SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Ask for the Skinny Podcast with a guest. I'm proud to present Dome Stovak. Dom, welcome to the show. Please tell us more about yourself. What is your story?

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Well, thank you, Peter. It's an honor to be uh on your show. I um uh my story starts quite really interestingly, and and and I don't want to go too far back, but um as I was growing up and went to college, uh, like any young man, I thought I knew what I wanted to do, um, which uh didn't seem to work out because I really didn't want to do that. I found um a degree that was called gerontology. Uh-huh. And I didn't, it said it was the study of aging, and I called the program director, and I was very interested in biology and physiology and those things, and said, Hey, um, what is this gerontology thing? And he explained it to me, and I said, Well, I'm really interested in specializing in that that biology specialization area and physiology specialization area, and he looked at me and said, Well, that's that's wonderful. And I said to him, Well, who would I talk to? And he said, No one. And I said, What? And he said, No one's ever done that before. And being the type of personality that I am, I said, Wow, okay, that's pretty cool. Uh, I'm I'm interested in this. I said, however, what am I gonna do with it when I get done? When I get out of school, what am I gonna do with it? And again, he looked at me straight in the face and said, I don't know. And he said, however, and he showed me the demographics of uh of how many and and uh the baby boomers ourselves and everything growing and the amount of people that were headed into that that aging realm. And he said, I don't know what you're going to do, however, you're always going to have something to do. And I thought, well, I love the uncertainty of that, because again, that's my personality type. And I uh received my gerontology degree and was one of the first people, person, or if not the first person, to graduate, specialized with my um specialization area in biological research and physiological aspects of aging and nutrition and aging. And I did my internship at uh a medical school at the University of North Dakota Medical School and was doing autopsies on expired older adults to find out what um they really died from what was on their medical chart with what was real. And we were doing that to form some of the first geriatric med school courses in the country. Knowing that, and I really enjoyed that, um the research was rewarding and it was good and it was fulfilling, but what do I do with it after that? The time back then, not many people uh knew what gerontology was, um, were not real interested in in aging, and there wasn't a great deal of aging research dollars. So I decided that I would go into a traditional field and do things untraditionally. And I went into running at that time nursing homes and geriatric health care, uh, and I spent over four decades running geriatric health care companies and advocating for uh older adults. Um and my mission, my personal mission and professional mission at 19 and 20 was to try to make the lives of older adults better. And I continued that um actually until today, even though I am an older person right now, I'm still trying to make life better for me. Um and and so I had a actually a tremendous career um very much doing many innovative creative uh work, both in um running organizations and in um uh doing consulting work and and advocating for uh living will legislation and and and all of that. And so that was really my uh career. The one thing that um I guess I left out if we're gonna talk about my personal story, is that at 17 years old, um I was in a major car accident, and I had a major head trauma, and I am a head trauma person. They told me I could never go to college because I didn't have enough left. Um again, being the person I am, that motivated the heck out of me. It also drove my career, and I drove my career to be one of the best at what I could do, and um really ended up being able to do that. I I traveled all over the country uh speaking nationally on different programs and topics, um really being able to innovate some of the integration of healthcare systems um for older adults and all of that. And then um, well, and then several other chronic conditions came along, and I um I was I was forced to retire because of um my medical conditions, and I retired, and then the next thing I knew I was a consumer and not a provider, and I would go to a provider at my age now, and they would say the same words I would say, however, it landed so differently, Peter. It landed just really differently, and it'd be like an ouch, oh, that's condescending. I take it as condescending now, or I take it as being very prescriptive, you're not being my partner, you're not asking me about me, you're not asking me about what I want. And and it was uh it was a rude awakening, it was a rude awakening um in that regard. Uh also so much of the retirement um and purpose, fulfillment, structure. When you work, we have structure. There is a structure to work and a structure to your day that is built in. You don't really have much choice, you have minor choice uh through the day, but you really don't. There is a lot of structure, there's a lot of perceived purpose in what you do, and that in the danger of that is it becomes our identity, and all of a sudden, I am this role that I have. And after I retired, the thing that struck me, another thing that struck me about that was someone said, So what are what are you gonna do now? What are you doing now that you're retired? And I looked at that person and said, I don't know. And there was this really uncomfortable pause between all of us, and I thought, I really don't know, and that's okay, I can figure this out as we go, but there's no time, it's not like I have to go get another job, there's time to really spend that I didn't have before, and how I identify what my identity is, who I am, what I enjoy, those kinds of things, and the time spent. And so the the the shift, I don't know whether you would midlife crisis comes at any age, chronological age is nothing to me. Um, but midlife crisis is when you don't know who you are, where there's a loss of identity for me, where there's a loss of a role. I was I all of a sudden I didn't have a role, I didn't have structure. So, how do I adjust to that? And then how do I adjust to all the other stuff that's coming at me as I age? Um and the the it was so much in my head as I listened to providers tell me what I should be doing and shouldn't be doing, and as I listened and watched my my um colleagues and other people around me all of a sudden change how they responded to me like I needed help. Well, I don't need help, um, you know, and and so to answer your question, I'm living through a midlife crisis and have been, and I wouldn't call it a crisis anymore, but I'm embracing aging. I'm embracing aging to the point that I'm not old. Old is a destination, aging is a journey. If I am aging and I continue to age, I am still vibrant, I'm learning, I'm growing, and I still have many things that I would like to do. That's aging. If you say you're old, you only have one other way to go. You reached a destination. There's only one other destination, and that doesn't sound real plausible or real palatable right now for me. Uh so that's really um when we talk midlife and and and midlife crisis, it's it's really a journey in aging. And do you fight aging? Do you do anything you can not to age, or do you inhabit it and live it and live with it and learn how to be a partner with yourself as you grow older and go through transition and change?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Amazing story. I I have so many questions that I would like to ask you. Uh, first one is in our society, uh, there's so much uh forever young uh mindset. Um wouldn't it be better if they would some kind uh somehow um help us adjust uh that we are getting older and that that's a fact and we should not we should uh embrace uh the the current situation and act accordingly, not trying to be young again or uh this time a bit different and stuff like that. Is is uh what is is is this societal framing how uh young is good and all this bad uh a problem? And uh what should we do about it according to yourself?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

