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Intro: Stay in control of your future, whether legally, financially, or with your health learn the latest strategies and best practices from national experts, help yourself, help Mom and Dad make the right decisions. Welcome to Smart Planning 101 here's Nicole Wipp.

Nicole Wipp: Welcome to the Smart Planning 101 podcast, episode 27. I'm Nicole Wipp. And I'm your host. Today, we're going to talk about planning for an unexpected illness or other healthcare crisis. This is a very important topic because the unexpected can happen to any of us at any time. Thanks for joining me.

I'm Nicole Wipp and today I'd like to talk to you about planning for an unexpected healthcare crisis. Now, this sounds sort of funny, right? Because planning for the unexpected healthcare crisis and what does that mean? How do you plan for the unexpected? But think about it. We do that every day in our regular lives and insurance is really the best example of planning for the unexpected. We buy healthcare insurance, car insurance, homeowner insurance. We buy these things because we know that it's possible that we're going to need healthcare. We know that it's possible we're going to get in a car accident. We know what's possible our house is going to burn down.

We know that those things are possible, not likely but possible, but one thing that is much more possible than anything is a healthcare crisis. Now, one of the things I want to make clear is that you can't go around thinking like almost everybody does. We all think this way. And I have been one of those people as well, that it's not going to happen to us, or at least that is not going to happen to us while we're young, because unexpected healthcare crisis is, or unexpected events happen to young people, every single day. Now think about the people in your life. And you know what I'm saying. We all know people that were young had cancer, had gotten into a car accident, something happened to them. We all know people like that. And there's not a lot of those people hopefully in our lives, but they exist. So, and then of course, as we age those things happen with increasingly increasing frequency, heart attacks, strokes, cancers, different types of things happen to us as we age. And it just becomes increasingly likely as we get older that we're going to have a healthcare crisis. That being said. It's definitely still possible while we're young.

And I want to tell you a little personal thing about this, just to make it very clear how likely this is or how possible it is. You know, I'm a lawyer, and not only am I a lawyer, I'm a lawyer that deals with this exact topic. Every single day, I deal with helping people prepare for unexpected events. And you know, we do estate planning. We do life planning in my office, and this is the type of thing that we do. But even though I intellectually know and knew that it could happen to me as well. I didn't really think it would just like everybody else would because, to be honest with you, I'm definitely on the healthier side or I would have been considered to be on the healthier side of the spectrum of somebody my age.

But in January of this year, I had, I got diagnosed with a very rare disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis. Now, this is a very rare lung disease that in my particular type of case is genetic. They think there's a triggering genetic event. So it's not even something that you're necessarily born with. It just sort of happens to you. And I just happened to be the, one of the people that happens to. Now, I look healthy. I hope at least I do, but I can tell you that I was in the hospital 27 days this year, and it is June while I'm recording this. And this happened in January. And so I'm telling you this because I didn't expect this to happen to me.

I didn't expect to be in the hospital for 27 days. I didn't expect to get diagnosed with this crazy rare disease. I didn't expect any of that, but it happened to me. And even though this is something that I deal with every single day, I wasn't as fully prepared as I could have been. Now. I think I was much more prepared than the average person, my age, but I still wasn't as fully prepared as I could have been.

So let me just give you a few tips about how to prepare, and I'm going to very quickly talk about the legal ways that you should prepare, but I'm not going to get into depth about that because I want to get into depth on those topics [00:05:00] in a later Video or podcast, but this is the two things that you need to prepare for, for an unexpected health care crisis that are legal documents.

You absolutely need a healthcare power of attorney and financial power of attorney. Absolutely must have these documents. And I know right now that some of you are thinking, but I'm married. My husband can take care of that. My daughter can take care of that. No, do not go around thinking that you can you know, they're joined on my accounts, all these kinds of things.

There are so many mistakes or things that people assume when it comes to their finances and their health, that they think that people are going to be able to do that. They can't do it legally for them. And you don't want to know that they can't do it when it's too late. And so healthcare and financial powers of attorney are absolutely necessary.

