Suzanne: And welcome back to Answers for Elders Radio Network. Now sharing our wisdom of the experts with so many cities across the USA and we are so excited to be with all of you in America. We are here talking with Dr Jill Burke. Jill is a national amazing icon in the aging in place. She has done so many things, she’s an international author, she writes blogs, and she is a member of the national state organizations dedicated to having accessible housing and home safety. And we are so honored, again, to have Dr Jill Bjerke on the show, Dr Jill, welcome back. And I want to talk today a little bit right now in this segment about your app. We just touched on it last time. It is called Silver Spaces. Tell us a little bit about it. It’s an assessment tool. Is it not?
Jill Bjerke: It is. Let me back up a bit. One of the things we don’t realize when we’ve lived in our homes so long is that our lifestyle and abilities have changed, but our homes haven’t. That is when we can not realize that there are dangerous situations for us, because the things that have been around us have been around us for so long, and we just don’t recognize that they could be a danger to our health: trips and falls. Trips and falls are the major cause of deaths for people over 65. Many have hip fractures. If they have hip fractures, they will usually not live independently, and most will have to go to a nursing home. These are preventable, and that was the reason this assessment was created.
It’s called SilverSpaces.com. And what it does is it allows you to walk through your home, each room at a time, and answer questions about that room as it pertains to the way you use it. So it will say, do you have floor rugs? You should not have floor rugs. So the recommendation will be, either tape them down, or remove them. You have three sources of light. Do you have a task source, a natural source, or an ambient above-light source? We need a lot of sources of light, as our eyes change, and we just don’t realize it. Do we have motion detector lights throughout our home? So that as we move through our home, particularly during dusk or during the dark, our ways are lighted.
If we have arthritis in our shoulder, can we reach up to that second shelf in our kitchen, or do we need to put in shelves that come down to us. Are we having back troubles and we can’t bend over very well? Then we need drawers that pull all the way out to us. Another one that people don’t realize over time, and I know this sounds silly but having gone through knee replacement surgery myself, I can attest to this: is how high is your toilet? Is it hard to get up and down off of? Because it’s too low, or do you have grab bars, and are they in the right place, or are they in the place where someone just put them, and are they anchored down safely? So this assessment goes through both the interior and the exterior. It goes through second bedroom, second bathrooms, offices, dens. You can do as much or as little as you want, and what you are trying to assess. And then, at the end, you get a report that can either be printed or saved as a PDF. And it gives you very, very targeted recommendations and changes that you can make to make that problem easier to live with, and maybe even go away and do it in a different direction.
Suzanne: And you know what you’re saying is so valuable, because there’s so many people that ignore their homes and then they have this fall. You had spoke at the beginning, we don’t even think about the financial ramifications of a fall like that. The health care that is involved, the care that we in this country don’t do very well and helping our seniors with health care costs and they’re rising there. Home care is very, very expensive. It can be on, on this type of situations. And unless you’re independently wealthy, like really wealthy, um, it’s a concern, it’s a concern to the fact that so many spouses are stressed to the max if they’re trying to take care of someone at home. And so these are all things that we have to think about. The term announce of prevention is a pound of cure. You know, this is what we’re talking about and a little bit about Silver Spaces, you download the app and tell us a little bit about what happens.
Jill Bjerke: It’s not downloadable. You go right to the website and you sign on and then you you create your password so you can get in. You just go ahead and use it, however many rooms you want. Now, the caveat here is that, say you get to the end and you get this report, and it’s overwhelming, you think I can’t afford all this, I can’t do all this. Well, no, you probably can – do it in stages, but it gives you some idea of where the trouble spots are in your home. So now that makes you think: is aging in place the right thing for me? Should I be thinking of other options for me, ahead of time, before I do fall, or something like that? And you can do these modifications in stages if you want to, you don’t have to do them all at once, but it makes you aware of where those risks are for trips and falls, and other sorts of injuries. If you have sharp corners on your countertops in your kitchen, or your bathroom, and you fall, that’s a perfect way to get a traumatic brain injury. There are rubber things you can put over those countertops. There are all kinds of solutions that are not real, real expensive that can change that environment.
Suzanne: Well, and I think… How often do we think about, you know, when we’re younger in our, in our 60s and 70s, one incident like that could catapult us into old age. And the other thing is, if we do that and we’re in that situation, oftentimes we don’t have control over where we go next, we don’t have a plan. And so having this type of plan in advance is aging a place right for me? Iif it is, what are the things I need to do today so that I can stay in a place that supports me? And like you said, everyone’s different. It may not be a possibility but it could be. And that’s the thing. I think that’s so amazing about your app is it really is an eye opener for us to see how, you know, what are the things in our house that we don’t even think about? Like, I would never think about the sharp corner, but you’re right.
Jill Bjerke: Well, and truly, it should be part of retirement planning. It should be something you think ahead of. So you think, oh, I’ve got stairs. I shouldn’t have stairs because it’s going to be harder and harder for me to get up and down stairs and they’re real fall areas. So I need to think ahead about, um, what should I do? Should I move if I’m going to move, where would I move? It gives you time to plan ahead.
Suzanne: Fabulous. And guess what? Yes. And guess what, Dr Jill and I were going to talk about future planning of aging in place. What’s going on? How do we work together to make sure that your life is done appropriately and effectively. And we’ll be right back right after this.
