Marceline M. - Non Participant

Hello.

Hi.

Hey. Thank you for joining me today. Could you tell me a little bit.

About yourself, including my name?

Absolutely.

Oh. My name is Marceline Mann, and I am a grandmother, mother. I just. Well, I didn't just retire. I retired about eight years ago from Milwaukee public schools, where I served as everything that they had to offer. Teacher, teacher, assistant, technology coordinator, etcetera. And I just recently moved out of my home, which I was in for over 30 years. Raised all my kids there and everything.

And my son purchased a home, a side by side townhouse. And I'm on one side, he's on the other, and it's working out really well. I'm really happy to get out of the neighborhood. Kind of rough over there, but I'm really enjoying the scenery, the neighborhood, the neighbors, all that stuff now. So basically, I don't do any. I haven't picked up any work yet. I'm actually looking for something, volunteer or something to do to get me out of the house.

Okay.

So that's pretty much it. My story for now.

For now. For now. What are some of your interests and activities you enjoyed?

Well, that's kind of sad, because I really don't have any activities that I can think of. I hate when people ask me that, because I'm like, this is ridiculous. I have no hobbies. I have no activities.

Well, what do you do every day?

Lay around on the couch and watch television and be on. I'm online a lot, doing a lot of stuff, but cleaning up my house. I cook dinner basically every day for my son and my granddaughter, who are next door. And other than that, I really don't do much, which is bad. I know.

No judgment. No judgment. Looking back, what are some life experiences you think have shaped you the most?

Good or negative?

Yeah, positive.

I think. I can't think anything when I was younger, except I wanted to be a ballerina. My mother stopped my ballet lessons because she couldn't afford it. I grew up in Chicago. Moving from Chicago to Milwaukee was something that shaped my life differently, because here it's totally different. And I raised my kids here. That, and I think my mother's death or being a caregiver for her and navigating the system, getting the things that she need, that was a rude awakening for me. And I learned a lot.

So I've been able to pass that along to some other people that needed it the most recent awakening was finding out when I did my DNA, that my father, that I thought was my father was not my father. It was actually the man that I thought was my stepfather who raised me was my real dad. And I just found this out a couple years ago. So I'm like 73 years old. I found it out when I was about 70. So that was, you know, something that kind of turned things for me.

Yeah, okay, that's interesting.

Yeah, don't do that DNA thing, that ancestry.com. i might not.

I might not. Going back to what you were saying about your mother being her caregiver and kind of learning, you said you had a rude awakening and just kind of like learning how to navigate all of that, what were some things that you.

Had learned about dementia? She had dementia. I had no idea what dementia was. Learning what that was and dealing with her with it. And my mom wanted to stay in her own place, and I kept getting bombarded by nursing home doctors and everybody else that said she needed to be in a nursing home and trying to navigate the system where we had enough money, enough caregivers, enough medical insurance to keep her in that home. It was an ongoing thing for a couple of years that I had to navigate and making sure she had enough people to take care of her, remain in their home. I didn't think that was that difficult, but that was the real awakening part. Like, really, they say they want seniors or elderly people to remain in their homes as long as they want and that they have put into place things to help them. I had a hard time finding those things and that encouragement from the medical and social services to do that.

It was even when they said, okay, she got this program, she can have this, she can do this. They weren't very helpful. They seemed like they were on the opposite end. They really wanted her to go to a nursing home. Yeah, that was a fight.

That was unfortunate. Now let's talk about your health and well being. How do you manage your health and wellness as you age?

That's kind of difficult, but I manage it by seeing my primary care doctor, which I just started going to a couple of years ago. He's an afro american doctor, and he's very good. He kind of leads me to take care of myself. He's not into, well, you just need to take this medicine, and you need to do this and see this doctor. He's more or less okay. What are you doing here today? Why don't you do this? Try these home remedy type of things? Not always. Here's another pill. Another pill.

And what are you doing for exercise and, oh, this is a medication that I want you on. It's much better. It protects your heart. But Medicare won't pay for it. And it's two medications that he actually found a way for the pharmaceuticals to mail me the medication free. He did that. Right. And so he helps a lot with that.

And then I have. I have a niece that's a doctor. I have two nurses, granddaughters that are nurses. My best friend is Ariane also, so they're my personal, you know, care. Yes. Calling me on the phone. Have you ate breakfast yet? Or, you know, what are you eating for dinner? Come on. I'm gonna pick you up and we're gonna go and do this so you can get out the house.

So I got a. What would you call that? What do they call? Whole neighborhood or. Whole what?

A village.

Village. There you go. Thank you. Have a village. Yeah.

