Inside the geriatric ward with Matt Preston | Club Sandwich

Club Sandwich is recorded on Gadigal land, home of the EORA nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be. Club Sandwich is brought to you by Australian Unity's Home Health and Care, helping Australian families support their parents to stay well, active and living at home for longer. Visit australianunity.comauclubsandwich. Hello, welcome to the podcast Club Sandwich. Now, this is the pod for you. If you have a lot of layers of life, of sharing and caring and a lot of responsibility, and let's face it, sometimes you might be feeling a little bit toasted and a little bit burnt. My name is Sarah McDonald and sometimes I feel like that. And I'd like to thank another Club Sandwich member, Alyssna, whose mum is friends with my mum and when we were on tour recently, actually went and visited my mum twice. So that is the community that is Club Sandwich and that is fantastic. So thank you, Fiona. Today, a very special guest, our first bloke on the podcast, actually Matt Preston, is a lover of sandwiches, a lover of food, a dedicated follower of fashion, except for the vinyl leg warmers when he was younger, in the 80s. He is a writer. You will know him from the global phenomenon that was MasterChef. And he's done a new show and he's in a new show for SBS which is called the Hospital and in it he takes you inside a geriatric ward. He's also been a carer for his mum who was overseas. So he can talk about when you're family member is not where you are. Welcome to the Club, Matt. Talk about the guilt, talk about the sibling that did everything, the sibling that didn't put my hand up yet. Right. We really aren't very well prepared. And I think that's something I realized with my mother. And then that was kind of reconfirmed by spending time at St. Vincent's Public Geriatric wards. We just aren't very well prepared whether we're gonna be going in and ending up in a hospital bed or whether we're going to be actually dealing a parent or a significant other that has dementia. I think there's a. I mean, one of the reasons for doing the hospital for me was just to get this idea out about dementia being more than just memory loss, that there's a lot of stuff we don't discuss. There's a lot of impacts in terms of physical impacts. We forget it's a neurological condition. I think it's. And I think again, just getting people to talk early about wishes and with the whole family is really important. One of the things that came across very clearly to me, talking to a couple of the nursing staff was the hardest thing for them was siblings arguing over what Mum really wanted. And that's, you know, that's very hard. That is so hard. Well, it's hard for the parent, it's hard for the siblings. And isn't that interesting? It's also hard for the nursing staff. Okay, so there's a lot in there. And what you were just saying, there is exactly why we're doing this podcast and the siblings episode, if you are having trouble with a sibling, do listen to that. It's enormously healing and very helpful. So let's start in the hospital, because you went to the acute geriatric ward. So describe it for us. It's this strange mix of grinding menial work, slight madness, fantastic conversations, No stimulating bright colors, because that's seen to potentially cause issues with. People have issues with dementia. Also a place where you have to look after not only the lovely, cuddly, old cliched Hollywood grandma, but also people who've got behaviors of concern as well. You've got wanderers. Wanderers have, you know, they'll just get up and go for a wander, which is one of the reasons why you're more likely to have a fall in hospital than you are within your own home. So within the ward, I think really what you see within the ward is, is this is the. One of the issues of where our health system is failing, which is we talk about this kind of aging population that's coming, this, you know, thing that's coming down the pike. But if you actually look at the numbers, it's here, and it started 2020, and, you know, from 16 to 17 to 18% of the population, so we're living longer. There's more issues with dementia. So you've still got the same two wards. So what tends to happen is that the geriatric care for geriatric patients impacts across not just those two wards which are full, but impacts across surgical wards, because if geriatric patients come in because they can't get to see or they can't afford to go to their gp, they go into the ED unit. So in some ED units, geriatric patients can make about half for the people they're seeing, they then get referred into a ward, They've got a fend to find a bed. If there's no beds in the geriatric ward, then they get to go into a surgical ward. If they go to a surgical ward, then your Child who needs that cancer operation isn't gonna get it because there's no bed for them. That's the thing. I think it's. A quarter of hospital beds are occupied by. That's very recent. Yeah. Recently there was a release of 3,000, but I think there were 30% of St. Vincent, really. 