Always Best Care Senior Services; a family of giving care

ABC Raleigh's President and Operations Supervisor, Sanjay Das started Always Best Care to provide the kind of loving, compassionate care that his own Mother provides for his grandmother. The agency opened its doors in February 2014. He and his wife moved to the Triangle in 2011 from the Boston area and love this area. In this article he explains what motivates his approach to providing superior care to senior adults.

Sanjay, can you talk about how your family's caregiving influenced you to start Always Best Care?



This business is a tribute to my maternal Grandmother who raised me; my second Mom. She brought together a community of women in India and helped them learn and train each other in the art of hand-crafted articles & clothes. She began this enterprise in her forties, and continued until she was in her 70s. I experienced it all first hand but didn't realize the tremendous impact she had on our community until I was an adult. As she grew older, I hired someone to run errands for her and others since we live so far away and they needed help. Their needs progressed over the past 10 years; now my Mother cares for my Grand-mom who has 24x7 care. My Father-in-law had live-in care, and my Father lived in a family care home towards the end of his life. Providing senior care is my way to continue my Grand-mom's legacy, and do something meaningful.

What aspects of being an IT professional help you in your current work?
I enjoy solving problems; finding the best solution for each senior and family. Each situation has unique needs; matching that up with each of our caregiver's strengths is what I enjoy.

What complex problem have you solved recently?
One client we helped recently had very specific cognitive, but not physical needs. Even though we started with independent living, we realized switching to a good assisted living community would be a better solution. We needed to find a community appropriate for someone with unique mental but not physical limitations. This challenge required me to expand my search criteria to look for an assisted living community that has safe, excellent independent resources and services around the community (not just within the community itself).We achieved the results we needed working hand in hand with the family and the facility community. It's a wonderful gift when that happens.

What new skills do you have to learn/practice?
I've had to learn many new things! I work with clients and caregivers, (who are the core of our agency), manage financials, sales, marketing. I am most motivated to build relationships that matter, and am continually learning how to improve quality of life for our clients.

You say you are "passionate about nature". What activities do you do to be outside or to embrace Nature?    I'm a hiker at heart, and enjoy running, gardening; anything outdoors really.

Working in the health-care industry requires a mindful attention to your own health. What are some of your own healthy habits?
I follow an amazingly powerful book: The 3 Season Diet, by John Douillard. I've applied John's approach to a seasonal diet and healthy living (based on an ancient Asian way of life called Ayurveda), enhanced with raw foods, no sugar, and jogging. That combined with deep breathing and meditation keeps me going, without any coffee.

Tell me about one aspect of running Always Best Care that gives you joy.

Nearly everything around running this agency is a lot of fun (even if tons of hard work). I thoroughly enjoy my interactions with people, whether they are our team members, clients, referral sources or partners.

Words of Acknowldegement

Last night, Saturday Night Live featured some of its more famous skits over the past 40 years. One particularly funny spoof features a character named Stuart Smalley (created by Al Franken) who dishes out the now famous Daily Affirmation:  "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough" and doggone it, people like me."

Words of affirmation get a jab because they can seem insincere or completely untrue. We laugh when in one episode, Michael Jordan says “I don’t have to be a great basketball player, I don’t have to dribble the ball fast or throw the ball in the basket”.  It sounds ludicrous.

When caring for someone who is chronically ill we are sometimes in that very place where words ring hollow.  I once heard a visitor say “You look good today” to a woman with unkempt hair and gray-tinted skin.  She rolled her disbelieving eyes at me as if to say, does he think I’m blind or just mind-numb. The visitor wasn’t trying to be disrespectful; he was using misplaced words of affirmation.

This discomfiture about what to say is why some people abandon visiting their loved ones and friends. But there are ways to communicate which are affirming without being insincere. I would call it using words of acknowledgement. It requires a bit more listening and a willingness to be in the other person’s shoes, if just for a minute. But it is powerful way to connect for caregiver and care-receiver both.

I sat and listened to a former military officer who was sometimes verbally abusive. Both his legs amputated due to diabetes; he was complaining about his care. I simply said to him what was obvious, “You have had a great loss and you must feel terribly angry.”  At first he responded, “You’re damn right I’m angry,” but he then became quiet. “No one has ever acknowledged that to me before.” It was the beginning of cooperation and friendship.

Words of acknowledgement require a gentle kind of truth-telling that can still affirm. You are frustrated but you haven’t given up, to someone struggling with disability. I see you are afraid, but I am impressed with your bravery, to someone facing another round of surgeries. I am sorry this is happening to you, it is hard, to a loved one facing another decline in health.  Words of acknowledgement state what is true. They are true because you have listened to the person in your care and heard what she said, and responded with a strong dose of kindness.

“Not feeling like Sophia Loren today?” I asked the woman after her visitor left. She laughed and said, “Give me a comb!”

Let me know what words of acknowledgement have helped you.