I'm Rima Gres and welcome to This is Uncomfortable, the weekly show for Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.

You know, a few years ago, when my grandmother got unexpectedly sick, my mom and I flew to Egypt to be with her.

And I watched as my mom and her siblings scrambled to care for her in her final days,

handling bills and logistical things in hospital waiting rooms,

you know, having the kind of conversations you never feel ready for.

And seeing that up close, it changed how I thought of caregiving.

It made it feel less like one big, dramatic crisis,

and more like a thousand smaller ones.

The bills, the phone calls, the decisions that

have to be made quickly.

Around that same time, I was reading Nicole Chung's memoir, a living remedy, and it put

into words what had been floating around in my head.

Nicole is an award-winning author who writes beautifully about caregiving class and grief.

And in her book, Nicole wrote about her dad's struggle with diabetes and kidney disease

and how after his death, she also lost her mom to breast cancer.

Nicole was still early in her career, raising kids of her own, while trying to care for her parents.

And her parents were relatively young.

In her book, Nicole wrote about how money, insurance, and limited access to care for her parents. And her parents were relatively young. In her book, Nicole wrote about how money, insurance, and limited access to care shaped not just their illnesses, but the burden

of caregiving itself. So I invited Nicole on the show to talk about what it really costs to care

for someone you love, not just financially, but emotionally and practically, too,

and what that experience taught her.

Nicole, welcome to the show.

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