Speaking With a Pharmacist About Medical Aid in Dying with Rodney Diffendaffer

Rodney Diffendaffer, a clinical compounding pharmacist and certified functional medicine practitioner, discusses his work in the field of medical aid in dying (MAID). He shares his personal experiences with death growing up on a farm and how it shaped his perspective. Rodney talks about his role at Flatirons Family Pharmacy, where he helps people with their end-of-life journey and develops formulations to make the process more comfortable. He also highlights the challenges he faced in spreading awareness about MAID in Colorado, particularly in getting doctors to engage in conversations about the topic. He shares his experience of advocating for the process and educating doctors about the law and procedures. Rodney also talks about the progress he has seen over the years, with more doctors and hospices becoming comfortable with medical aid and dying. He emphasizes the importance of respecting individual beliefs and boundaries when discussing end-of-life options. Rodney also shares a personal story of his mother's end-of-life experience and highlights the need for early planning and open conversations about death.

Transcript

Wakil  
Today we are honored to have a conversation with Rodney Diffendaffer. He has been certified in several fields of pharmacy. He is a clinical compounding pharmacist who enjoys the new directions and changes in pharmacy. He believes that pharmacies need to become more patient-specific in the different fields of medicine and help educate and guide their clinical needs to find the root cause of diseases, then treat them.

Annalouiza  
He also believes that MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying, is another field that needs to have more studies done for the patients, family members, and healthcare professionals. And that is how we met him. He has been educating healthcare professionals in this process since 2017. He has helped over 300 families with the complete process. He was recently certified as a functional medicine practitioner at the School of Applied Functional Medicine and has since passed the extensive three-year case studies. He is starting his six years at Flatirons Family Pharmacy and Wellness and absolutely loves helping people educate themselves on medications and disease. Welcome, welcome, welcome Rodney. So grateful for you to be here.

Wakil  
So good to have you.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it very much. 

Wakil  
Yeah, we're looking forward to this.

Rodney Diffendaffer
I find it probably one of the most highlighted moments of my life. 

Wakil  
wow, that's great. I love that. That's wonderful. We always like to ask this first question just to kind of get going and that is, when did you first become aware of death?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Well, death was brought to me on a farm in Bertha, Colorado, back in the 70s. When I grew up and we had every farm animal possible and we raised quite a bit of them at the same time.

Death was part of our life, right? So we would be giving birth to babies everywhere and some would not make it and we'd have to take care of that baby first of all, which is the toughest part for me was the babies. But after that, you'd get to the other animals and again, you would not let them suffer once they went down and you would do the kind thing and give them a little pat on the side and say, thank you for what you've done for us and take care of the business and make sure they move on to the next place they need to go and they're not suffering in pain. 

So that was my first part of life and death. And it was kind of weird to raise an animal and have to eat it the next day, right? But again, this is part of life and death that I had to deal with. And this is the way I was raised. I was fortunate enough to be raised on a farm.

Wakil  
Yeah, that's great. We have a farm nearby here that we own part of and the guy who runs it says the farm life is, every day is filled with love and joy, pain, life, death, drama, you know. And when he asked me one time if I wanted to come help with harvesting their chickens, it took me a minute and then I said, well, you know, I eat meat. So yeah, I think it's important.
  
So I've done that a lot now and, and, I really do think that's an important thing for anybody who eats meat to know how that happens. It's not just, it doesn't just show up in the grocery store.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Yeah.
Yeah.

It does not. Yep. So.

Annalouiza  
Yes, that's right. So Rodney, tell us how death has created this foundational piece for you. Who are you because of death?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
With more of my life, I've tried to not push away the things that come to everybody, which is death. procreation and death are things that we don't talk about, right? Sex and death. So I've always had a problem with that since I was a teenager, right? So I didn't understand why we couldn't talk about that. So coming back to death was a...

I've really not had a problem with death personally. I really believe it's an inviting venture that we don't know what's going to happen. For me to talk about death at the beginning in 2016 when I started with the medical aid in dying, it was pretty difficult talking to the first several 50 people.

But after time, it got easier to be able to relate with them and where they are in the process and how I can help them along with their death. But that's personally death is part of my life now. So.