It is a problem, it always has been a problem, and it still is 40 years later, and I was trying to make it not a problem, and it still is a problem. Young is young. You're young, there are many positive things you can do, but as we age, I I have learned that I'll just talk as as we are younger and we get into our work life and everything, we are based off of performance, pushing our body. Um, uh, how many relationships and friendships do we have? How many how much stuff can we accumulate? Um, and that's just the goal when you're young, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but as you age, what you learn is I don't push my body the way it I used to, but I pace my body to what it can and cannot do, and I still push myself to a degree, but it's more of a pace. Instead of performance, it's experience, it's how we define performance. Pitting old older aging people versus younger people. I I watch it too in older people, aging people want to tell younger people how to raise their kids and how to do this, and younger people want to tell older people and aging people what they should do to stay healthy and what they should do to stay young. And I don't need to stay young. What I need to do is continue to age and age well, and we miss that, and I think if we can educate the younger population to aging isn't you're not old, you're aging, then they don't they change as a perception in their head of seeing some uh old man like me sitting in a chair doing nothing, and it's just not even close to what my life is. Um and and conversely, as people age, don't buy into the narrative that you have to slow down, don't buy into the narrative that uh you need to stay young. That's that's fighting aging, it's gonna happen anyway. So as it as you do that and as you take steps to age, well you're gonna experience things. How do you come to them? And when you're younger, you come to them head on, and you're gonna fight them. I did. Right? I'm gonna I'm gonna conquer. I'm gonna conquer this, it doesn't matter. When you're older, you say, eh, maybe I'll maybe I'll go down the road with it for a while and take my time getting to the top of the hill. That's that's really, I think, if we had more of an understanding in coming together and done away with some of this uh ageisms and and perceptions, I think people would age better, and I think younger people would um maybe under would would maybe listen better. I I think I think one of the things, an example, I have a I have arthritis in my back and and um sciatica, and I've had that for the last two years, it flared up. The doctor said, Well, you need to at least go get a physical therapy um evaluation. So I walked in, and this very fine, nice, professional young physical therapist, young man, and he had read my chart, and I walked in, and he was treating me like a 70-year-old man with with chronic conditions, and saying to me, now, Mr. Stofak, what would you like to get out of physical therapy? And I said, Well, I have you taught me all these exercises, and there's one that I have forgotten, and that is the one that helps my hip when it rotates up to rotate back so it doesn't provide me more pain. I just want that. And the young man said, So you think your leg is a little shorter? Said, I know it is. Well, let's lay down, Mr. Stofak, and we'll see. And and oh, sure it is. And I said, Yes, please just give me the give me the exercise and let me out of here. And the young man said to me, Well, okay, and so he showed me the exercise and he said, Now, in order to get some real push on this, I will hold you and you do this exercise. And so he's leaning into my one leg and trying to hold down my other leg. And he said, Now, as hard as you can, push down with one leg and pull up with the other. And in about two minutes, he was shaking. I was making him work so hard, and his whole attitude shifted because then he saw me for who I was and not what he perceived. And he told me, Well, you don't, what do you do? And I said, Well, I work out for an hour and a half in a warm water pool and I do nice stretches, and then I live on six acres of land. And and and he looked at me and he said, You don't need physical therapy. He said, And I really don't want you to go to physical therapy. And I said, Well, why? And he said, I'm afraid you might hurt one of my physical therapists. I said, Oh, I wouldn't hurt her, I wouldn't hurt your physical therapist. He says, No, not intentionally. And he said, You are one of the strongest 70-year-old men I have met, and with your conditions, I would not expect that. And I said to the young man, so you learned something today, and he said, Yeah, I did. And on the way out, I handed him my book. That's just an example again of how how do we come together and and get rid of some of these perceptions, and it serves both young and old. That was a long answer, Peter. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