30%. So that's the bed block they found. That's the bed block. So you've got. You've got to. All the way along the line, you've got this clocking. So the idea of. And then getting people into places of care is also incredibly hard because there just aren't that many places. There aren't many places that will take people with, you know, comorbidities or behaviors of concern. So you've got your nursing. You've got your nursing manager trying to find beds for people and that can take up to 200 days. In one case, you were saying, yeah, there was one in the hospital on your show, there was one person who'd been waiting for an aged care bed for 220 days. So in a hospital bed for 220 days, which is obviously not what the hospital is there for, if that was the role of the hospital, then you would have. Then you would have had double the bill, double the number of wards or. That's right. One of the things we looked at was this idea of care at home. Now, my mother stayed at home all the way through, which is what she wants. Which is what she wanted. She hated hospitals. And also I had gone through with my grandmother who had catatonic Parkinson's. At the end, I went through putting her. Hybe was her kind of next to kin. Putting her into a home. Brilliant home. Fantastic. Take all her stuff with a lovely room, view of her paddocks. Great. But she went within three months from being chatty to catatonic. So we took her out, put her back in her house again because we hadn't sold at that point within a month, she's talking and she's back. So I just. She just didn't want to be there. She just didn't want to be there and she hated it. And being in your own house, I think is such a. It's such a great. It's such a great way of caring because again, it's very much safer. You look out the window, your friend, you know the community, you've probably been there a long time, people just wave to you. I think you feel a lot more connected. People know where you are. It's less of a palaver to drop round and say hello than it is to go and get a bus and go to the aged care facility. But then you've got the challenge of how geared up are we to be able to send people home and how many people also there you probably need to have someone staying in. So if you've got a significant other or a relation, that's there. But a third of the people at St. Vincent's Public didn't have a partner or didn't have a significant other. And so that causes. There's a gap there. But in a way, we should not be looking at where the problems are. We go, okay, well, if there's, if we can put more people at home, they're gonna be better, safer, healthier, then what do we have in place to literally push the button? Now we know when it comes to getting carers, now we've got the algorithm and we're talking about what, three months, I heard six months, eight months waiting to get an assessment, to get an assessment in order. Then. Then you wait to get the care. And that's the whole. Yeah, the care at home, there is a waiting list. And again, we come back to the pre planning, which we very much talk about on this podcast. So you, not you want to preplan and you want to sign up and get a booking in for someone to come and assess you before you get to the stage where it's urgent. And so I think a lot of the people in the hospital you saw probably didn't have care in place, and so then they had a fall. What were they mostly in for? Things like falls or. It could be a range of. It could be a range of anything because that's the nature of a geriatric ward and some of them are sicker than others. But did most of them have dementia? No, no, no, not most of them. There would probably be about 20%. I don't know. I can't give you a set figure because it was looking at the whole geriatric issue. I think one of the issues though, with that is obviously we know with an aging population, we've got more incidence of dementia. And so dementia tends to be different states have older populations, therefore have more dementia. But one of the challenges is when you take dementia, put geriatric patients into surgical wards, is you put them into wards with nurses perhaps haven't got training that those people may have dementia. And then you got all those behaviors concerned. They could be physical or they could be. Or they could be jumping into the bed with your mum who's in for. Who's in for BCD removal. You know, that kind of. That sort of. Because how do you. You know, when you've got. In lots of areas of public and private health, you got no set ratios, no skill levels for nursing, stuff imposed on management. This is why you want to avoid hospital, if you can. Right. That's the thing. And that's the thing about it. Don't have a fall. Don't have a fall. But that's the other thing. If people go into aged care, then you can avoid the hospital in that the aged care place can often keep you and look after you there. My mum's had X rays, ultrasounds, all sorts of things, so we didn't have to go into