authors.com. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast on the whole Care Network. I hope this episode provided encouragement and practical tips to infuse into your life.

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Just visit happyhealthycagiver. com to join. Until our next episode, I’m Elizabeth Miller with a reminder to take care of you. Are you still here? Well, it’s time for the disclaimer. I am not a medical, legal or financial professional and I am not providing medical, financial or legal advice. If you have questions related to these topics, please seek a qualified. Profession. I have taken care to spotlight family caregivers and experts, but their opinions are theirs alone. This podcast is copyrighted and no part can be reproduced without the written permission of Happy Healthy caregiver LLC.

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