Wakil  
Yeah. And we've, we've, had a little bit of a conversation ahead of this and we've really already learned quite a bit and more than we knew. And we appreciate that. We really want to understand more about that. So can you tell us a little bit more about your current role and the work you're doing and kind of the important parts of that to you and to your belief system too as well?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
My belief system again is I started, I'm going to say Western Medicine School back in the 90s. I went to, was pre -med obviously for a long time and going to medical school, got sidetracked, went to pharmacy school in 91 and got done with that school in 95 and in 96 I had to start learning homeopathy.

Chinese herbs, different things that we were not taught in school. So the school opened up my eyes right there to begin with of the way we diagnosed and treated. Every person was one person. It was not individualized, right? So I started finding that people are all different and we can't treat everyone as the same. So, so my deal when I was 26 years old was to start studying. I had, I had to study and I'm, I'm very old now and I've been studying for that whole time, 30 plus years. 

Why do I study? Because I need to find the truth. Eventually, I got to find out what's really going on in life and and again, finding the root cause. I try to help people in all reality. My job is at Flatirons Family Pharmacy. I'm a clinical compounding pharmacist in a functional medicine. Okay.

Again, I am a functional medicine provider and a clinical compounding pharmacist at Flatirons Family Pharmacy. So when I started my role back in 96 of the career of trying to find out the truth, I kept on going to school. So I have compounding, pharmacogenomics, clinical, the functional medicine, about 10 different certifications.

I kept on trying to find out the root cause of disease, the functional medicine, SAFM. Final class I went to, school I went to, was able to tie everything together. So my role at Flatirons Family Pharmacy is to help people keep healthy, but when they move on, I'm able to help with that process with medical aid and dying.

I started that process in 2016 again when the law came out. I voted it was passed in 2017. The Proposition 106 was the law.

At 2017, I reached out to Dr. Grube at Compassion and Choices and started learning about medical aid in dying, the process, the law. And at that time, I went out and started talking to providers about medical aid in dying and what it is, how does it work, the law.

Wakil  
Hmm.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
The satisfaction of 18 years of older Colorado residents of sound mind, not coerced, those simple laws. And I kept on educating and advocating for medical aid and dying in the state of Colorado. So my job still today is I deal with probably six people per week, six families per week of their loved ones going through a hard time, someone's dying. 

And I'm trying to ease the person that's in the situation plus the family members at the same time to make sure they're all comfortable about the process. And also doing different formulations with the process that are different from other states and trying to educate on the way that we give this medication. There's better ways to give it than let's say apple juice and powders. 

 So, at Flatirons Family Pharmacy, we're chemists, so we started doing formulas to make it better ingestible for the person, more palatable, less bitter, less burning. So we are always trying to perfect things. The formula has always been changing since 2017. I think we've gone through six different formulas now. The formula we're using is DDMA, or other people are using DDMAPH.

Those are acronyms for drugs. We can get deeper into that if you would like to. 

Wakil  
Haha.

Rodney Diffendaffer
But my role again is to help people live and when they get the bad news that something is upon them, I help them with that process to move on in the best humane way possible. 

Wakil  
Wow. I see a cycle here, from farm to here, just being willing to, not only willing but capable and having the mental and spiritual and physical and emotional capacity to really be present for people at this time in their lives. Very important.

Annalouiza  
Emotional.

Right.

Yeah. So Rodney, what are your biggest challenges as you are out in the world trying to educate people about this process?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
My biggest challenge as of starting in 2017 was trying to get the word out to doctors in the state of Colorado about medical aid and dying and the process, the law, and just advocate to doctors willing to talk.

So one of my main challenges was finding that right doctor that was willing to talk about medical aid in dying and have that conversation. And I had a lot of doctors tell me, thank you for that conversation, no thank you.

Wakil  
Hmm

Rodney Diffendaffer  
And then I had other doctors that invited the conversation. When they invited the conversation, we would have a further in -depth conversation of the whole process. I would share everything with them, again, about the law, about... what I do about the medications, about the formula, everything. So I was really going out there trying to teach the doctors and I would say, here's my two cents, go out and learn more about it. They would take and learn more about it. And they would start using Flatirons Family Pharmacy for the prescriptions. So my main challenge back then was getting the word out.

It was slow at first. It is very, I mean, the numbers this year is picking up a lot. So I'm seeing a lot of more doctors calling in prescriptions. So I know that advocation is working in Colorado and more doctors are feeling comfortable about the process. They're not as afraid anymore. They have some track record of the previous doctors. There's no lawsuits. Really, there's been one in the state of Colorado, but that was only one. 