hospital because hospital is confusing, it's bewildering, it's scary, it's. I mean, they might have the lights down low and they might have these wonderful nurses and doctors that you met, but it's still a pretty scary place for someone to. I mean, for most. Well, for pretty much anyone. Yeah, that's right. And add to that some dementia and, you know, being old. But dementia, as you said, it's this rising thing and I think. I think it's our. Yeah, it is. It's our leading cause of death now. And I want to talk to you more about your mum. But what did you learn about. You said. Yeah, a third of the people there didn't have anyone. And so that can also. That's terrible. They didn't have a niece or a nephew or a partner or a child to look after them, which is terrible. And the system can look after them and get them into care. But that's really sad, too. Did you find it really confronting from the patient point of view? Probably not confronting, because I kind of. We know and accept that that's a bad. It's a bad situation. What I found confronting was the real lack of support for the nursing staff specifically, and the pressure of. I think the hardest thing is kind of. If you are nursing in that ward, you've got these. So much of the stuff you do is menial backbreaking, shifting bodies to avoid pressure sores, changing dressings, toileting patients. You know, it's that grinding menial stuff. But then the next moment there could be a code blue. You could be saving a life or you could be dealing with people. You could be dealing with people with behaviors of concern. So you might get insulted, spat out, scratched, hit. There aren't many jobs in the world where that is part of an expected experience. When you go into Work, possibly prison guard, you know, occasionally, obviously, that, that's. We see that. We're seeing that more increasingly with teachers, but that's unacceptable. And it was, that was that sense of. We all talked a very big game about how nursing staff were the heroes of COVID and they risked their life. And, and these nurse staff, we are coming in and they're. They're getting really badly paid to do a job that most people wouldn't want to do. And we don't want to know about it, but we have to know about it. We have to know about it. You know, like, we're all going to age. If we're lucky. If we're lucky, we're going to age and we might end up in there themselves. And that's where these conversations before you get to hospital are so important. And things such as advance care directives. Did you see that sort of stuff come into action about people that did have that and their wishes for being. No, no, because. No, I didn't. We didn't get that detailed on specific cases that probably comes. We looked at more things like, you know, when you get dementia, one of the last things to go can be your ability to swallow. And so therefore, you know, who's gonna feed, who's gonna feed the patients? Cause again, you've got nursing staff that are basically running at full capacity, so they don't have time. They got volunteers. Well, three, but only a few. They have three at St. Vincent's if you can volunteer, really important. Like that was the other thing I sensed that lack of volunteering in that specific hospital was something where you go, okay, well, there's an area where we can make a dramatic change to the quality of the working day of the nurses and of the patients that are there. And that allows you to increase dignity. Because how frustrating not to be able to have a, a chat when you're doling out the meds, for example. You know, you've gotta move on. Yeah, Quick, quick, quick. But the other thing is you can have a directive that you don't wanna be force fed when you get to an older stage in life. And my mum's got this, she will not be force fed. Very clear about it. I mean, that's okay. That's a whole nother. That's a whole nother conversation about assisted dying and about how we deal with people when they get to end of care, when they can't, when they can no longer swallow, when they physically no longer swallow and they can't. You can obey their wishes and that's a really important thing. Yeah, you can obey their wishes not to feed them but then you're going to sit and watch them fading away starving, you know so that's the last power they have left sometimes and that's it. So do we need to. So I think, I think there's a. I think there's a broader question and it's a. But it's. The problem is it's a hard question, a hard question to broach with your 70, 65 year old, 70 year old mum or dad what they want to go through when maybe in 14 years time they get to a point where they lose the ability to make that decision. It's a hard discussion for us to have about end of life generally and where we sit in terms of people's rights to determine what they want to do. I think that's a big but I think and we're very, I don't think we're particularly good either as politicians or as society and having those conversations. That's why this pod is so important. It is to