Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: From Riverside Health System.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: This is the Healthy youy Podcast where we talk about a range of health related topics focused on improving your physical and mental health. We chat with our providers, team members, patients and caregivers to learn more about how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and improve overall physical and mental health. So let's dive in to learn more about becoming a healthier you.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: I am really excited to have with me today in the healthy youy studio.
Ms. Elba. Ms. Elba is going to be sharing her personal experience transitioning her husband from independent living to memory care.
This episode we will focus on the loved ones. Remember navigating the journey from independent living to memory care. Hello.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: Hi there.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Welcome.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Nice to be here.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: It's exciting to have you and look at that bright smile.
Welcome to the Healthy youy Podcast. We're going to be exploring conditions and treatments and ways to stay well. I'm Frankie Myers, your host today and we're talking about the emotional journey families can experience helping a loved one transition from independent living to assisted living and ultimately memory care. For many families, making the decision comes with a mixed emotions, a mix of emotions, uncertainty, sadness and even guilt. But it can also bring peace, comfort and deep connection. A little bit about our guests.
Ms. Elba originally is from Germany and came with her husband Wolf and five month old son to the United States in 1970 following an invitation from NASA. Is that correct?
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: For your husband. Ms. Elba worked in the German equivalent of NASA where she met her husband, Dr. Wolf Elba, and where, as a hobby, learned fly. Is it called fly gliders? I need to learn that. That sounds exciting. A hobby she pursued for 46 years.
Her husband and son became glider pilots as well. Living in the U.S. Ms. Elba did not return to the paid workforce in order to raise her son bilingual. Did you do a good job?
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: She still speaks it fluently and is 55 years old.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Wow. Instead, she worked as a library volunteer in the Newport News school library system for 29 years. What was supposed to be a two year stint turned into a lifelong stay in Newport News.
They bought a house in the Riverside section of News and lived there for 43 years before deciding to move to Warwick Forest Independent Living Community for retirement. But just months, three months after settling in there, the plans took a turn for the unexpected when her husband was diagnosed with cancer of the lower jaw.
As his health declined, he transitioned from independent living to assisted living and ultimately to memory care. Ms. Elba was by his side every step of the way, including his final moments. She's here today to share her journey, the emotions and challenges faced, and the gratitude she holds for the team members who provided compassionate care during this time. Ms. Elba, welcome again to the podcast.
All right, so I'm going to let you start and just, you know.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Well, you introduced me with my whole life curriculum.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: It was a mouthful, but so much to be proud of.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: But I really would like to introduce my late husband.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: He also was born in Germany the same year I was born. But after the war, his family emigrated to Australia.
And he grew up in Australia, did all his schooling, including university, up to his PhD in Sydney, Australia.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Then, after he finished his PhD or doing his PhD work, he made a discovery in the metal fatigue world that made him world famous.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: And he had an invitation to come to NASA, but it took about two years to get all the paperwork done for this. So he decided to come to Germany for the interim time.
And he started to work where I was working. And it was really funny because I had my own office and I had a very long commute. So the first half hour at work, I had my coffee and read the newspaper, and everybody knew not to disturb me.
And that morning, the secretary comes in with the guy in tow and introduces him and disappears again. So I call her later. I said, you know, not to bring a visitor in. Well, she said, he's not a visitor. He's starting to work here today. He's Dr. Elba from Australia.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Five months later, we were married.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Wow. So what did he do that day? Did you begin?
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Well, no, never. But he came from a lot of water sports In Australia and in the center of Germany, you don't have water sports.
He had learned from his colleagues that I was flying gliders. And he asked if he could come out one week. And so I gave him his first ride in a glider.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: So explain what a glider is.
[00:06:06] Speaker C: A glider is an airplane with very long wings and no engine.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Okay. Brave, brave woman.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: No, it's not as brave as driving a car down Jefferson Avenue.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Okay. So five months later, the rest is history.
[00:06:25] Speaker C: The rest is history.
And then we came in February 1970, we came here and it was supposed to be a two year postdoc stint. And then when the two years came to an end, NASA kept him here permanently. He worked directly for NASA for 15 years. And then the army had problems with their helicopters, and they offered him the job as the director of the army lab. And so he switched over to the army, but still out of the Nasalangli complex, Right?
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Right. Right.
Well, it sounds like a beautiful transition until life took an unexpected turn for you to. Just three months after moving in, your husband was diagnosed with cancer. Cancer. Can you share what that time was like for both of you?
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Well, towards that time, I noticed some slight memory losses, like his spelling was not as good as it used to be, but he was still fully functional. He still gave science talks all over the country, even that year when we moved to Warwick Forest.
