My gosh, it was impressive, the way he appeared to defy every universal law of physics just to stay upright and nimble on his spindly little popsicle stick legs. “It’s a miracle, a true-blue spectacle,” I whispered to myself in awe and envy. “Could he be magic?” 

I’m similarly astonished by Mick Jagger, 80, and Paul McCartney, 81, who remain impervious to the ravages of time, and are able to still tour and perform at a high level without making a mockery of themselves. Tony Bennett continued to amaze and delight up until age 95, long after his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s. 

People like Barry, Mick, Paul and Tony make things tough for other seniors, and for me as I approach that time of life, because they skew the curve. Getting old should mean the pressures to achieve drop away, but after watching them onstage, I feel nothing but the growing panic of high expectations. Their performances make 85 seem like the new 70, but for most of us, that won’t stop 70 from feeling like 85. 

Fast forward a few years to when I’m your rehab patient, I’m already dreading the day I hit the wall and tell the therapist I can’t possibly take another step. Instead of reacting with acceptance and empathy, she’ll probably respond, “Of course you can. Don’t be such a wimp. I just saw Barry Manilow do it in Vegas, and he’s 100.” 

Actually, I suspect the secret to their unnatural longevity is wrapped around the self-sustaining nature of performance itself—the nurturing elation of feeling fervently loved and valued by their audiences. Even as my own pastor father aged into his mid-80s, I could see his energy spike and years drop from his face every time he stepped into the pulpit to deliver a sermon to a church full of true believers. When he was preaching, he was plugged in to the source, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.

You probably see this in your facilities every day, especially if you’re blessed with a great activity director who understands how to give each resident the opportunity to express themselves and be valued for it. Even just encouraging someone to tell you a story from their past, and responding to it positively and with presence, can offer them the sustaining warmth of an appreciative audience.

But I guess my main point is that while I don’t have a band, pyrotechnics or a literal stage, writing this column is also a performance of sorts. So as I enter my final years, your passionate loyalty and glowing feedback will be more critical and nourishing with each passing day. In other words, you hold my quality of life in your hands, and can only ensure my continued vitality by responding positively and passionately to my work. 

That means that in the absence of a literal performance space, and instead of screaming and waving glowsticks, you’ll each need to inundate the McKnight’s editorial team with emails, texts, social media posts and phone calls extolling my writing and rhapsodizing about how it has changed your lives for the better. 

Share from your hearts. Don’t hold back. Because my life depends on it, and I can’t smile without you.  

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

From birth through high school, it was mostly a low-grade loathing, but things reached a crisis in college. A calculus course started out well enough, with an A on the first test. Unfortunately, the second was a B, the third a D, and I barely passed the class. Then and there, I resolved to live a life free of arithmetic in all its forms. 

Up until now, working in long-term care has offered me a refuge. I’m able to use words, not numbers, and quote smarter people’s computations. In my personal life, I’m no longer so fortunate.

Through no fault of my own, I’ve become increasingly ancient, and as a result am forced to do more math all the time. Every decision lately seems to involve an unwelcome calculation. 

Would I survive to pay off a new 30-year mortgage? Could this be the last car I’ll need to purchase? Will I live long enough to use the six giant tubes of toothpaste and pallet of toilet paper I just bought at Costco? 

Now, simply existing requires me to consult actuarial tables like a sailor poring over a nautical chart. Worst of all, every answer carries with it a bonus sense of foreboding and doom. 

So here’s a frightening question: If these existential calculations are already taking over my life while I’m still working and living independently, how much more tyrannical will this mortality math become once I’m a resident in one of your facilities?

It’s a horrifying thought, for you and me both. But I derive comfort from long-term care residents I know who routinely muster the will to look past whatever challenges might await, and simply seek to find meaning in the present. 

You know them too, people of mystifying strength who are somehow able to push aside the burning temptation to do the math. They embrace the moments, without pondering how many are left. It’s their superpower, and whenever I’m ambushed by the realization that maybe I’m not immortal, they’re my primary source of inspiration. 