So I think that track record of seeing the process go for six years is letting everyone else join now. Now I'm seeing bigger facilities join. Some are doing different formulas, which I really can't understand, which are formulas that we used three or four years ago that are substandard. So I'm trying to advocate that to these bigger organizations. So it's evolving still.

Kind of a new law, correct? You know what mean? So it's only six, seven years. So at the beginning it was a wild, wild west. Now we're trying to tame the wild west to have some kind of procedures and protocols, right? 

Annalouiza  
Mm

Wakil  
Mm

Annalouiza  
your protocols.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
And so I'm trying to help with the procedures and protocol in Colorado since 2017 of what I find to be the best formula. What's the times to sleep? What's the times of death? Is there any agitation? Do I see anything from the loved ones? 

So when I deal with these family members, I get reports back from I'm up to 560 cases now of people I've helped through the process with loved ones, the family members, and I talk to everyone that's going to be in the room. I want to make sure that they're comfortable. There's no bad energy in the room. That is a very peaceful space. So that's my another thing that I'm advocating to people.

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
...that I find to be very important. So hospices in play were very sparse at the beginning. So there was two hospices that came out in 2018. That was the first hospice in Colorado that let us in. Now there's pretty much every hospice allows us in too. So that was another application that was a challenge dealing with hospices.

Do medical aid in dying or don't do medical aid in dying. So now, hospices are allowing medical aid in dying in their practice. So the process is growing very nicely.

Annalouiza  
Yeah. Rodney, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about going back to the doctors. Do you think that doctors sometimes are reluctant to participate or support MAID because of their own philosophical religious background? Do you find any of that happening?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
That was one of the biggest challenges that I found was, there religion, their philosophy or the political organization they're bound to is bound to religion. So those facilities, I'm not naming any of them, but there's many facilities that you do not want to walk into because of the name. 

Annalouiza  
Mm

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
 I respect them, right? So again, it's just one of those things that, but again, I... I found that to be by far the biggest challenge at the beginning was finding where they were in that stage of their own lives.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Right. And, and having spoken to one of your clients who use medical aid in dying, that's what she mentioned to me that nobody would let her have a conversation because it was against their moral values, religion. And so she had to work really hard to find somebody to help her with this. So, you know, that's such a challenge for you to be able to work with families who are interested in this because there's like a lot of gatekeeping, right? There's a lot of folks who are just saying, nah, I don't believe in this. I'm not going to actually like send them to Rodney. So it's really hard, I suspect. That must be a large challenge. then the piece about hospice, not all hospices allow maid to be used on their facilities, though, right?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Ah, that is changing. I'm in this area and in this whole area, I'm seeing pretty much every hospice is allowing it. There might be one or two that's not, but again, out of fifth 40, maybe around 30 or 40, there's only a couple that are not allowing it. 

Annalouiza  
good, okay. That's a good change.

Rodney Diffendaffer
 So that's really, really changed. Yes. Yeah. So things are progressing.
 
Wakil  
Yeah. I experienced what Annalouiza was talking about myself when I talked to my main practitioner about this. And she said, well, I totally agree with it. I think it's a good thing. But I work for an organization that doesn't allow us to even talk about it. So that's a real thing that I think people really need to be aware of. I teach that in my class about end-of-life planning. And we talk about it here.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Yeah

Wakil  
So it's one of the things we want to really emphasize for our audience that if this is something you think you want to look at at some point to check in with your doctors and find out if that's something that they will talk to you about or if they can't and then maybe you need to find another doctor, you know. And that actually leads to a question too and that is if they need to find another doctor, is there a resource for them to go looking?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Beautiful lead in. So, Wakil, there is another place that people cannot find any doctors that will talk, and that is Rodney Diffendaffer.

Wakil  
I love it.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
So, so Rodney Diffendaffer has many doctors in the state of Colorado. If anyone's having trouble anywhere about getting any process done, Rodney Diffendaffer will personally call up that doctor and have a conversation with that doctor if I need to. That's how I advocate. 

Wakil  
right?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
That is how I advocate, right? If you can find the doctors that don't want to do it and I can reach out to them and just have a conversation and just bring it up to them, that starts. a with that doctor with a person that has had 560 cases. So that gives me a leeway. So that's another way that we can on this channel is to advocate. If you're having any kind of troubles, please reach out to people. There's Barbara Morris, right in town in Colorado. There's there's myself. I have my own doctors that will take on the process personally. 