Good, good. That's what's up. Are there any specific routines or activities you find beneficial to maintain your health?

Yeah, I think maybe minimal. But the fact that now my bedrooms are upstairs and I have to go up the stairs and come down the stairs. So I've been told, you know, you should get that stair. Little thing which causes a fortune, or you should put your bed down here, downstairs. Because I have arthritis in both my knees and I have fibromyalgia. So I'm constantly in love, some pain. And my thing is that my routine is I get up, you know, I take a shower and get dressed. I come down the stairs, and then at night, I go back up the stairs.

And sometimes I have to go down the stairs to the basement to wash. And that's the most of what my walking around in a day. If I don't go outside, I don't go to the store, I don't go anywhere. That's the basic of me walking, you know, a moving. So I think that routine of just getting up and coming downstairs, taking a shower, which is easier because now my son has a walk in shower. For me, I couldn't. It was hard to get in the shower with the bathtub and everything. So, you know, just that routine, which is kind of weak.

But that's the.

It's a routine, yeah. Can you describe any challenges you faced in maintaining your health and how you overcome them?

It's a challenge to manage. Manage my diabetes. And it's just thing that's kind of, I guess, depresses me in a way because it's like I have to eat at a certain time, which I'm really bad at. I have no routine. I have to watch the curbs. But now that I'm on this new medication, my blood sugar runs low and really low. So that scares me. So I got the monitor thing where I just, I don't have to stick myself with a needle.

I couldn't just check my blood sugar, and so now it's like, before I go to bed, I check it, because I'm supposed to take medication at nighttime for it, and a lot of times it's really low. So I just came to the conclusion that maybe I shouldn't take it if it's already low. And if I go to sleep, it could go lower and I could not wake up or something, you know? So I don't know. What was the question you asked? Oh, sorry, the managing my health.

Yeah. And how do you overcome the challenges, how do you overcome those challenges that you just identified?

Oh, okay. I did insist that I get this monitoring device that I just put on my arm so I don't have to keep sticking myself because there's only so many times you're gonna do that in a day. Now it's a matter. I can check it every hour, every few minutes if I want. So I'm constantly checking it and constantly eating something, or I won't say not eating. Cause I don't eat, really don't eat that much. But, you know, keeping candy sugar is stuffed so that I can eat it to bring my blood sugar up. And this is.

I'm still working on it because it's been kind of hard for me to get used to it. And the fact that I have to eat something because I don't have. And that's part of the diabetes problem because you're supposed to eat every three to 4 hours. I eat maybe once or maybe twice a day, and so my blood sugar runs low with this new medication, but I think I'm managing it pretty well by keeping stuff sugary and checking it constantly.

That's good. In terms of diet, exercise, and mental health, what strategies do you find most effective for staying healthy? Which strategies do you find most effective?

Exercise.

And for diet, exercise, and mental health, what do you feel like it's most effective?

Diet, exercise, and mental health, I guess staying connected to, basically, I have a few really good friends, but mostly it's my family that I'm constantly in contact with and doing things quick. So staying in the loop with what's going on with them and I guess participating in things is like a lot of grandkids. A lot of grandkids. They all have birthdays, they have weddings, and they have all these things, and they always want me to be a part of it, which is, I guess, a good thing, but if I didn't do that, I probably wouldn't be doing things. So I guess, you know, just kind of staying connected with the family and participating in social stuff with them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what do you think for diet and exercise? Do you have any strategies for those to stay healthy? And I know. I know you were talking about how, you know, you kind of minimalistic when it comes to certain things, but let's just say in an ideal world.

Oh, in the ideal world, what would help me a lot was the to have those home delivered meals. I've been looking into them, and they're very expensive, so. And I know they do meal on wheels, but you have to be really, literally, I guess, in your house, not being able to get out to get that. But if I had a way of. Or somebody cooking, if they brought me the food, I probably would eat it. I wouldn't eat a lot, but I would be eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I think. And so in the ideal world, if they had that available to seniors, the only thing that's available to seniors is the places where you can go and eat lunch. The seniors sent us a senior centers, and then they had a meal on wheel, which most of us aren't eligible to get.

And thank God I'm not, because that would mean I would be really sick or bedridden or something to get that delivered. But it'd be nice to have. Maybe the department of aging has something where even if you have to pay a little bit, you know, just. And it's like, when I was in the hospital, my insurance paid for frozen meals for, I think, 30 days or something. They delivered it to me and I put them in the freezer. I just pop them in the microwave, and they were healthy, healthy milk. If something like that was available to us, that, like, I don't have Medicaid, so a lot of stuff can be paid through Medicaid programs and stuff like that, but I don't have that, so I would have to pay out of pocket, but wouldn't mind paying out of pocket if somebody came. They don't have to come to my house and cook.