We’re so fortunate in this profession. We have the world’s greatest resource of wisdom and resilience right in front of us every day. We provide the care, and in return, they offer the positivity and perspective.  

Just ask them the secret to accepting whatever comes next. They’ll probably tell you it’s easy, just mind over math.

Dutifully receiving this nonverbal signal that she’d now be forced to interact, she turned from her computer screen and greeted me as pleasantly as could be expected. I very much doubt she’d awakened early that day, fighting traffic in the dark and rain, in order to play therapist for the elderly bald guy in his fit of morning melancholy. But she made the best of it. 

After a few minutes of my usual woe-is-mankind futility-of-my-existence riffs, when I paused to take my first breath, she jumped in with a tale of her own. Something about waking up one morning during the pandemic hardly able to breathe. Going to the ER. Finding out her lungs were full of blood clots. Nearly dying. That sort of thing. 

She didn’t conclude her story with a preachy moral, but the implication was clear. After experiencing the wake-up call of lying in an intensive care bed for a week, she’d decided it was way past time to be more positive, and less reactive to the anxieties of living. And her subtle, unspoken suggestion was that maybe I should too. 

“Now I choose joy every day,” she said. “I don’t focus on the news, or on the latest social media outrage, or on the tailgating truck driver who blasted me with his horn this morning. Life’s too short.”

It was just another serendipitous interaction with another wise coworker. Just another “exactly what I needed to hear” moment, one of many over the years at this fine long-term care company. 

Somehow, either through coincidence or witchcraft, our colleagues seem to have a spooky ability to give us exactly what we need at the perfect time. A pep talk. A work-appropriate hug. A passing conversation with someone from the next hall, floor or cubicle that takes on far more import and impact than they can ever possibly know. 

It’s a much-underestimated perk of our profession, this privilege of interacting with and being supported by a nurturing work family and culture. I know the notion of working from home still has some romance about it, but as long-term care staff, we should always treasure the richness that comes from a communal workplace experience. 

I’m well aware that some days the treasuring might not come quite so easily.  I’ve had colleagues who were annoying and frustrating. I’ve been a colleague who’s annoying and frustrating. But all in all, when we tally everything up, I’m convinced the truth will be clear. We’re better together.  

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

You probably see that statement for what it is, nothing but bitter bluster. Of course I care. Everyone does. The problem is we all expect, and feel we deserve, to be treated like gods on our special day, or even for the entire month, and nothing anyone tries to do in our honor ever quite measures up. 

For instance, my birthday was Tuesday, a mere two weeks after nine co-workers went to great effort to dress as me for Halloween. But when it rolled around, all anyone did was tape a cheap cardboard banner on a string across my office door. If interest in celebrating me continues to decline at this precipitous rate, next year I’ll be lucky to get a Post-It note, with “Happy Birthday, Dear Occupant” scribbled hastily in Sharpie. 

Sad, is what it was. But it’s my own fault, for allowing unrealistic birthday expectations to be my emotional puppet master. Someday, I’ll finally be given the recognition I deserve on every anniversary of my emergence into the world. Not by other humans. I’ve given up on them.

I’m counting on robots. 

By my first birthday as a facility resident, I hope/believe automatons and androids will have advanced sufficiently to pick up the celebratory slack where people consistently fail me. And the word out of Australia is heartening on this front. 

According to McKnight’s, a new robot called Abi is being tested in 40 long-term care communities Down Under, and is reported to combine artificial intelligence with the ability to do physical tasks. It apparently leverages ChatGPT to become a more relatable companion, and also tells jokes, blows bubbles and leads tai chi courses. 

With all those skills already demonstrated, there’s absolutely no reason Abi can’t also be tasked with delivering the level of birthday praise and recognition I deserve and demand. Exhilarated by the possibilities, I’ve spent the past 10 exciting minutes exploring how ChatGPT could eventually provide the words I’ll desperately need my robot to say about me. 

