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Host Candace Dellacona welcomes investigative journalist and author Chuck Whitlock to this episode of The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide to discuss caregiving, advocacy, and protecting seniors. Chuck shares how writing about white-collar crime led to a media career, and how his experiences caring for an incapacitated first wife and later advocating in healthcare shaped his focus on caregivers. He describes turning to support groups and national associations for resources and respite, and explains how his partnership with healthcare leader Peggy Baddour led to co-authoring “LifeSource, A Caregiver’s Guide for Managing Mental Wellness for the Older Adult.”
This episode offers practical tips for doctor visits, medication oversight, and inpatient facility selection. Chuck discusses neglect and overmedication risks, recounts his mother’s death after improper oxygen administration, and warns about medical and financial scams that target vulnerable seniors.
- (00:00) - Welcome and Guest Intro
- (01:54) - Chuck’s Career Journey
- (03:39) - Caregiving Lessons Learned
- (07:15) - Entering Senior Care Advocacy
- (10:40) - LifeSource and Advocacy Basics
- (14:00) - Choosing Care Facilities
- (18:44) - Overmedication and Neglect
- (23:00) - Scams Targeting Seniors
- (28:10) - Final Thanks and Wrap Up
To purchase Chuck and Peggy’s book, visit https://lifesourceinc.org/book/
Connect with Chuck Whitlock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckwhitlock/
Creators and Guests
What is The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide?
Welcome to The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide, where we explore the challenges and strategies of navigating life caught between work demands and supporting our loved ones while maintaining our own well-being. Join us in this dynamic podcast series as we uncover the complexities individuals face balancing multiple roles in the modern world. Our host, Candace Dellacona, shares personal experiences and professional insights to guide listeners through this complex journey.
Candace Dellacona: Welcome to the
Sandwich Generation Survival Guide.
I am your host, Candace Dellacona.
I am honored to welcome today our very
special guest, the notable Chuck Whitlock.
Chuck is an investigative journalist.
He is an author.
He is a world renowned speaker on a
number of topics, namely financial
crime, and exposing con artists.
He has been on Oprah in 60 Minutes in the
Today Show and CNN, just to name a few.
And Chuck's really become a
world renowned expert on data
protection and healthcare crimes.
And Chuck is here to talk to us today
about his latest endeavor, a book called
Life Source, which is for caregivers.
And so, Chuck, we are so happy
to welcome you today to the
Sandwich Generation Survival Guide.
Chuck Whitlock: Thank you for having me,
Candace, it's really good to be here.
I love talking to caregivers.
It's one of my favorite topics.
Candace Dellacona: I'm delighted.
So, Chuck, as you know, we started this
podcast, the Sandwich Generation Survival
Guide to really provide resources for
those of us in the middle, those of
us providing care to our loved ones
in the sort of middle of our lives.
And the goal with the podcast is to
provide experts like you, Chuck, that
can help us navigate this really tricky
spot in the middle of our lives when
we're trying to help our seniors.
So we're really lucky
to have you here today.
I know you're very sought
after in the field.
So tell us a little bit about, Chuck,
your background and how you ended up
here in the world of advising caregivers.
Chuck Whitlock: Well, I guess most of
what's happened to me in my lifetime as
I look back and I'm 82, so I have a lot
of years to look back on, but as I think
about it, it, most of it was not planned.
I didn't have a huge strategy
coming outta college.
I just wanted to make a
living and support my family.
And I worked through
college as a police officer.
But when I graduated, I was offered
a job significantly more than what
I was making as a police officer.
Because I had a wife and a young
baby child at home, I thought,
okay, I'll go for some money.
At the age of about 38, I think, I
decided to go into business for myself
and I made a little bit of money and
I took a year off and I wrote a book.
And when I was a kid growing up, there
was a show on television called Racket
Squad, and it was all about white collar
crime and I decided to write a book
called Easy Money, which was about white
collar crime, and I wrote it because
I had been scammed so many times.
Like everybody else, I can think
of a million instances in my
life what I had been scammed.