Just bring me some on a regular basis, you know, that would help.

Okay. Let's talk about staying informed and engaged. Okay. With so much information that is available, how do you stay informed about the world around you?

Facebook. Seriously? Facebook and just being online. I'm online a lot. You know, I am on Facebook. I don't do the Instagram and all those, but I just go to random sites, which I don't think a lot of people do. So that's why a lot of people don't get the information. Like the department of agent, for example, I was on that website and I found this program, a pilot program they had that I signed up for that I'm involved in now. And I was wondering, like, if I didn't go and look at the department agent, how would I known about this program? And I think they're having a problem that they're not getting it out to people because it was supposed to end May 5, and now I see that is extended to April 15 for people to sign up for it.

What's the program?

It's called. God, it's the initials. I l s. I l s v. Yeah. You know about that?

I sure do.

Okay, well, I signed up for it, and they are, I don't know, whoever they got to do the financial part of it, I think they are overwhelmed because I signed up in the February, February, no, January, and I still haven't gotten any services or anything. I'm in the program. I submitted all the paperwork and everything they asked for, but my basis was I wanted someone, a housekeeping to clean the house. I got the people to do it. I got everything, paperwork, and I still have. That hasn't started for me. And they were talking about maybe a couple more months before anything gets started. So the program is not on a good start already.

But if I had not been online, I wouldn't have seen that. And now I see it pops up on Facebook. I don't know if that's because I was in there, you know, and it pops up now, but I told several other people about it, and they were like, I didn't know nothing about that. How did you find that out? You know? So I do.

And has someone contacted you yet about it?

Yeah, they contacted me within seven days. They said they were contacting within seven business days, and they did. And the young lady, worker person lady, she's doing an excellent job. She's on it. She's getting paperwork from me, whatever's needed, but then she forwards it to some other department or something. And that's the department that's got a backup. They say since December, they're working on December. People that enroll now.

So they're out there dropping the ball, kind of, but. And then I asked for a stair lift. They'll pay for that. You know, the thing take you up the stairs. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't need it all the time. If I don't need it. I'm not going to use it.

But sometimes my knees are pain, my back, my shoulder and everything, whereas it's really hard. I can do it, but I come down there, like, on the steps, almost crawling. So I would use it for that. That's in the process of being done. I got everything to them, but I really haven't heard anything about it.

Okay. How important is it for you to keep up with current events?

Very important, I guess, because I've been, most of my life, I've been involved in everything. I was out there marching and anything that went on, I was involved in it. I was very active, and so now I'm not that active because I can't do a lot of things because it involves standing and walking a lot. But I still like to know what's going on. And I'm the, what you call it, the information person for the family. So I'll shoot out stuff to the family. Like, this is going on, that's going on. You need to do this new that.

And they come to me when they got questions about stuff, where can I go to get this, or how can I get help? So it's real important to me. So that's why I'm online. A lot different websites just research and looking at stuff. Sometimes I start in the morning, I realize it's 03:00 in the evening. I haven't did anything. I've been online, but I do get a lot of information, like, I think with you guys. How did I get involved in this one? You sent me an email. You don't know how I got.

It was online some kind of way.

It was online somewhere. Somewhere online?

Yeah, that's where it was. Out there, right?

Yeah. Out there in the world. Mm hmm. Are there particular sources or methods you trust? So you said Facebook, right?

Yeah.

Is there anything else that you.

I don't trust everything on Facebook, but.

Well, that's fair, right? Is there any reason trust.

Online or anything?

Well, so we're talking about ways in which you stay connected, right. You identified social media as your primary source, but if there are other sources.

Let's see. Can't think of none off hand. I'm sure there are some, though, because, like, even with the program we're talking about, I did. People also don't trust stuff they see online and on Facebook, because a lot of people say, yeah, I saw that program, but I thought it was a scam. They say get $7,200. Right. And the way I kind of authenticate things, I look at, like, the source, like I said, through the department of agent. I was like, oh, there you go.

That's not a scam. Department of agents not going to be involved in it. And then my granddaughter just was trying to get health care because she doesn't have any healthcare because she's like a traveling nurse person. And so she's online, and she filled out an application for us. She thought Obamacare. And she was like, grandma, they said I got to pay dollar 385 a month for Obamacare. So that doesn't sound like Obamacare. It's supposed to be helping people be affordable.

