12 Vows to Stay Married Forever After
One: Think And Grow Younger Together……………………………………35
Two: Hey Good Looking What You Cooking…………………………,……. 78
Three: Sex, Kids And Rock-N-Roll……………………………………….….. 98
Four: Have A Purpose And Destination……………………………………. 128
Five: My Body Is Agile, My Marriage is Fragile ……………………………155
Six: Consumption Is For Living Not Dying……………………….…………187
Seven: Fun Is A Remedy For Stress and Distressed Marriages…………….209
Eight: Be Better Soul Mates………………………………………………… 230
Nine: Be Satisfied With Your Love Life……………………………………..250
Ten: Give of Yourself for Staying Married………………………………… 264
Eleven: Be Smart With Your Money and Honey………………………….. 285
Twelve: Get And Stay Good With Your Matchmaker……………………..317
Last Chapter & Verse: Love Now and Live Forever After…………………352
Every year more than 2,400,000 marriages end in divorce, 117 million people struggle with chronic illness and as of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected more than 26,000,000 people. With death and despair omnipresent, the world needs some hope. Jerry and Shari Rhoads are uniquely qualified to write a book about the secret to a successful marriage. They have been married for more than sixty years, each celebrating their eightieth birthday near their milestone anniversary. It’s more than compatibility and good genes that have kept them alive and together for more than three-quarters of their lives. Throughout their decades-long love story, they have built a solid relationship based on trust, friendship and adventure that has resulted in four children, twelve grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
Countless people have asked for the secret to their success. How could they sum up the entirety of their adult lives? Although it took years to write this book, some might say a lifetime, they have succinctly and eloquently epitomized what keeps their marriage and their love for each other alive in 12 Marriage Vows and Lifestyle Habits that are highlighted in their 111,000-word self-health book, How to Live Forever: 12 Vows and Habits to Live By; Happily, Forever After.
1. Think and Grow Younger Together. How you think determines your real age, the longevity of your marriage and your life expectancy.
2. Hey Good Looking, What You Cooking. How your looks are dictated by choices made at an early age and impact your real age.
3. Sex, Kids and Rock-n-Roll. How improving your lifestyle for a happier family life and better sexual habits inspire healthier children.
4. Have a Purpose and Destination. Various ways to set goals for a purposeful journey to personal physical and mental health.
5. My Body is Agile. My Marriage is Fragile. Various ways for getting fit of body and mind and creating a marriage to be proud of.
6. Consumption is for Living not Dying. How controlling urges in the consumption of food and use of leisure time leads to wellness.
7. Fun is a Remedy for Stress and Distressed Marriages. Various ways to calm the waters using fun and family games to relax and live a happier married life.
8. Be Better Soulmates. Various ways to recognize the importance of being sociable with friends and family relationships and their impacts on marriage.
9. Be Satisfied with your Love Life. Being happy with yourself and your marriage positively impacts your lifestyle.
10. Give of Yourself for Staying Married. Various ways to be a go-getter who gives to feel good and pay it forward in marriage.
11. Be Smart with your Money Honey. Various ways to manage your money and obligations for the longevity of your marriage and yourself.
12. Get and Stay Good with Your Matchmaker. Various ways to be spiritual and be a believer in the longevity of marriage and the forever after.
Jerry and Shari’s 12 Marriage Vows and Lifestyle Habits, when followed, allow newlyweds to have a long and loving life together. They also apply to older couples who find themselves in need of a refresher course in love and what they need to do to either stay happy or find their way back to better times. Not only do the Rhoads’ have a literal lifetime of married experiences and wisdom to share with the reader, they both come from the healthcare and nursing home industry. So they are professionally trained as well. Unlike other “how-to” marriage books, this one is authored by a couple who has defied the odds and has lived and taught by example.
The authors have delivered over 200 workshops, training seminars and self-health presentations, including state and national health care events. They give workshops to corporate HR departments on the 12 Marriage Vows and Lifestyle Habits. They’ve also written and published industry newsletters. Jerry has been on TV and radio as an expert in the field and hosted a weekly radio show called “Focus on Health Care”.
Jerry has also written “Health Care for All” a self health book for guiding seniors through the complex and frustrating nursing home experiences. His sole focus is promoting his books and assisting in national healthcare reform. The Pandemic exposed that Nursing homes aren’t allowed by regulations to provide acute care. Any patient requiring hospital acute care for pneumonia, respiratory failure, high risk of stroke, heart failure, diabetic seizure, bariatric care for severe obesity must be transferred to and stay in an acute care hospital.
Therefore, nursing homes don’t have respiratory therapists on staff, aren’t allowed to provide ventilator care since they don’t have negative air filtration rooms, 24-hour on-site RN coverage and physicians making daily rounds for continuous supervision of Covid19 interventions, evaluations and treatment. As a result, in New York over 15,000 nursing home patients in nursing homes or hospitals expired due to the decision by Governor Cuomo to require hospitals to send patients with Coved19 back to nursing homes and not accept readmissions. Across the country nursing home patients were the highest risk group and highest death rate due to Coved19.
Unfortunately, the uniformed Governors used nursing homes as dumping ground for overcrowded hospitals. This not only caused deaths it exposed the other patients, the caregivers and their families to the deadly virus.
Americans are aging in record numbers. Chronic disease has afflicted 117 million. Forty-six percent with four or more than one. Restorative care in an institutional basis is not the best at assisting an aging population with disease prevention and health preservation needs. We should do this in a non‑institutional setting and recognize that Long Term Care is not a permanent resting place. This book focuses on solving these problems. First and foremost, the current approach to funding and holding health care providers accountable, is based on enforcement, punitive surveys, fines, civil law penalties, threats of closure, media misrepresentation and at the tipping point for bankrupting the nation’s health care system.
Out of this pandemic are proposals for more regulatory enforcement and oversight of the nursing homes. More of the same. Hoping that doing it with more enforcement tactics faster will solve the problem. It hasn’t worked and won’t until reinforcement is used with Americans taking responsibility for their personal health condition and holding the providers accountable for outcomes. (We can get better outcomes by using economic incentives for an affordable price to attain moral incentives of better care). During the heightened flu season, that comes every year, it is the same struggle for the nursing homes to handle subacute care and the hospital sending them back too soon.