So here I am 38 years old, I
decided to write a book, but I
don't wanna write about cops and
robbers and that sort of thing.
I thought I'll write about white collar
crime and I'll talk about the things
that have happened to me in my life.
The book was very successful
and it led me into a career
as an investigative reporter.
A national magazine show saw me on
Oprah and they said, Chuck, would
you do investigative reports for us
but specialize in white collar crime?
And I accepted it, and that launched
my career in television broadcast.
So all along the way I was
pretty much a caregiver.
Which brings me to my current
topic and why I was so interested
in working on the LifeSource book.
My first wife had just about
everything you can imagine.
She was incapacitated.
She couldn't drive.
I had to have caregivers.
I had to have housekeepers, and
yet I was pretty busy back even
then being a national sales manager
for a national medical company.
I really had quite a job, and yet I had
to take care of my ill wife at home.
And it was really a difficult time.
And I remember feelings, huge amounts
of guilt about not being there more
for her than I thought I should be.
I had a $1 million policy, Candace,
at the time through my employer.
I burned through every penny of that with
her hospitalizations, and I got another
job with a competitive company because it
gave me another million dollar healthcare
policy, and she burned through that.
And now this is a long time ago,
so it's when $2 million was a
significant amount of money, probably
equivalent to six or 7 million today.
Throughout that whole time,
I had to use my imagination.
I had to figure out ways to deal with
somebody at home that had these major
issues and make a living at the same
time and raise children at the same time.
So I ended up really becoming
pretty good at time management.
And I found support groups.
And I found that they had access to
resources that I didn't know existed.
And the more help that I
found to help me deal with the
problem, the easier my life got.
And I realized early that I
didn't have to be a doctor.
I didn't have to be a PA or an rn.
All I had to do was identify symptoms.
When you're dealing with folks that have
various disorders, you learn how to cope,
but you need help to learn how to cope.
I was at the support group meetings
and I learned these things.
I would never have known it otherwise.
And I'm a young dad with kids at home.
I don't have too much money.
I wasn't seeing psychiatrists
and getting advice.
I was kind of figuring out on my
own and going to the support groups
and asking lots of questions and
relating to what folks were saying.
And so I'm urging your folks that are
listening to this podcast to please reach
out and get the help from all the national
associations who educate caregivers to
do a better job to get some respite.
But what I wanna share is having
to take care of somebody and work a
regular job and then have a 24 hour a
day, seven day a week responsibility
to take care of somebody else.
It's more than difficult.
It's mind boggling, and it can
really create some huge problems.
Candace Dellacona: You
said so much there, Chuck.
One of the things, being a sandwich
generation member yourself, you sought
out community and you sought out
support and you created a community by
virtue of the exchange of information.
And I think that's really important
and something that should never be lost
on those who are listening, realizing
that there are other people who have
walked the walk and they have probably
lots of tips that you can receive and
make your journey a little easier.
After you wrote Easy Money, Chuck,
can you fill us in a bit about what
brought you into the framework of
seniors and the elderly and trying
to use all of your years of being an
investigative journalist and a writer
and into the arena to protect seniors?
Chuck Whitlock: Sure.
I was getting pretty close to
retiring myself and I was looking
at nursing homes and assisted living
facilities and all kinds of different
facilities for elderly people.
My mom was getting older.
I knew several people that were much
older than I was, and I thought, it'd
be interesting to write a book to help
people navigate this retirement business.
So I got a major law firm to
write chapters on trust and wills.
Salvation Army, wrote chapters
on charitable gift giving.
I got all these folks that had a hand in
helping people to retire successfully.
And I finished that book, Age Without
Rage, and that introduced me to that
whole world of taking care, the sandwich
generation and the myriad of problems
that we all have had to deal with.
I have a friend right now that's going
through it, his aging mother, she
now is showing signs of dementia and
I was with him one night at dinner
with his mom in a long-term care
facility and the more I listened to
the conversation, the more I realized,
Tom, you really need some help here.
You need a lot of information about how
to interact with somebody with dementia.