And so I looked at, I said, send me the link where you. Where you signed up. And she sent me a link, and it was Obamacare slash something something. And I was like, you. It's not reparable. It's gotta be dot gov dot. It's a government program. So if it don't say dot Gov and the address that's wrong.

She ended up was on a website that was just an insurance something another. And I gave her the right website to go. So there things definitely online. Again, it seems like I'm online all the time that I look at the website address, and if it's medical, I depend on Med. What is it called? Medmd. It's a. It's a medical source thing, but it's legit. And then, of course, if it's, you know, says.org or something like that, I look at where the information's coming from.

So it's basically online.

Okay. It sounds like you're doing your due diligence when you get information and you're.

Trying to figure out if it's legit or not.

Legit or not? Yeah, for sure. How do you feel about using technology to access news and information? Do you find it easy or challenging?

I find it easy, but I know a lot of people in my age category don't find it easy. But because of my background in MP's, I was actually a technology coordinator for my school. So I dealt with the Berkeley computers and teaching the teachers how to teach from technology standpoint of view. So I, you know, so from the get go, and I got to go to a lot of free training, you know, free schooling in the technology field and computers. And so, of course, I kept that up after I retired. So I kind of get some type of way sometimes when people ask me like, do you know how to do email or do you know how to do simple stuff? I'm like, don't everybody know how to do email? But I know they don't but it bothers me and everybody. People have told me that you shouldn't be like that because of the job that you had. That's why you're more informed.

I was like, okay, that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

So I don't have a problem with negotiating too much stuff when it comes.

To, you know, technology. Okay, now let's talk about your interest in evidence based programs. So those were the programs that we were talking about before we kind of started the interview.

Mm hmm.

Have you ever participated in any structured programs or classes focused on health and wellness?

Structure? Class. Like, I did one online about diabetes, and I think it was through the department of aging. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So what was that like?

I didn't like it. It really wasn't online. I thought it was online, but they end up doing it over the phone. It was a phone conversation with all these people in the group, and then the information was really good, but I didn't like, you know, on the phone with other people, and it was kind of weird. I thought it was more like a virtual type of class, but it wasn't.

How long was it for?

It was for, like, I want to say three weeks or once a week for three weeks or four weeks or something like that. I don't think I completed the whole thing.

But you didn't like it.

No, I didn't.

Evidence based programs can offer structured ways to improve health and wellness over an eight week period. Okay. So what are your initial thoughts on joining such a program that has that eight week commitment to it?

Is this like a in person type?

I think. I think most of them are in person. Now, don't hold me to that, but I think most of them are probably in person.

I would be open to that eight week or even a year program if it was the right. What I really needed. Yeah. Sometimes I actually think programs like that are too short because they're trying to cram a lot of information in or they don't get to all the information.

Yeah.

And. Yeah. Especially if it's something that I really need and I'm really interested in it, then I kind of want all the information I can get, and I want to try it for a long period of time, see if things work or whatever, you know.

Yeah, I know. Some of these programs, at least from what I've seen, is that, you know, there might be eight weeks and then, like, 2 hours for that, that day. There was one that saw that was like 3 hours. So there is, you know, they do have that varying time going back to what you were saying about, you know, having enough time to get all the information in.

Mm hmm.

Would you be. So you would be interested in doing a program like that?

Yeah, according to what it was for.

Right, right. Understanding that these programs require weekly commitment. What are some potential barriers that could make participation difficult for you?

For me personally.

Personally.

The time, it would have to be during the morning or early part of the day. In the evenings, I'm kind of involved with the family dinner and that kind of stuff. So evening stuff, it's hard. And then my granddaughter, who's loud and stuff, trying to do something while she's around. Well, this is not, I keep thinking online this may be an in person.

Yeah. You have to go somewhere.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, early part of the day, in the evenings, I don't like being out. I don't really like driving in the evenings. Cause it's crazy out there. So during the early part of the day, not too early, but like, you know, ten, 1112, that.

Yeah, not eight, nine, eight.

I'll just be getting up.

What are some incentives or support that will make you more likely to join and stay committed to the program?

Money's always nice. Yeah, money incentive, not so much prizes, but I guess that's. That's a good thing, sending me money or food. Food. I forget my food.

So if they have food at the event.

Yeah. Or what you call a card sort, door dash, food delivery places, that kind of stuff.

Okay.

Got you gift cards.

Still money, right? Still money. Still money. Still money. Okay, well, that is all that I have for you today. I appreciate you coming to talk to me.

Oh, no problem. I enjoyed it. You're bright, cheerful person. I enjoy talking to you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, bye.