But I had given a presentation at Warwick Forest about the war gliders, and that's when I saw the facility for the first time.
Then a couple of weeks later, I ran into a lady at the Mariners Museum who lived at Warwick Forest. And I said, hey, can I have a look at your apartment?
And she said, yes. So I went there and I liked what I saw and told my husband. That's where we are going. And the apartment I'm in now was the model apartment where.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
All right.
Talk a little bit about. So we're going to go into this phase. We're going to talk about the journey through the care transitions. Because it was a journey.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah, well, as I said, we moved to Warwick Forest in September 2015.
A month later, he was diagnosed with cancer to the lower jaw.
It was a 15 hour operation, and I think that did a number on his brain.
And from then on, it was a very rapid decline. I could not keep him in the apartment anymore because he wandered off, especially at night. You can't lock anything at Vohilforce.
So the operation was in December, early in December, and he was in the hospital for two weeks, then went to the rehab at Warwick Forest for three months.
And he had to learn to speak again, to swallow again. He was fed through tubes, so he needed specialized food, basically pureed food, and the independent living kitchen couldn't accommodate him. So that's why he had to go into the assisted living.
Well, he stayed there for over a year and the mental decline continued to a point that they could not keep him in the assisted living part anymore and he had to move to the Evergreens, which is the memory care unit.
And, well, he stayed there for over a year and it got so bad that even there he couldn't stay anymore and he moved to Piedmont, which is in the Gardens, which is a step down from the Evergreens. In Evergreens, you still can bring your own furniture. You have a little studio apartment at the Piedmont. It's a strictly hospital setting. A bed, a dresser and two chairs. That's basically everything in there.
So he went through that whole thing and he stayed at the Piedmont for.
He went there in August and he died in January.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: So during that time frame, how was it for you? Well, it was when it first started, and there was one episode very early on, which was in, I think, November. We moved in in September, and in November, he was supposed to come back from the Riverside area where we used to live.
And he called me late in the afternoon and he said, I'm on the way home, but I have heavy traffic. He never came home.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: And so it got later and later in the evening. By 10 o'clock, I called the police and they finally found him in the Saluda area.
So he had totally gotten off course.
Well, they kept him over there in the jail because they didn't know what to do with him.
So I had to get the car out of the compound. The next day, my son actually found out where he was, and he was clear enough that he realized something had gone totally wrong. And on Monday, that happened on a Friday evening. And on Monday, he went to the DMV and surrendered his driver license out of his own impulse. That's good for safety.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Yeah. No, you can imagine I was a nervous wreck at that time. That night was absolutely horrible. That was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me, not knowing where he was. What happened?
And then came the cancer thing.
The operation was in Norfolk, so I commuted every day between the hospital and. And then when he came home, he came home on New Year's Eve.
And so having everything on campus was really a relief for me. I didn't have to leave campus. I could be there around the clock, basically just walking across the yard. And I was there, and there were no restrictions. I could be there every time. I worked with the physical therapist to get his speech back because she didn't have the time to do it constantly. So she showed me what to do with him. And so we kept practicing and practicing and practicing.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: I also. When I noticed the decline, I said, I have to stimulate him. And I took him to basketball games, I took him to theater in Norfolk and things like this. But there was no panic or anything. I just coped with the situation.
The hardest part for me was the day they made the decision that he had to go to the Evergreen.
That really was devastating for me because I knew there was no return.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: And so that was actually the hardest part. Not when he was in the assisted living or. So I just saw it as a second job.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, he was very lucky to have you?
[00:13:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it was good. We have no family because my family's in Germany and his family is in Australia, and our son lives up in the mountains, so we didn't have anybody nearby. It was just the two of us.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: So you did what you had to do. How did you take care of yourself during that time?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Well, pretty good, because I was able to stay in my apartment, and that was the good thing.
Even it was very expensive to have basically two residences.
But I could basically live a normal life, except for the hours I went over to be with him. At one point, we had a pilots meeting in Italy, and I asked the staff in the assisted living, hey, I really would like to go. Can I go? Can I leave him? And I said, yes, you have to go. You need that break so that we take care of him. So that took a load off me.
I also had very good neighbors at that time. I couldn't walk. I had a bad knee. And so one of the neighbors who was walking his dog every day took him on the walks to another one, drove him for a couple of days to the chemical radiation treatment.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: So people pulled together to help.
[00:15:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that was really nice to have that community help.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. You mentioned the community help and then, you know, talk a little bit about the staff and some of the other things in your interaction along your journey.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: Well, what was nice for me, when we moved in, I suddenly realized I didn't have to clean anymore.