And that's how I really
got started in this.
And then I met Peggy.
Peggy Baddour is one of the nicest
human beings on the face of the earth.
And she provides healthcare
services to 15,000 patients.
So when I met her and she started
sharing stories with me about the
sandwich generation and the problems
that they deal with, I thought, how
do they take care of themselves?
And I was thinking back to myself when I
was going through those issues in my own
life, and she said, there are volunteer
groups that will sit with your loved one.
You can call most hospice centers, for
example, have a number of volunteers
that will sit with your mom or dad or
grandma and grandpa, and they'll just be
companions for two or three hours a day.
You can hire companions.
Sometimes family members, if you're
in hospice, can be paid to spend
time with that person that's going
through whatever the disorder is.
But anyway, Peggy pointed all these things
out to me, and the more she pointed out
to me I got more and more interested in
taking care of the sandwich generation
because being in that sandwich generation
and taking care of your parents while
also working with your children's
issues, it's almost an impossibility.
Candace Dellacona: It really is.
Chuck Whitlock: Especially if you're
the primary earner in the family, you're
really totally responsible yourself
for those below you and those older
than you that have come before you.
And it can be really overwhelming.
And Peggy showed me a lot of ways
to address those issues and that's
how I got involved in this thing.
It was mostly my own experiences
identifying with the things
that I heard Peggy talk about.
So I partnered up with Peggy
and we co-authored a book.
So that's how I got involved.
Candace Dellacona: Yeah, so let's talk
a little bit about the book and for
those listening to you today, I think
what's really important to understand
about the book is that this really is
a book geared towards the caregivers,
geared towards the family members.
Helping them advocate.
And the word advocate is used so
often and often people I think,
don't realize what it means.
And I think advocacy is really
hard when you don't understand the
infrastructure of the medical system
and navigating the healthcare system.
Chuck, tell us a couple of things
about the best way for family members,
when they start out on this journey on
navigating the healthcare system, you
have the insight of Peggy and her team.
They manage tens of thousands of
facilities across the country.
So share with us any bits
of your knowledge that you
expound upon in the book.
Chuck Whitlock: Thank you, Candace.
That's a great question.
Being an advocate means so much to me.
For example, when you take your loved
one to a doctor, you should have
a list of all the questions that
maybe they won't remember to ask.
You only have a limited amount of time
with that geriatric physician or the
primary care physician or the specialist.
So create a list of questions so that
when you leave, you have all the answers.
Be the advocate for your loved one.
Your job really is to see things that
are happening that maybe they won't
remember have happened, or things
that maybe they don't think are a
concern, but because you've studied
a little bit about their issues.
For example, if they're diabetic,
watch how much sugar they're eating,
if they're taking insulin, make
sure they take the right dosage.
Do a little bit of research on the
medications that they're taking.
And, all you have to do is
ask a drugist which ones are
contraindicated with others.
You can find out very quickly if the
patient, because maybe they're taking
psychotropic drugs and they have multiple
disorders that are contraindicated for
their arthritis medication or whatever.
You need to know that, and
the drugist will help you.
And almost always, there's
alternatives to drugs that are
contraindicated with other drugs.
So being an advocate means
looking over the shoulder of
everything that's going on.
I remember I was in the hospital
about 13 years ago, having open heart
surgery, and my wife, she got a bed
and stayed in the room with me the
whole time I was in the hospital.
She was my advocate and every time
they came in with medication, she
checked the medication to make sure
the pill colors were the same, that
they were round or not rectangular.
She knew which medication
I was supposed to receive.
Candace Dellacona: Advocacy can be
really basic and making sure that you are
educated to the extent that A, you know
the questions to ask and you leave those
doctor's appointments with the answers
to those questions and you bring up
talking to a pharmacist about medications.
We're fortunate enough these days, there's
so much information online about the
basics related to medication and making
sure that you're educated on the basics.
And Chuck, when family members have to
transition into an inpatient facility,
what is the best advice for advocates
that you can give to them to help them
navigate those systems once they are
inpatient and where they'll remain.