So if you cannot find a doctor that will not talk to you and you're getting run around. You don't want to get the run around. You can reach out to me. I will hook you up with my doctor if you personally want that one, which is local. There's other doctors that say to Colorado, I can hook you up with that will do the process for the person. They will have to get certain notes from the provider. Obviously, it's not that hard to follow up with the change changing providers. So it's a simple process to change providers and get it going. So it's not that hard.

Annalouiza  
Beautiful.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
But getting the word out there when you have when you're having the problem is, mean, who you reach out to. That's my problem. I've been trying to start. It's Colorado made is my program. Colorado made dot com. So if you go to Colorado maid dot com, you can reach me. My phone number is on Colorado maid dot com. You can find it there. And.

Wakil  
Yeah, sure.

Annalouiza  
Mm

Wakil  
Okay, good.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
phone numbers there. I can help you through the process. I can help you with any of the legal parts. If you're not from Colorado, we can figure out a way to get you residents in Colorado. I can help with any of those kind of processes.

Wakil  
Wow.

Annalouiza  
Wow, he's a go-to guy.

Wakil  
Yeah, that was going to be my next question for people who aren't in Colorado, because we have, course, an international audience. But mostly for people in the United States, there are, of course, states that it's illegal in and that's going to be and that may be a case where they want to become a resident of Colorado. But in states that it is legal, I'm in Washington state. If they are having the problem I was having, do you know if there's an online resource besides calling Rodney Diffendaffer that people can look at if they're not in your state. Or do you think that you still have connections to help outside state of Colorado?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Dying with death with dignity is in Washington. So there's Emma that I deal with personally. So people in Washington reach out to Emma, death with dignity, people reach out to Kat, compassion and choices, which is all through everywhere.

Say you're in Colorado, they can usually refer you back to me or the resources in Colorado that they have for people that will help with medical aid and dying. And I've been one of those resources since 2017 for both those places. So, Emma out of Washington gets me quite a few people from different places. And I have a lot of phone calls from Florida to Louisiana to, mean, lot of phone calls. And again, they can follow a process and they can get a Colorado residency.

And then that makes it legal.

Wakil  
Wow. That's awesome that you got that resource for people. It's like this whole, in a way, very, very interesting. And I think Annalouiza brought this up in another call about the way we treat birth is often similar in some ways to these restrictions we put on death. We put restrictions on on abortion in many of the same places, right? And similarly, the facilities who won't talk about maid also won't talk about abortion for the same reason. So that to have resources that people can contact in ways that people can find their way is really important. And I appreciate that work that you're doing so much.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
I appreciate you two also.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

And Rodney, I am going to deviate from my next question because I actually feel like you might have a really great story to share if it's HIPAA, you know, safe and everything, but is there like a, like a story that you would want to share as like the most beautiful case scenario of what it looks like to go through the maid process.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
This is gonna sound kind of ironic but can I do one beautiful and one horrible?

Wakil  
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
If this, you're, yeah, let's do it.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
And again, I'm going to start with the bad one. The bad one was my mother three weeks ago.

Wakil  
Mm, mm.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
So she got a diagnosis about a month and a half ago of two weeks to live.

So I was in a situation, I was not able to get out there at that time. I had to wait a couple of weeks. My mother was still alive at that time. I talked to my brothers, which know, they know exactly what I do. My father knows exactly what I do. I went to Arizona, got there, had the conversation with my brothers and my father. The very first time I was able to sit down with them.

And my dad said, no, do not bring it up. I respected my dad's judgement. I looked at my brothers. I had to leave the room, take a breath, come back in and follow my dad's wishes, which I did. I sat by my mother's bedside for 12 days.

It was not enjoyable. So that's the side I could tell you that I don't want anyone to have to go through. The side I want them to go through is the 560 cases that I've helped through the cases. Those 560 plus people haven't had nothing but gratitude to say to me of how beautiful the process was, how peaceful it was, how they were able to make their choice.

They're not able to sit there and suffer and agonize in pain without being able to speak. So personally, I have a better understanding now than I did three weeks ago. So I wish everyone would understand that the process is the most beautiful process I've had. 

Again, I can't start with one, Annalouiza, because there's 500. They always reach out and tell me that this was very beautiful. So I've had a couple when the times would go too long, depending on their health and depending on certain states of their body, right? The person that was going on, those were more difficult because I was dealing with people in the field calling me and talking about what should we do, right? So those are the ones that were tough, but the ones, those are three...