“It’s my birthday,” I typed into the text box. “Tell me I’m great.”

“You’re absolutely great!” came the instant response on-screen. “Everyone has unique qualities and strengths, and I’m sure you possess many wonderful attributes. Keep being the amazing person that you are!”

Now that’s more like it, a sentiment no living person could ever be trusted to speak. But my robot will. 

“Does life have meaning at my age?” I continued.

“Remember that the quest for meaning is a journey, and it can evolve over time,” said my new ChatGTP friend and future robot mentor. “It’s okay not to have all the answers, and it’s normal for your sense of meaning to shift as you navigate different life stages. If you find that these questions are causing distress, consider discussing your thoughts and feelings with friends, family, or a mental health professional who can offer support and guidance.”

A little preachy perhaps, but still a helpful perspective, one I’m sure will be easier to accept coming from my robot, hopefully in the voice of James Earl Jones. 

Looking ahead to that first facility birthday, I know I’ll also wish to rise above this annual window of sanctioned narcissism to accomplish a greater good. So I ended the AI conversation by making an unselfish request. 

“As a birthday present to me,” I asked, “could you please solve the staffing crisis crippling the long-term care profession?

“I wish I had the power to directly solve real-world issues like the staffing crisis in the long-term care profession,” came the disheartening response. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to implement practical solutions or enact policies.” 

Great. My robot is going to be just another politician. Next year, just string up that cardboard banner again, and forget I said anything. 

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

That’s how I fly these days, from departure to destination, floating above it all on a cushion of sound. Actually, it’s basically how I live my entire life. And so, it appears, do most other folks on this planet. 

Look around you, wherever you are. I predict that 74.79% of everyone in your field of view will have something in or over their ears. Collectively, we appear to have embraced 24/7 audio stimuli as a fortress against all inconvenient or unpleasant external sounds. Against life, in other words.

What used to be an occasional quest for harmless distraction seems to have turned into something increasingly more societally unhealthy — even inhuman. I say this as I notice my own habits changing, and not for the better. 

My apartment is just three floors above our community pool, so for hours I rely on modern ear technology to shut out the endless maniacal cries of “Marco! Polo!”

When night falls and the hordes of little water hellions are finally gone, it’s time to neutralize all worried and stressful thoughts in the battle for sleep. Once again, it’s AirPods to the rescue, with an endless playlist of podcasts, meditations and soothing soundscapes. 

I wear them while journaling in the morning, prepping for work or even sometimes while driving. Once at my desk, I slip them in at any opportunity, making me plausibly oblivious to my colleagues until they’re ready to rip them from my ears and grind them under their heels. 

At this point it’s clearly an addiction. But I’m convinced that if every person could take a frontline shift in a long-term care facility, we’d each be able to kick the habit, no 12 steps required. Inside those doors, it’s rare to spot an earbud. Nursing home staff quickly learn to tune in, not tune out. To stay engaged and alert. To see sound as a vital tool of connection, not disengagement. 

In a world on an endless quest for distraction and denial, the best of this profession offer a model for how to actually participate in life. It’s a path to fully embracing all the heartache and joy our collective human existence represents, and meeting it not only with open arms and eyes, but open ears.

I’m still not sure if it was intended as a loving tribute or blatant mockery, since I don’t possess the power to pierce the opacity of the human heart and discern anyone’s true motives. But nine previously loyal co-workers conspired this week to dress as me for the Halloween party at our long-term care company home office. 

They could have chosen Barbie, Spiderman or Taylor and Travis. Even Richard Nixon or a head of cabbage could have been a more pleasing and relevant costume choice. Instead, they rubbed their fake-bearded chins, put their pretend-balding heads together, and transformed into living, breathing incarnations of Gary Tetz. 

I had no advance warning of their diabolical plan, so was shocked to suddenly be surrounded by a horrifying Halloween horde of maniacally grinning clones. Driven by an unquenchable desire to either honor or humiliate, they became me, from my hipness-free wardrobe down to my pathological Canadian apologies and lame jokes.