And I am, like I said, going to get more in-depth about both of those documents and what makes them necessary and what you need to be making sure is included in those in a later episode. But today I just want to make sure you know, that that's part of the planning for an unexpected health care crisis, whether you're 18 or 100 and all the way in between you need that document because the moment you become a legal adult, your parents, your loved ones, your spouse doesn't necessarily have an automatic legal right over your stuff. And so you just want to make sure that that's being taken care of.

But also part of good planning for an unexpected healthcare crisis is really making sure that you have the right doctor on your team and that you have the right family member, friend, other person that is in your life, that's going to be able to help you if something happens. And what do I mean by that? Because when you're healthy, it's really hard to understand where I'm coming from. But you need to think to yourself. If I got hit by a car tomorrow and I was in the hospital, who is going to be the person that I'm going to want, by my side, that's going to be able to talk to the doctors is going to be able to retain the information isn't going to be freaking out the whole time. While this is happening and is going to be able to help make the right decisions for me now, some, because, you know, and I'm saying this to you because sometimes we automatically say, well, our spouse is the best person or, you know, whoever, but sometimes, especially with healthcare stuff, if somebody's not able to be really good about understanding medical things and, or being able to challenge a doctor. If they're saying things that don't seem to be making sense or aren't explaining things well enough or are telling you things that conflict with what another doctor told you, all of these things happen, they all happen to me.

You want to make sure that you have somebody that's going to be able to stand by you and say, wait a minute. The other doctor said this, that doesn't make sense in the context of what you're saying to me, explain that again and tell me why that's necessary or, you know, just be able to absorb it and then say to you, Hey, this is what the doctor said. What should, what do you want to do? Like, and then you can say, but I thought they said this, Nope, this is what the doctor said. You know, sort of interpret things for you because when you are in a health care crisis, yourself, You are compromised. I mean, listen, I am highly functioning and able to understand things and I deal with medical things every day as, as a lawyer even.

But you know, when you're in the hospital, you're having surgeries. They're giving you pain pills and all kinds of stuff. Your capacity is diminished. It doesn't matter whether you actually are still have legal capacity. Most people, a lot of people still do, but your capacity is diminished. You're not able to understand, especially things that are as complex.

So you need to have a person or persons that you know are going to be there. People that are going to be on your team in the event that you have an unexpected healthcare crisis. And so you want to make sure that you know who those people are, you've identified them, and they're also incorporated into your legal documents.

The other thing, like I said is having the right doctor because, you don't want to do what I noticed so many of us do, and I was guilty of this and I've talked to many, many people that are very guilty of this is having a primary care physician or other doctor that does not listen to you, does not take your concern seriously is not willing to explain things to you, leaves you confused when you leave their office or does it address the things that you are feeling are crucial to your health. And this can happen even when you're sort of healthy. I mean, if you go into the doctor and this is an experience I had, I went into the doctor and I'm telling this doctor that I'm [00:10:00] dizzy and I'm having like all these crazy, I, it was almost like vertigo. I felt like I was like gonna pass out and you know, it was really funny is that the doctor gave me this vertigo medication. I never ended up taking it, but it turned out I was pregnant. I was pregnant. Never checked me to see if I was. You know, stuff like that, doesn't make a lot of sense. And you know what, though, this is the worst thing about it.

And I'm just telling you this because you have to understand how easy it is for these things to happen. I stayed with that doctor even after that happened because I sort of chalked it up to, I don't even know what I chalked it up to. You know, what I talked about. Convenience. It was convenient for me to stay with that doctor.

But then when I really had a serious health care crisis, that doctor was absolutely not the right one for me. And I very much regretted not having sought out the services of another doctor prior to having this healthcare crisis, because then when I needed somebody, I didn't have anyone. So it's really essential to get the right doctor on your team. And then, and you want to invest the time to find that person.

So this is sort of scratching the surface of what you can do in times of an unexpected healthcare crisis. But I think that if you are otherwise healthy person, even taking these minor steps, trust me when I tell you it will take you so much further than if you don't have any preparation whatsoever, the stress on yourself and on the other people that you love is just not worth it. And so you want to at least get some of these little things in place that are easy to do, by the way, they're easy. It may sound a little bit daunting, but it really is pretty easy to do. And that is part of smart planning for yourself and for those that you love, hope that helps. Let me know what you think.

Thank you for joining me on the Smart Planning 101 podcast. For more information, please visit smartplanning101.com/27.