prompt that and we're gonna model a conversation about the five questions you can have when you're in the 70s. But it's like the sex talk, you kind of age it up right. You get more explicit and more kind of deep into it as they get older. It is the birds and the bees conversation in reverse. The box and the trees it would be. Yeah, it's a thank you for that. That's good. The box and the trees we might use that. There's a call that every sandwich generation daughter dreads. It's the one where dad can't explain what has just happened and mum sounds different or you can't put your finger on why and suddenly you're googling aged care at 11pm Wondering how you missed it. Australian unity Home health and care is the thing you set up before that call comes a local care team, a dedicated person who actually knows your a plan that moves with them proactive, not panic and that's the difference. Visit australianunity.comauclubsandwich but it's that whole idea of you know when you're compass. My mother in law said to us the other day right that's it, you know, the moment I start to go I'm outta here, you know, you know, bricks in the pocket end of the pier and it's like well maybe there could be a more, a more delicate way. Yeah but then, but then you also ask that I've got a very elderly dog that's at the End of life. So do I. We will deal with that in a very humane way. But we can't. We can't. You know, I can't. When I get to that stage, I can't be treated in the same way. So it's a question. I know, and I don't think it's a. I don't think it's a yes, no. And I think it has to be. And I think it has to be, you know, tightly controlled and run by. But the whole point about the whole. Sometimes I wonder that we oppose a very venal attitude on people that actually spend their life caring for us and we think that the worst is going to happen, that the zombie apocalypse is going to happen. I think for an awful lot of people in that situation whose life is to care and make life better, they're not gonna. They're not gonna rush to the green dream pill. I mean, I think they shouldn't. And that's the conversation. What is living for you? What is, you know, what makes you happy? Are you happy to just sit and look out the window? But these are the conversations we can have because you can't generalise and you can't kind of predict it. And that's why the younger you have it, the better. I mean, did you have these chats with your mum because she had dementia? We knew that she didn't want to go in hospital. She told you that we were lucky in terms of. The local council was really good in terms of carers. We managed to find a wonderful carer who was everything you want to do and would put up with. Because I think that's the thing when, you know, they don't necessarily. Your parent doesn't necessarily change the whole time, but certain things, like having a shower is really painful. Getting dried is really painful. It feels like you're being punched and, and hit for some people with dementia, so they react badly. Is that what happened to her? The hurt to touch. Did she have a living carer or. She had two carers who would flip flop. Gosh. So that. So that was. And you could afford that in. Well, no, because one of them was paid for by the council. Oh, okay. So, you know, I don't think you'd get that in Australia. Well, no, you wouldn't, but you wouldn't. But I think that's one of the questions you need to ask yourself. It's gonna be cheaper to keep people at home. So do we need to be training up more people? You know, we're talking about now. It'd be Quicker to get those at home care packages apparently. But then do we have the, do we have the staff in order to deliver those packages? Especially in the regions? The answer is no, we don't. So, and the whole point should be, it should be like, you come in, you're assessed. If you come into the ed, you're assessed, you're not a. Go to the ward, block up a bed, you can go home, by the way, there'll be a nurse round tomorrow to have a chat with you. And most people wanna die at home. Yeah. And then you can discuss. For most people it's not, you know, it will get to a point where you need 24 hour care, but initially that's probably not the situation. No. And it's much easier to be in the system and step that up. And so if you're not in the system, that's where you go to hospital. But tell me about, so for your mum, you were here, she was there, and so you'd have to fly over and see her in London. What was that like for you? Because I think there'll, there will be a lot of people listening who have a parent who is interstate or in the country or overseas. Okay. So the number one, the number one rule is, I think that's a really good idea. That's your major line, your major line to your siblings who are caring and making those decisions and not. I don't like this place, can we find something better? I think that's a really good idea. You have to support them in their decisions rather than argue about it unless it's something totally crazy. But