Chuck Whitlock: I've done dozens
of investigative reports on
long-term care over the years.
And so let me share a little
bit of that with your listeners.
The first thing you have to do
is check with Medicare to get
the rating on the facility.
The second thing you need to do is
you need to shop, you need to go
to, not one, not to maybe five or
10 different long-term healthcare
facilities, whether it's assisted
living or memory care or nursing home.
You need to visit those facilities
and meet with the medical director,
not just the administrator
or the sales representative.
Always ask for the medical director
and ask them, what's your rating?
How many complaints have you had?
Do you have any lawsuits
going on right now?
Do you do a criminal background
check on the employees?
Do you have a record of it?
If I were to ask for it,
could you show it to me?
Candace Dellacona: So you can go in
Chuck and ask to talk to the medical
director and ask this kind of information.
Chuck Whitlock: Absolutely.
You're the you're the advocate, Candace,
and if this is somebody you love, you're
not gonna turn them over to people.
Lemme give you the, let me
just tell you a quick story.
I have a neighbor whose husband's
in a long-term care right now in a
nursing home, and he has very serious
dementia and some other comorbidities.
And he shakes, he can't
use his hands to eat.
And so she went to visit him
and he's licking the food out
of the bowl in front of her.
He can't use his hands, and that's
how he had to consume the food.
And she called me and she said, Chuck,
I can't stand watching this happen.
What can I do?
I said, let's go to this facility and
let's talk to the medical director.
And we did.
And she said, I had no idea
the floor was doing this.
We will have your husband hand fed, which
is of course the appropriate thing to do.
Candace Dellacona: Right, and it's the
dignified thing to do, but you know, you
bring that up that, I think as consumers,
quote unquote and non-medical people,
we don't know how far we can push.
So that's great advice Chuck.
Chuck Whitlock: You have to
talk to the medical director.
They're the ones that are legally
liable for the actual care of
the patients in the facility.
Of course, the administrator, he's
at the top or she's at the top
and the buck will stop with them.
But trust me, if there's a lawsuit, the
medical director's gonna be named in the
lawsuit, so they're very cautious about
the care that patients are receiving.
So anyway, I suggest that A, you check
with Medicare to get their rating.
That will tell you that there's a lot
of complaints or hardly any five star
rating is what you're looking for.
If it's a four star, it may still be okay,
but four or five, nothing less than that.
If it's a three, don't go there.
Go to the fours and fives, look 'em over.
Talk to the medical director.
Be their advocate.
Think just in your own brain, think
to yourself, I'm moving in here.
Is this a place I would come
if I had the same problem that
mom has, would I live here.
And I'll tell you, I've been to some
facilities where they'll have 200
patients sitting in one large great
room in wheelchairs with one nurse.
You can't possibly take care of 200
patients sitting in wheelchairs.
How do you take care of those
folks if you're understaffed?
And Candace trust me, understaffing
is a huge problem right now.
So you have to visit your loved
one as frequently as you can.
I know you have a job and other
responsibilities, and you have
your children to take care of.
I get it.
But either you or somebody else, maybe
your spouse, maybe a good friend of yours
can stop by and just visit and look and
see what kind of care they're giving.
If the patient's not being cared for, if
they're not being walked to the bathroom,
if they're being kept locked in by putting
the handrails up, which by the way,
are against the law in most states now.
You need to know what expectations
you can have based on the laws
and it takes a little homework.
Maybe you have to go online and,
look at a few, ask a few questions.
We can Google anything,
Candace, and there it is.
Candace Dellacona: Yeah.
Chuck Whitlock: But you have to take the
time to do that, to be a good caregiver.
And at the end of the day you're
gonna go to bed and you're gonna say,
I've really done something today.
This, I'm treating mom the way
I would've wanted to be treated.
And if it weren't for, she raised me and
she was there when I needed my diapers
changed by God, I'm there for mom.
That's what you need to say to yourself
when you're going to bed at night.
Candace Dellacona: For sure.
