Ed Bogle Interview: Hiring Outside Help Sooner Rather Than Later

Ed Bogle is Senior Marketing Strategist at Ideation Edge Consultants, a brand development company, and he works closely with entrepreneurs in the health and wellness industry. So he’s very familiar with caregiving from an industry standpoint and on a personal level.

Ed Bogle’s wife was diagnosed in 2004 with a very rare and aggressive form of breast cancer in Stage 4. Ed had a long road ahead, being a caregiver for his wife all the way through to 2013. Early on, the doctors used an aggressive treatment which led to a lot of problems down through the years, and then in March of 2011, they found that the Stage 4 breast cancer had come back.

He said he wouldn’t recommend to anyone be the primary caregiver in this kind of situation because your emotions will confuse your decision making. Ed notes that there’s an analogy to running a company — great companies surround themselves with a great team. He kind of thought he wore the big red “S” on the chest and was Superman. He had all this knowledge about healthcare and well care and thought that is why he didn’t have a team around him. But ultimately he got his family involved and he worked a hospice planning and management service.  According to him “I didn’t bring them in until she was pretty critical about 3 months before she passed away,”, and wishes he had done it much earlier.

Asked about what advice he would give to somebody with a terminally ill loved one thinking about hiring outside hospice management help, Ed says “Don’t wait until they’re critical.”

ED BOGLE | ideationEDGE | IdeationEdge.com | 918-269-3449

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Jim: I’m very excited to hear about what Therese Johnson and her guest Ed Bogle have to share. Therese is with Senior Care of Sacramento. She does placement, she is a placement agency and I know she is gonna be expanding throughout Northern California as well. So I’d like to go ahead and introduce Therese Johnson, Therese how are you?

Therese: Hi Jim, thank you so much. I’m doing good.

Jim: Great! Well I look forward to the content today. I know you’re telling me a little bit about it and this is information that is really important for people to hear, so I’ll go ahead and turn it over to you.

Therese: Okay, thank you and I wanna thank your guest Mike and his wife for serving our country. I know firsthand, my son, Justin Silva, is in service also as veteran serving in the army in Afghanistan and Iraq, and so I really appreciate them putting their lives on the line for us. So thank you very much to your guests today too. My guest Ed Bogle is a professional and I’m having him come on today because I really have so many clients that I see that just don’t ask for help when they’re in a caregiving situation. And, like Jim always says, if you have a lot of money, you have a lot of choices, and if you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of choices. But when it comes to caregiving it’s strikes everybody of all levels, it doesn’t matter where your station is in life. And so I like to hear from professionals like Ed and their experiences, and that’s why I’ve invited Ed here today. Hello Ed, are you there?

Ed: I am here, can you hear me okay?

Therese: I can, alright. So, Ed is the Senior Expert Marketing Strategist at Ideation Edge Consultants, a brand development company, and he works closely with entrepreneurs in the health and wellness industry. So he’s also very familiar with the health and wellness industry and the caregiving situations, and he knows this not just from working as a business professional, but also on a personal level within his own personal experiences, and that’s why I’ve invited him here today. But he’s an expert in what he does his work with, and serves as the coach to two of Inc Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year regional winners and three companies in Inc Magazine’s 100 fastest growing companies in the US. His work encompasses firms ranging from start-ups and emerging entities in the Global 50 enterprises, as well as breakthrough thinking for high growth strategies, turnarounds, acquisitions and mergers, and capital formation. I mean I can go on and on, Ed is highly qualified and has numerous credentials, but I really wanna hear from him today regarding his personal experience as a caregiver. I know, Ed, that your wife suffered from stage 4 breast cancer and she was diagnosed in 2004, and you had a long road ahead of you with being a caregiver for her all the way through to 2013. So why don’t you tell us what happened in your wife’s situation?

Ed: Well, yah, she was diagnosed with the original cancer in 2004 that was a very rare and aggressive form of cancer. So they took a very rare and aggressive treatment pattern which led to a lot of problems down through the years, and then in March of 2011, they diagnosed a stage 4 breast cancer had come back. And she kind of fought a long hard battle with that until December of 2012 when she literally went down and never recovered in ultimately passed away in July 2013. So I became, personally I was self-employed and had the money to do this, but I haven’t anything with those stuff that I tell people about is I became the primary caretaker from about December. Go ahead…

Therese: And I know you said that as an emotional caregiver you wouldn’t recommend that anyone be the primary caregiver in this kind of situation, and why is that?