It was odd and unsettling to spend a day laboring alongside what came to be called the Gaggle of Garys, but I should probably be nothing but grateful. Their costumes were a mirror, providing a rare opportunity to see myself as others see me and adjust my perspectives. For instance, without them I might never have realized I was suffering from hair loss, which apparently has become quite noticeable since high school. 

Long-term care being a difficult and exhausting profession for all concerned, it did occur to me that with so many other Garys around to take my place, this would have been the perfect moment to resign and creep anonymously into the sunset. But imagining the tear-streaked and anguished faces of the abandoned McKnight’s editorial team reawakened my loyalty and rekindled my passion.   

Though I spent the Halloween party pretending to be emotionally wounded by my colleagues’ all-too-accurate costumes, the truth is that like a lizard on a desert rock, I was actually basking in the sunshine of their attention. Deep down, I knew it was an expression of nothing but affection. And I was reminded that whether on the front lines of a facility or in any other long-term care role or location, the feeling of teamwork and human connection plays a huge role in bringing us back together every day to make life better for seniors. 

The importance of the work we each do is great, and the intrinsic rewards and motivations are many. But sometimes it’s the unconditional support and warm embrace of our co-workers that gives us the necessary strength to do this work, and do it well. Sometimes it just takes a Gaggle of Garys. 

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

A recent report by the New York Times identified 46 incidents involving major airlines in July of 2023 alone, and stated that “close calls … have been happening, on average, multiple times a week.” What’s a close call? Well, how about a FedEx plane passing within 100 feet of a Southwest jet with 128 passengers taking off for Cancun? That close. 

The margin on some of these incidents is adorably described by the Federal Aviation Administration as “skin-to-skin,” which sounds more like a Tinder request than a near-catastrophic collision. Here’s another good rule of thumb: If you’re in a window seat and notice that the pilot in a passing plane needs his or her nose hairs trimmed, you almost died. 

Frightening as all this is, here’s the part long-term care leaders might find… interesting? Frustrating? Hypocritical? Maybe a little bit absurd?  

Turns out, it’s largely a staffing problem.

I’ll quote directly from the report: “But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nation’s air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret — the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more — the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known.”

Did I read that right? No knee-jerk royal decree? Just the search for a little funding to hire and train? The absence of draconian measures and lack of apparent urgency seems a bit incongruous compared to what nursing home providers are going through. 

It’s truly disorienting to see regulators and politicians attempt to solve a different staffing crisis by actually investing resources in recruiting and education, rather than reflexively legislating. What happened to their tried and true long-term care model — ignore a crippling nationwide labor shortage, stoke public outrage and simply roll out a magical unfunded mandate that could, in the long run, reduce available service? 

Why take the time to wrestle with inconvenient truths, when they could just impose a rule, disregard all external factors and likely consequences, and serenely walk away whistling.  

Aren’t they busy? Don’t they have a flight to catch? 

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

I strongly suggest you brace yourselves. Get in a positive head space. Sip a soothing cup of tea, or crush a Xanax on your oatmeal. Command your admissions directors to keep phone lines free. Set a wheelchair near the door, and assign someone sturdy to push it. Because evidence suggests that sooner than later, I’ll be one of your residents. 

I know this because recently, for the very first time, I accessed my senior discount. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It was accessed without my knowledge, by an alleged friend who was buying us movie tickets for “Barbie.” 

When she proudly told me what she’d done, I alternated between gratefulness and despair. Yes, I saved two dollars. But she also created deep within my age-encrusted soul a palpable sense of looming mortality. So I’m currently processing those opposing sentiments by creating a new self-help book, “Approaching the Grave, 10% at a Time.”

For those who have followed my column over the years, my acceptance of this milestone must come as a terrible surprise. “Gary, this is shocking beyond belief,” you’re thinking. “We’ve seen your author photo, and sincerely believed you had qualified for a senior discount at least a decade ago.”