I didn't have to cook anymore. And I told my husband, I said, now I will retire, too. I'm not going to cook anyone. He said, what?
So suddenly I realized, hey, I'm retired now, too. He had been retired for 10 years and could do whatever he wanted to do.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: But we did. We still went out to the glider port almost every weekend. We didn't fly anymore, but we were out in that community and we did trips and things like this. And as I said, the staff basically was very helpful and very supportive.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: It was just that our kitchen at the independent living could not accommodate him.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Okay. It's so important, and you've touched on that, how important having a support system and how helpful that was for you. I understand that you were with your husband in his final moments.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Can you share what that experience was like?
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Well, as I said, he was at the Piedmont at that time, and I never forget the date because I had a friend over whose birthday was that day. They called me from Piedmont, and, oh, he was already, for two days on hospice at that time. And so they Called me and said, we think the end is coming.
So I went straight over to Pete. My son had come home right away. Here. I called him when I got that call. So he was home within six hours.
And so we took turns on my husband's bedside at that time, as I said, he was in hospice already. He was on oxygen. He was also on morphine.
And what was really moving was that the last two months or so, he didn't recognize me anymore. But when I came in that day, he grabbed my hand and pressed it and said, frauke. And that was his last word he ever said.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: What does frauke? What is it?
[00:17:38] Speaker C: That's my first name.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Frauke. Okay, okay, I got you.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: That's my first name. Similar to your name, just spelled slightly different.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Okay, so he recognized you.
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Oh, there's another episode when he was still in the Evergreens.
No, it was at Piedmont already. They had some of the activities there on Thanksgiving. They're cut out of colorful paper oak leaves, and they had a drawing of a tree on the wall without leaves. And the activity director went around and said, what are you grateful for? And so the answers were that I'm here. My grandkids took food. And he said, my wife.
He did not recognize me at that time. And that brought tears back at me, I'm sure. And I stole that leaf that's hanging now.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: You robbed the leaf, right?
[00:18:30] Speaker C: I robbed the leaf that's hanging on my kitchen counter.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: I won't tell anybody, but that that's.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Where the moving experiences, because he didn't recognize me at that time anymore. Another thing that's really funny, because he usually was sitting in an armchair, bent over at a table, and when I came, I usually put my legs into his lap reading a book, and he grabbed my foot and, like, flying the glider.
So, you know, in the end, even the whole thing was very tragic.
They were absolute funny moments earlier, you were still connecting. That's awesome.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: That must have been tough, though.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: It was. And there was never any panic in me.
I just went along. The only thing I did, I told the doctor at Piedmont, please don't do anything to extend his life. Keep him comfortable. Yes, but don't extend his life.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's important that, you know, they were.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Because we made that deal already when we were younger, that we don't want to end up at vegetables.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: And with no family support around. Yeah.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Y'all had that conversation.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Looking back, what do you wish you had known before starting this journey?
[00:19:56] Speaker C: Well, you know, my. I saw part of my parents decline so it was not totally new for me. What really was devastating, that you had a person there who was on top of the science world and suddenly very rapidly went down.
And that was a devastating part. I survived it pretty well.
But afterwards, when everything calmed down, I could tell what the stress was on me because I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat.
So that took a while till I had fully recovered from that.
But I was absolute at peace when he passed away. I said, ha, it's done, right? Yeah.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. You did so much. It sounds like, you know, along the journey, you guys, you were able to do, still do some activities and.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, take some fun trips. Being at Warwick first and having everything on campus was a real big help. Yeah.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Because I could return to my apartment and forget everything that happened. Doing the day yourself. Yes.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: For families who are currently making these tough decisions, what advice would you give them based on your journey and is there anything you would do differently?
[00:21:19] Speaker C: No, I wouldn't do anything differently.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: And I. I did the best I knew what to do. You know, like, I brought games over, we played games. Tilly was unable to do that.
The only thing is don't panic. But it's a different thing when you stay at your home and you're faced with that situation than when you are in a retirement setting like Warwick Forest is.
It's totally different. And I was so glad we were at Warwick Forest when that all came towards me.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes. There's something to be said about having the support.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. And as I said, all the residents were supportive.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: That's very good. Very good.
Your story is one of love, strength and resilience. And thank you so much for coming and sharing that with me today.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: You're welcome.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: You can come back anytime, talking about.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: More pleasant things like flying the gliders.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
And to our listeners, if this episode spoke to you, please please share it and hit like as well. You can also find resources on caregiving, memory and assisted living on Riverside Health Blog. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this episode of Healthy Youth. We're so glad you were able to join us today and learn more about this topic. If you would like to explore more, go to riversideonline.com.