again, you, your siblings will probably want the same quality of care, the good quality of care that you want. So that was step number one, was not to be the. I don't like that. Why can't we do it better? Yeah, well, often the fly in one is the one who flies in at the last minute and says, no, we must save mum or dad at all costs. You've got to be all on the same page. Yeah, that was pretty. I mean, I don't think, I think when you're living on the other side of the world or when you're living in another city and you're not dropping around there four times a week, then you kind of lose, you lose some of that right to have control. Yes, you can move back there, but it is that thing of moving back and coming back for a week, but you're back for a week. And the deal with caring is it's, you know, it's 25 there's 24, 7 and 52 weeks. And was it hard flying in though? And each time, I think you said in your book, each time you'd see her, you'd see her. Well, I think that thing you don't. You don't notice perhaps when you're seeing people every day how that decline is coming, but when you come. And so. Because obviously for two years of that period, we couldn't fly because of COVID Then we flew back. Then I flew back with my daughter to have Christmas with her. We got Covid, gave it to my mum, which was like, oh my gosh, here's your Christmas present, Covid and potential death. It's like not exactly what you asked for Santa from, but she got through that. She got through that. And then. So I went back the next two years. I went back about three times a year. But yeah, it's always gonna be fleeting. It's always gonna be sort of. It's always gonna be. It's gonna be something for her to look forward to, I think. And she always would travel the other way. Okay, be honest. Did you. Were you kind of like. Cause you'd fly in, you were like, oh, Matt's here, the darling, you know, Whereas your sister, who was there all the time, were you kind of seen as the incoming. There's absolute potential that that's gonna be the. That that is gonna be the case. Because then that. Which is so unfair. And again, one of the other terrible truisms about being the sibling that does everything is that you'll also be the sibling that is really annoying and makes me go and do that. I don't wanna go and do the test. And so that's the terrible thing is you're. Did you apologise to your sister? Yes, I have apologized and I do apologize, mister. And again, if you're dealing with a parent with the dementia, then that brutality, those conversations can get really hurtful because you know this idea. Well, then also just. It's a lash out thing. I know someone, friends, mothers, you know, got to that point where now she's moved into a home and she was just. And it's like their attitude was, well, she's not my mum anymore. She's kind of lost that thing. It's a second. It's another personality coming. Like Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three said his mum's got dementia. It's like discovering another person, you know, because everything is so different. Their whole attitude, you know, the. And how do you kind of cling onto that mum, that person you did know and love when you're in that situation with dementia. Because if they do become another person, that's so confronting and hurtful and painful, trying to be present and loving at the same time. But you've got to also realize that it's not them that's doing that. It's not them that's lashing out at you. It's not them that's dementia. It's dementia. So I think that's a neurological condition. So I think that's the. I think that's a really important thing because I think it is. If you take it personally, it's incredibly hard to deal with. And because dementia is invariably not the only thing they'll be going through. Often they'll be Parkinson's or there might be a cancer or there might be UTIs or, you know, there's a whole. And UTIs make the dementia worse. And so what about with your mum? Did she. So she knew who you were all the way? Yeah, pretty much. She was pretty good until the last time I saw her. Did you use things like food and music with her for memory? Because they're such powerful things. They go right to that primitive deep part. No, we use pictures, we use football because she was a mad keen Fulham fan. So watch football together. She had a cat, which is great. So that was really good and unusual cat with a belly bigger than its legs. So I think they were the things that she hung on to. She loved Dancing with the Stars. So you've watched that with you find those ways of, of you find those ways of finding connection. Play cards are obviously, you know, I mean there are so many things that over the years that have been built up as kind of nodal points to where. To your relationships. I think you look at ways of doing that but you know, it's just things, you know, taking her out for. She loves a coffee. Taking her out for a coffee. And they're terrified of being in the wheelchair and crossing the road and those cars are going really fast