Now that I’ve taken this first step in accessing my hard-earned benefits, I’ll be seeking other opportunities to take full advantage of elder status. Senior menus alone will open up a whole new world to me, hopefully starting with a Moons over My Hammy breakfast at Denny’s. 

I’ll also be attempting to leverage my new position as a revered elder to ease the effort and stress of my work with McKnight’s. Let’s just keep this between us for now, as I haven’t yet notified my editor. But here’s what I’m thinking:

From now on, my columns will be 10% less relevant. My words will be 10% shorter. My spelling will be 10% worse. My submissions will be 10% past deadline. My jokes will be 10% lamer. My anger over criticism will be 10% more hair-trigger. My judgment on controversial topics will be 10% impaired. My opinions will be 10% less subtle. And my ego will be 10% more insufferable.

However, since every column I write is dictated directly to me by an omnipotent deity and set in stone at the time of its creation, my willingness to be edited will be exempt from any kind of senior adjustment, and remain at 0.

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, it’s not like any of the national long-term care organizations filed a restraining order against me, or I was thrown out for stealing handfuls of swag on a trade show floor. I simply haven’t gone, and I’m consumed with regret just thinking about it. 

Even after years of absence, autumn still brings a certain sense of wistfulness for the conference experience. “For a clue to the shifting seasons, there’s no need to watch for turning leaves,” I apparently wrote years ago in McKnight’s. “The AHCA and LeadingAge conferences are the true harbingers, when hordes of LTC folks fly in perfect formation to warm trade show environments, and booth-sitting sales reps change color and fall from their hotel barstools.” 

In truth, though, it’s probably best that I not show up anymore for one of these gatherings. As my column has become infinitely more popular and influential,* I would fully expect to be mobbed by loyal and admiring readers, and to become an unwelcome and counterproductive distraction from the proceedings. The resulting melee would be a lot like Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs football game, and I couldn’t in good conscience allow that to happen. 

As I’ve followed this year’s event from afar, it’s clear that the proposed staffing mandate is taking up a lot of oxygen in the room, and rightly so. Long-term care leaders are determined to somehow nip it in the bud, and it’s looking like lawmakers are also taking up the cause. This coming on the heels of learning that even prisons had fewer staffing shortages during the pandemic than nursing homes did.

Maybe with all the growing pressure, those responsible for this misguided plan will finally see the light. But it’s hard to imagine any CMS administrator or president ever following Taylor Swift’s noble example and simply admitting, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem.”

*That’s a lie. It has not. 

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.

Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.

I saw “Oppenheimer” at the IMAX, and the images and sounds are still ravaging my brain and ears. Especially the scientist’s famous words, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, as he watched the sky fill with fire, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

I’m not here to inveigh about whether Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, should have built the first atomic bomb, or the morality of dropping it.

But I do have a question: Where was someone like him when our fragmented, inefficient, overregulated excuse for a long-term care system was being devised? Where’s our Oppenheimer for today? 

In that crucial moment, as war raged with the outcome very much in doubt, we marshaled every expert and resource in this country, public and private, academic, political and military, to work toward a single cause. 

But once the world was saved, never again did we harness our prodigious national fortitude and brain power to solve any looming crisis, including protecting and preserving our vulnerable seniors. The pursuit of a COVID-19 vaccine came close, but even that was undermined by poisoned politics and societal fractures. 

Now as the pandemic fades, the long-term care profession is faced with a swell of baby boomers and deep challenges far outside its control that once again require a sense of national purpose and resolve. Oppenheimer’s team didn’t produce the bomb by relying on scattered scientists working alone, and the demands of caring for so many seniors can’t continue to be approached piecemeal at an uninspired scale.

Only a Manhattan Project for seniors that spans their entire spectrum of care, one that brings together our country’s greatest minds and most inspiring leadership, can ensure the enduring healthcare system they deserve. 

This initiative, too, might require an unsettling explosion of the status quo, but one that saves lives this time. And as a nation we’ll be able to say with pride, rather than regret, “Now we have become life, the preserver of worlds.”