One of the things I know that you've
pointed out too, is that overmedicated
patients and overmedication in
general is unfortunately rampant
with the senior population.
I know it's sometimes used as
a substitution for care to keep
patients sedentary and docile.
So what are the sort of telltale factors
that you can impart to family members
about things like over medication
and neglect, other than the obvious.
Chuck Whitlock: Another great
question, Candace, and I'll tell
you I'm so glad you asked 'cause I
would love to have brought that up.
I always check the medications.
When my aunt Mary Louise, who, she was
my second mom, I would always check
the medication and on several occasions
I found the pain medication missing.
That she had a 30 day supply, and all
of a sudden she has a 20 day supply.
So there's a problem.
And I didn't do it often, but I
did do it often enough to find two
instances where somebody in the
staff was taking her pain medication.
Also, I look at the
strength of the medication.
If a patient has, is diagnosed
with bipolar and they're given a
certain psychotropic drug of 50
milligrams and you check on it.
You ask your pharmacist, they're
not gonna ask their pharmacist.
Most places they don't have
a pharmacist there to ask.
You can pick up the phone and call.
Maybe they can't.
Is 50 milligrams the right dosage
for somebody with this diagnosis?
And then the pharmacist might ask a few
questions about how severe the problem is.
You might even ask the internist.
There's usually a medical
director with every facility.
In fact, by law, they have to be,
and usually they're in the facility.
Go to the medical director's
office with a bottle of pills and
say, look, this is 50 milligrams.
I look at this online.
This is a really strong medication.
Can you get the same
result with 25 milligrams?
Be an advocate.
Ask questions.
Look, I wrote the book Medi Scams after
my mom was killed in a nursing home.
She was in a hospital
she was 84 years old.
She had kidney failure.
She was taken to a hospital, which
was an long-term care facility.
But, she was diagnosed with
three different things, including
heart disease and kidney disease
and there was a third thing.
And they took care of it, and then
they figured after four weeks they
couldn't do anything more for her,
so they sent her to a nursing home.
On the paperwork to the nursing
home, it said, do not provide oxygen.
She had a peritonitis and if they
used oxygen, it would kill her.
And it said in bold, red, type, do
not administer oxygen to Mrs.
Whitlock.
They did.
And she was dead within a half hour
after arriving at the nursing home.
Candace Dellacona: Oh my gosh.
Chuck Whitlock: You just, you gotta
be a strong advocate and you have
to just be aware of all the things
that can go on in these facilities.
My brother was there when my mom died
and he told me the story, and that's
what prompted me to write Medis Scams,
a whole book about medical quackery, and
I did probably 30 national television
segments on that very topic, just
to show America the kinds of things
that they needed to watch out for.
Candace Dellacona: I think what's so
hard too, as non-medical people and
the way that our society generally
respects and reveres those In the
medical profession, it's really hard
to question the people that we're
relying on to give us the best advice.
And I think, making sure that our
listeners and those who are advocating
for our loved ones understand that asking
questions is not disrespectful at all,
and doctors and caregivers are humans and
recognizing their own humanity and their
ability to make a mistake is so important.
No one else is looking in on your
loved one the way that you do.
And this information is so incredibly
helpful to people to not be afraid to
ask those really hard questions and
ask to talk to those in charge because
they're the ones that set the policy
and set the tone within the facility.
I just wanna talk a little bit about,
and I know you've been generous with
your time, but I do wanna talk a
bit about the financial exploitation
that you are seeing with seniors.
And I know you just had the occasion to
speak to thousands of law enforcement
officers specifically about how
we become so vulnerable to these
instances of financial exploitation.
And what's your best advice for
those of us listening, to know what
to look out for and why are we so
vulnerable to these scams, Chuck?
Chuck Whitlock: Candace,
your questions are so good.
These are great questions.
But let me just tell you, whenever
there's a dramatic need, there is
a strong possibility of a scam.
And I'll give you an example.
There was a well-known comedian who
had terminal cancer, stage four cancer.
The oncologist tried
everything they could.
They couldn't cure him.
They told him he had 60 days to live.