Wakil  Yeah.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
...five out of the out of the 500. So very small amounts of just the times went too long. But now that the times are getting down to pretty much an hour to two hours, we can tell the family there's going to be maybe this five hour get prepared, but it could be going in. They could really move on in three to five minutes, which is very, very beautiful, too. So the process is you drink the cocktail. Within 90 seconds, they fall asleep within three to five minutes usually. They sleep, it's a very deep, comfortable, just peaceful sleep and then they slip away and move on.

Annalouiza  
Mm

Wakil  
Yeah, thank you, boy. That's so poignant. I really appreciate you sharing that.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

All right. And Rodney, I'm really, yeah, I'm thankful that you're sharing that with us because it is your lived experience. You've seen both sides of the entrance into death, right? Like the tough, yeah.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
I just experienced it. it was, yeah, was a, it's a life changer for me personally again. And just to talk to my mother for the 12 days when I was by her bedside and having her tell me, thank God you're here. And just to be able to hold her hand and take care of her. it's still, was a different way that I wish she could have gone. And I believe she would have wished that way too because we had our conversation, but it was too late. So please everyone don't wait too late. I have a new perception that everyone needs to get this in their wills.

So if you can get it in their living will that mother wants maid and then there's any kind of discussion, well, mother had it in the will. We can't have any discussion, can we? So that's my, I just, that was my intuition of what I need to do next is try to talk to somehow people that do that kind of stuff living wills and then try to talk to them about that process and bring that process up in the living will because you're obviously doing a living will for a reason about death. Correct?

Wakil  
Right? Yeah. Yes, indeed.

Annalouiza  
Right. Yeah. And it also could I was just thinking.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
So I think if we could somehow advocate that way and that would.

Annalouiza  
No, I was just thinking, know, I'm, both, Wakil and I both do advanced care directive planning with folks. And, you know, that is a place, there is a place there where if I am in a, a situation where there will be an inordinate amount of pain or my quality of life will be like super limited for months on end, I would be open to having medical aid in dying. You know, and I mean, that could just easily be put in there if that is a value that you hold in this day and age, right?

Wakil  
Right. And you live in the right place.

Annalouiza  
and you live in the right place. 

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Yep. You'd have to have a, Yep. And they do have to say that after the CTI, the certificate of terminal illness, is there. That's when, if you get a certificate of CTI, that is your six months to live diagnosis. That makes one of the requirements, right?

The 18 years of age is another requirement of sound mind, which I was just talking about has to be done before the process, before it's too late. So as, as a sound mind is very important and not coerced. So those are the laws again. So there was one of those five or four that I could not do with my mom. And that was of sound mind at that time. And then the second one was it.

Other wishes were commanded and I respected those and that's what we're going to have in life also.

Wakil  
Wow. Yeah, that's so, so it's such an important and beautiful story and important story for what we're talking about here and for people to recognize the parts that they will have to work with and deal with and being educating themselves depending on where they live and their particular laws about what's needed and getting it done ahead of time. We also talk about dementia and, and there is the University of Washington here created a dementia care that you can fill out ahead of time, dementia care plan that you can fill out ahead of time if you have that in your family. And so people can actually do similar things before they start to be affected by dementia, which is another one that is important, again, to do early on. 

And as you said, 18 and older, you know? Both of us have experienced people saying, well, obviously your classes are for people in their 60s or 70s, right? And it's not, mean, people need to have an advanced care directive or dementia care directive and the will and all these things should be in place if you're 18 and older, if you're old enough to make those decisions, you know.

Annalouiza  
Right.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Well, I've unfortunately seen 18 year olds and 20 year olds and a lot of, not a lot, but too many younger people again. So exactly what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, there's no other time to start thinking then when you're young enough and can have that conversation, I guess is another thing, 

Wakil 
Yeah.

Annalouiza  
Mm

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah, we're all gonna die. Right?

Rodney Diffendaffer
About, about, we're all going to die. There we go. So some people don't want to talk about when they're 80 though, right?
 