Ed: Well, there’s a whole, because your emotions will affect your decision making in that kind of stuff, there’s a little bit of an analogy to running a company here and great companies surround themselves with a great team. And I’d kind of thought I wore the big red “S” on the chest and was superman and I could handle all of this. I had all this knowledge about healthcare and well care and that kind of stuff. And so I didn’t have a team around me, and ultimately I got my family involved and then ultimately I worked for an organization they while they do hospice work they do other things. And I waited, honestly, too long to bring them in. I should’ve bought that team in early because the knowledge base they had about emotions and treatment, and what she was gonna go through and how they could help was enormous. And I wish I’d bought that in earlier than I did. I didn’t bring them in until she was pretty critical about 3 months before she passed away.

Therese: Yeah, and I want our listeners want to know that you’re a big guy, your 6’1, 200 pounds and in good shape. And you would have trouble dealing with the day-to-day care, the physical demand, especially the last 8 months you were telling me when you sharing part of your story. So I think it’s important that people know that valuable information that those experiences hospice caregivers can share with you and, like you said, and help you get through that trying time and knowing what to expect. So what advice would you give to somebody that’s facing a loved one that’s going through a major life crisis like this after going through yourself?

Ed: Well, a couple of pieces to that. One, don’t wait until they’re critical, okay. Because once they become critical, you don’t know, you know in her case the oncologist did not know when she was gonna pass away, how long she was going to be with us. We honestly didn’t know for certain that she was going to pass away soon, until about 3 to 4 weeks before she did. But the level of care that I had to deliver before that and again, as Therese said, I was a big guy, I can handle it, I was strong enough to be able to lift her and that kind of stuff, most people wouldn’t be able to handle that. And, you know, the other part of it was I just didn’t, know till I brought them in, what all the emotional support they could give me, how they organize it, they met with my entire family and we divided up the duties and kind of build that team that provided wonderful care for my wife all the way up to the end. And she was very lucid and alert up until about 2 weeks before she passed. And, so getting that team involved earlier, getting the emotional support and also understanding physically what she was going through. A lot of times in your doctor’s offices they don’t share that with you; it’s these teams of professionals that are dealing with someone that is ill, homecare, in a hospice center, or whatever. They have teams, they have people, all the way through a chaplain, that can really change the dynamics of that. And if I may have one more thing to that, what it allowed me to do is focus on my wife, not just on the caregiving side, you know in terms of the physical needs, but also the emotional needs. And I would tell you that we have some of the most fabulous conversations in the weeks before she passed away, and I wouldn’t have been there ‘coz it was too frustrating to do that. You don’t want your loved one to be ill, So you’re trying to fight and help them through the battle of maybe finding a cure, but at the same time you know, it’s just very very frustrating, and having those other people not only get physical support but spiritual support. I’m telling you – worth its weight in gold.

Therese: Well thank you so much for Ed, for sharing your experience and your advice has been a worth is weight gold for our listeners too. I hope they take your suggestions to heart, because you’ve been there and you know what it’s like. Also…
Ed: Therese, let me add one more. If they think they’re heading towards homecare of their loved one, call these people immediately. Whether you think death is imminent or not, call the homecare professionals, the hospice people, the homecare professionals early early on, the day you head home.

Therese: Absolutely! And not everybody else that needs to wait for hospice till the end if it’s a diagnose that’s gonna be years on, then you may need in-home care or assisted living, which is what we provide at Senior Care of Sacramento. But I would like our listeners to know if that if you’re a professional and looking for a compassionate, professional coach for your business, you can contact Ed at his website at www.IdeationEdge.com or you can call him at 918-269-3449. Thank you so much Ed for being with us.

Ed: You’re welcome.

Jim: Yeah, thank you so much and thank you Therese Johnson for bringing Ed to us – very valuable information. And, of course, for local placement here in Sacramento, you can contact Therese Johnson of Senior Care of Sacramento at 530-305-8872.