He heard about a psychic surgeon
in the Philippines for only
$150,000, they could remove the
cancer from his body psychically.
He got on an airplane and he went to
the Philippines and he had psychic
surgery and they dramatically pulled
out a tumor with blood on it and they
shook it and he could see it, and
they threw it into a bowl of water.
And they said, now stand up.
And he did.
And there were no incisions in his body.
He was, oh my, this really worked.
And he gave them, believe it or
not, he gave them an extra 50,000.
He was so impressed that
they had saved his life.
He came back to the States
and was dead a month later.
People who are desperate
will do almost anything.
And when they're given an opportunity to
save their life or a loved one's life,
and they're convinced that the oncologists
really don't want to talk about this,
because they would lose all that business,
the pharmaceutical companies would
lose all those pharmaceutical sales.
So that's why people like they, they talk
about people like us who are legitimate.
Well, they're not legitimate
Candace, they're con artists.
And that's an extreme example.
But there are so many people out
there who are desperate for a
solution and people that have mental
disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia
any number of mental disorder.
They probably are not gonna get
better, which is one of the most
frustrating things for caregivers.
They're used to mom coming
home with a hip replacement.
Okay?
They take care of mom and she gets better.
But now you have a mental disorder
and nobody has a cure for it.
They can extend your life.
They can make your life better
from now till the time you're not
here, but they can't cure you.
In fact, everybody knows you're probably
gonna get worse as time goes on.
So if you find a charlatan who says, I
used to be in the same place you are.
I couldn't remember what time of day,
I couldn't remember my wife's name.
It sounds too good to be true.
And somebody that's rational
and not desperate, wouldn't
believe it for a second.
But when they present this opportunity,
this solution, and it sounds so
good, and they sound so convincing,
remember the word is confidence man.
They're gonna win your confidence.
How do they do it?
They wear a white jacket with a
stethoscope around their neck.
They pretend to be doctors.
Whatever they are, whatever they do to
present this unbelievable opportunity.
To a point where you say,
what have I got to lose?
It's only money and I can't
take it with me anyway.
I've interviewed hundreds of con artists
in and out of prison, who specialize
in medical fraud, selling durable
goods to people that didn't need them.
You get a wheelchair delivered
to you and how did this happen?
I didn't order a wheelchair.
Somebody stole your identity and
they ordered 500 wheelchairs.
What you have to do when it comes to
financial fraud, medical fraud is you
have to be on your guard when you're
going through a traumatic event in
your life, whether it's a divorce,
a bankruptcy, a business reversal,
a medical problem, whenever you're
going through a traumatic event.
I tell my friends, everybody that
I can, speeches that I give, please
don't react without talking to your
lawyer or to an accountant, or to an
advisor, always get a second opinion.
That goes for medical issues as well.
Candace Dellacona: That's
good advice though.
It's, taking a beat and taking a pause.
Making sure that the information
you've been provided, which seems
custom fit to the problem that you
have, is actually the right solution.
And really seeking out the experts that
can validate whatever claims are being
made, whether it's financial or medical.
I think that's really great advice.
Chuck, I just wanna say thank
you so much for joining us.
And for all of your efforts in
putting together LifeSource a
Caregiver's Guide to Managing
Mental Wellness for the Older Adult.
It is a book that is so needed, especially
for those of us in the sandwich generation
who are looking for a guidebook, which
you and Peggy really came up with.
So we're really delighted to
have you on the podcast today.
Chuck Whitlock: Candace, I can't
thank you enough for letting me
share what knowledge I have about
the Sandwich generation caregiver.
My heart goes out to each and every
one of those folks, and if there's ever
anything I can do to help, I'm your guy.
And trust me, I've been there.
I know what you're going through.
And all I can tell you is
I came out the other end.
My kids have turned out great.
My ex-wife is in long-term care, but she's
getting the kind of care that she needs
and she's getting great qualified care.
Candace Dellacona: And you've
helped so many people along
the way, Chuck, so thank you.
Chuck Whitlock: Thank you.