and all that. That kind of anxiety that can also come with dementia is also something you have to have to deal with. You have to work out what are the non stressful ways you can enrich what's happening and staying calm yourself to calm that anxiety. Oh my gosh. And that can be hard when you're stressed and upset, worried. I mean, I think again, remind yourself that you, if you're the fly in that this is not your point. It's not about you. It's not about you. Words not about you. But yeah, again, it's that grinding nature, I think. And we talk about the amazing level of weight that's carried by people who are carers and we tend to. Again, there's an element of that. And I think government is as guilty as siblings can be of going, it's fine, they'll take care of it. And it's mostly women. It is mostly women. And it's mostly women. That's right. Exactly right. You mentioned guilt right at the beginning. Did you feel guilt? I think, I think if I. I think if I had left earlier, like more recent to my mother's. My mother's imminent demise, I would have felt my lot guiltier. I. I'd left the country 30 years prior, so. And I'd seen my mother for. She would come and stay for a month. She loved travel, she would come, so I would see her lot. So I kind of felt, you know, I once totaled up. I probably spent more time with her when, When I moved to Australia, because you come out, we'd have, you know, a month's quarter time. When I lived in London, I'd see her three times a year. Not a different quality, different. Different attitude that I think. Different attitude I think kids had to their parents, you know, from my generation than, say, my kids generation, it seems, and this seems to be, whether it's brought up kids in Holland or Australia or England or wherever, that those. The amount of running around we now do for our kids when they're young, the driving, the going to the football, going to the ballet, doing all those things actually pays off when they leave home and they want to actually spend some more time with you. And I think that's that, that's that wonderful thing you do. You don't expect that, you know, think about that when you do it. But it has a huge. Has a huge impact moving forward. So. So what about you? Do you worry about getting dementia? Do you think about the next phase of. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I'm. You know, this has been one of those things. There's that weird tipping point, you know, Donald Sutherland, I think, says once you get to 33, it's a really slow climb up to 33. And then once you get to 33, it's a really fast downhill rush towards. Towards your demise. 33 is young, I reckon. Yeah, well, no, well, I think, yeah, it's a. Like all those things, there are magic numbers that make you focus on. Yeah, that is young. And certainly when you're sitting at a 50, 60, it's young. I think for me it was that idea of. It started with that idea of what retirement looks like and how you retire and how. So a friend of mine is a big fan of the taper. So you don't retire, you taper, you slowly drop off stuff. You just keep the stuff you love and you focus on passion projects and you do all that kind of stuff. So I've been able to start doing that. I discussed it for three years and then. And now you're tapering now finally I'm tapering. I'm turning down things and saying no. So but that also focuses me on the fact I turned 65 this year. And that also focused me on, you know, if the average age of death for Australian men is 81, if your last two years are, you know, rattled with disease, illness, infirmity, then say that takes you to 79 and 65. 14 summers. So when you start thinking of things as 14 summers, it, I think it definitely GS you up to make sure you take full advantage of those summers. And so last year I traveled a lot, I made a couple of TV series and I did this hospital series because it was, you know, that whole cliche about walking a mile in someone else's shoes and actually getting to see that. And I think that's a. You know, there are only probably two subjects, three subjects that most Australians will agree on. You know, it's importance of healthcare, importance of education, and then possibly law and order as a third. But, you know, these seem to be things that are universally agreed on by left and right. Is there stuff that is this stuff that we can address? And I suppose also, you know, I'm lucky enough to have, have a certain amount of leverage that I can use. I apply that to things that I care about, like, you know, food security, epilepsy, and just finding ways of trying to broach the subjects we're talking about now, which is have the conversation. That's hard. Do it before it's too late, you know, so you'll do that with your kids, do you reckon? Yeah, we've already started to talk about it. Yeah. See, little conversations because it's easier, rather than just going, hi, by the way, I'm gonna die. And you know, it's like it's seeding those conversations. I mean, again, and that's the great thing about an elderly pet. I keep saying, I keep saying to him, look, do you understand this is like a dress rehearsal for me in 20 years time. How old's your pet? How old's your dog? The dog is 18 years old. So dog is properly older. He's older than my dog shag. He's 15, 20. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's properly ugly. Yeah. Okay. I don't think I'm gonna get that far. I don't think I want to get to that age. My father in law had this great line which was that old age is not for sissies. You know, I think it's that thing that old age is really tough. It's really tough. And all these things that you took for granted, like health, fitness, they start to go. And that's bad. Our first episode was Old Age is Not for Sissies. And Stephanie Ward told us what it's like and how when they're training the doctors, they put. Put weights on them and funny glasses so they can't see properly and make them partially deaf so they understand what it's like to be in an older person's body. My gosh. It's not for sissies. And so that's why you've got to enjoy, well, hopefully 14 summers or more than that and kind of, you know, live your best life. Oh, there's winters as well. And I did. Someone did point out that I could. If you had. If you had. If you could save up enough money to travel to Europe, you could actually get 28 summers. Cause you could do summer in Australia. Oh. And you could do two summers a year. Right. If you can afford the airfares right now. That's true. Well, that's right. Who can afford the airfares right now? No one. No one. But it's only. But you only go. You only go one airfare. You don't go every week. You just go and stay there. Yeah, okay. If you can find somewhere cheap. Well, I wish I traveled as much as you, but maybe. Gotta do it. That's my next plan. Gotta do it. If you haven't seen Anchor. What? At sunset, you haven't lived. There you go. You got it to go get a bucket list. Porno bucket list. I haven't got a bucket list. Why not? Okay, I'm gonna start as soon as we're finished. You need to have a bucket list. So have you ticked off all your bucket lists? No. God no. Because the whole point about a bucket list, it's an ever evolving thing. You're adding stuff to it the whole time. I really want to go to. There's some really important early historical sites, like first sites of human civilization. One in Turkey and one in Scandinavia. One was a fermenting pit where hunter gatherers would come together and ferment fish in Scandinavia. And the other one is a temple complex which is seen as the first ever complex temple complex 9,000 years ago. And it's also the side of the first kind of big communal pits rather making beer or pottage like a kind of stew. So this is, you know, these places exist, they're there would be kind of cool to it. And I mean I have a, my grandfather's an archaeologist. I know your daughter is an archaeologist. So I have a definite bent for that. All right, I'll see you on a dig. We'll dig up the past as we live our we'll head to the Nubian ferries of Meroe unreal and see the strange step, the fermenting pit. I love it. Thank you so much for chatting to us today on Club Sandwich. Pleasure and all the best for the show. It's called the Hospital in the Deep Inside the Hospital System. It's a really eye opening show. Thanks, Matt. Thank you, Sam. So we want to hear from you. Please email us@helloubsandwich.community. you can suggest topics for the podcast, you can comment on our Facebook or our Instagram and tell a that will help us build new episodes like the one with Matt. And forward this to anyone who has a parent and is worried about them ending up in hospital and wants to see what it's like in hospital. Or perhaps someone who is long distance caring a fly in, fly out carer for a parent who is overseas. We're also gonna do an episode on Interstate. So just remember you are not alone in this and you are doing a great job and you've got them. We've got you. Today's episode was supported by Australian Unity Home Health and Care Services, proactive local care that helps your parents live well at home. Less stress for them, less worry for you and more time for the good stuff. Visit australianunity.com. Hey clubbers, if you're lying awake at 3am and you're running through that mental to do list, mum's appointment, your kids hecs debt, your own exhaustion and you're thinking, houston, we have a problem. But you're not even sure what the problem is anymore. That's exactly why we've built Vera. This is a free 15 minute AI voice conversation that gives you a really structured and steady look at where your parent stands and how you're traveling as you care for them and everything else. Vera is grounded in real clinical frameworks, but it's going to feel like a pretty natural human conversation for you and it ends with a personalized guide. So instead of all that vague 2am anxiety, you've got some clarity and you've got some practical next steps. Access Vera 75. It's free, it's in the show notes, and you can also find it at Vera Guide.