Wakil  
That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We actually had somebody in one of our episodes say that they had a, I think it was an 85 year old father who said, I don't want to talk about this, you know, I'm going to die. know I'm dying and that's fine, but I'm not going to talk about it. I'm just going to live as long as I can live. And, you know, don't tell me what you want to do. So, so that's, yeah, we have to be respectful. I appreciate that part too. I think that's a really important thing that you said, which is you have to be respectful of people where they are and be willing to not be coercing and not pushing your agenda. And that's another big part of this, to be with people where they are.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
And again, mom got her wishes. She moved on, you know what mean? So she's where she needs to be now and that's the end product again. 

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
 But again, just I believe there was a better way to do it. And again, if you have your boundaries, which we're always going to have in our lifetimes, this is a boundary that I had in my lifetime where here I am teaching it and then I got, I got a punch in my gut. You know what mean? So. It was an eye -opening experience for me to understand what people are going through in life, right? This is another situation that we, I don't know how to fix this one, right? But again, how to just respect the judgment of the person that's, I guess is the one in charge, because that was husband and wife, right? I'm just offspring, so.

Wakil 
Yeah, yeah, very important. And I know what you mean. I mean, I've certainly experienced that myself, suddenly it can be real. It can become very real. 

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Yep. Yeah, I was.

Annalouiza  
Yeah.

Wakil 
One of our good questions here, and it kind of leads into that, is how do you support, how do you feel supported? What kind of practices or resources do you have to help you feel supported in the work that you're doing? 

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Let's start with end of life conversations.

Annalouiza  
Ha ha ha, Yooo hooo

Wakil  
Right.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
That's that that a one -off for end -of -life conversations again, so you guys lady all of you are beautiful people again, and you're just another piece of the pie right and the more people we can get in The same like -minded conversations, which there's lots of us and we can start spreading the word of who we are what we do that's that's the best thing we can do is just keep on trying to stick together and spread the word of love and death, right? And how we take care of death and end of life and the most justified way that we feel fit. So.

Wakil  
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, it's just about connecting constantly. I mean, End of Life Conversations isn't just a podcast, right? It's talking to you. You talk to people. I talk to my kids. Wakil talks to his friends. Like, it's always about having these moments of clarity about what's really going on and talking about it so that we're not scared.

Wakil  
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
And again, the door has opened up again. can see again in this, I don't know what's going on this last year, but I'm seeing a lot more people that are opening up to the process. And I find that very encouraging to just everyone being able to spread the word more or like, you know what mean? So we're talking organic spread is what we're talking about by just word of mouth and...

And again, I wish there was another platform that we could put out there. We have a big, huge platform for people that are having problems and everyone can see it, right? Put it on the TV everywhere, paste it everywhere like those other things. But I don't have those resources. A lot of these people don't have the resources. So we're all just doing organically. And I feel that's the best way to do it personally.

Annalouiza  
Yeah, I would agree with that actually. I think that having it be too in the spotlight, neon lights, like let's talk about death, know, death, death, death. 

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Ha ha ha ha ha

Annalouiza  
I think, I think it would really turn off a lot of people. And what I, what I love about this idea of organically spreading the word, it means that these conversations also come up naturally. It means that, you know, somebody will listen to this podcast. and will all of a sudden have a need to find you or somebody else, right? And that's a very organic way. you know, this is where I believe spirit moves in mysterious ways and this information will get to the people that need it.

Rodney Diffendaffer  
It will. And the proper people too.

Wakil  
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah. May it be so.

Annalouiza  
Maid it be so. 

Rodney Diffendaffer  
Yes. Yeah, love that.

Annalouiza  
So I think we're going to have to end soon, but I was going to ask you, is there something that we could have asked you that you wish you could have had time to talk about?

Rodney Diffendaffer  
I believe I've said what I need to say this time. There's many other conversations. If you ever wish me back, I would love to come back and have another conversation. But yeah, the conversation is pretty well rounded up in an hour. Again, there's deeper conversations we can have, but I appreciate your time very much and being able to spread the word of medical aid and dying and resources to have and people who like you guys again, just I really found this a very big part of my life right now. So I appreciate you very much for having me.

Annalouiza  
Good.

Wakil  
Yeah, thank you. We appreciate you and your openness and your willingness to share and all the work you're doing. It's so important and we're so blessed to have met you and to have this opportunity. So thank you.

Annalouiza  
Mm -hmm.

Annalouiza  
And reach out to us to Rodney, if there's anything we could do to support you, because I'm you know, that's what we're here for,

Rodney Diffendaffer  
We are connected now, so we'll have a relationship from now on out. OK. All right.

Annalouiza  Yes.

Wakil  
All right, wonderful.