No, no, no problem. I really like how you explain things. And um what I was reading between the lines is all about power and wisdom. When we're young, we push with power, and uh, when we are older, we use more wisdom, and uh we don't need that much power anymore, but we can still uh become there. Um and I would like to talk a bit about uh your book now, if uh if we if we may uh can you tell us uh uh you you told us the story uh behind uh your life. Is that also the story behind your book? Was that something that triggered you to to to write uh the book?

SPEAKER_01 20:57

I I wrote the book um as I after I retired, and I kept going to a provider and seeing that things weren't landing the same in me, and they were the things that I said, and that I wanted a provider to be a partner with me and realized that I really wasn't much of that when I was a provider. I bought into that you're so many rules and laws and everything else that you have to do that you you miss the person that's in front of you, and and I felt bad about that, but they kept coming, and then as I started to age, uh and and other things happened um losses of friends and losses of roles and all of these other things, I kept going back to I studied this stuff, and some of it was real, but some of it's not, and it was just running through my head. And I sat down one day in in my quiet, solitude, contemplative time, and it seemed like it was time to write the book, it was time to get the message out for two reasons. One, I believe that I'm still trying to make the lives of those of us aging better, even though I'm aging in that cohort. Two, I had to get it out of my head because it was starting to drive me nuts. I kept thinking about it, so I had to get it, I had to get it out of the head out of my head so I could be uh uh relieved of of that. Now it doesn't because I still keep finding different things. However, that's really why I I I wrote the book, is because I felt strongly that I have a perspective that on aging that is a little different because I studied it, because I was this aging specialist, because I was a provider for over 40 years. And and I just thought, I I just want to write my reflections down to see where it goes. And um it has gotten some really interesting responses and and and great responses. I've really it's accomplishing what I wanted it to do, and that was to get people to think.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Tom, where can our listeners and viewers uh get your book?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

What can get the book? Is that what you said?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Where can they buy the book?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Okay, you can get it on Amazon. Um and you also can get it on bookbaby.com. Um both are uh very good. There's other resources and um and other outlets that are sort of sub-outlets, but I would suggest if someone wanted to get the book that they go to either Amazon or bookbaby.com.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Uh is there a webpage where people can get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yes, there is. It is called PeaceintheJourney Press.com. And um there is an email that is uh Thomas Stofak. It's PeaceintheJourney at Gmail. And those are areas that they can easiest get to me.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Uh thank you, Tom. Thank you for this insight. Um, thank you for sharing your story, and thank you for being my guest tonight.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Well, thank you so much for having me, Peter. I really appreciate it.