Dispatch from the Nursing Home
A quick, depressing update as to what's going on with me (Spoiler alert: It's nothing good.)
I mean, it’s my own fault.
I looked at the websites, and I read the reviews, and a little piece of me actually believed that my mom would be comfortable and cared for. That the facility would be bright and sunny and welcoming. That I could still have a life and a job and maybe get some sleep after our two-week sojourn at the hospital, where it took two days of asking to get a wash cloth.
I believed the press that “Life Care Centers of America in Medina, Ohio, has been named the 13th best nursing home in Ohio by People Magazine!” (An aide at the hospital told me not to believe the People Magazine bullshit because they use metrics that have nothing to do with a patient’s actual experience. But it was too late.)
Yes, I’m an idiot.
But stress does that to you, and I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)
The first thing the home’s marketing director did was pull a bait n’ switch on me as to which room we were getting. (Spoiler alert: NOT the big airy one she showed me with a desk and the TV that was positioned where a normal person with two eyes, give or take, could actually see it. She actually had the balls to tell me “This will be her room.”)
No, we got the much smaller model — the Interstate Motel Room Circa 1972 model — which, honestly, I’m not even complaining about.
There’s no desk, but I’d never find time to get any work done anyway because my mom needs constant care. Care that I’m providing, because guess what? Nobody wants to wipe old people’s asses for a barely-minimum-wage living.
Huh.
So it’s on me to wipe said ass since she has chronic diarrhea that no one’s made any attempt to address. Certainly not the doctor who swoops in for three minutes once a week and runs away after I voice my list of concerns using medical terminology that proves I’m not stupid and this isn’t my first time in a medical setting.
They don’t like people who aren’t stupid. They don’t like questions.
They like inert bodies lying there in bed without attentive caregivers causing all kinds of problems.
Like asking why there’s no food. I kid you not — last Saturday my mom didn’t get a dinner tray at all. She drank an Ensure I’d brought and that was it.
She can’t have chocolate and what do they bring? Chocolate everything. I’ve complained 18,000 times. Nope. Chocolate. Even though the slip on the tray says NO CHOCOLATE. They literally just brought her chocolate ice cream.
It’s almost laughable.
Half the time, they forget to reattach her oxygen line after taking her to physical therapy (which she’s doing well at, thank the Medicare gods). I mean, it’s just the fucking oxygen she needs to breathe. I’m sure it’s fine.
Housekeeping is good, and I like most of the aides — there’s just not enough of them. And you can forget about anybody helping you on the weekends or holidays. This place is a ghost town.
The home had a runner the other night, so that was exciting.
My first clue was the screaming — very One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
My second clue was that all the inner doors, like the blast doors on a Navy destroyer, had been closed. We were in lockdown! (Look, I’ll take any excitement I can get.)
I can’t figure out the timing on the front entry doors, which are remote controlled, and everybody’s ready to hunt me for sport. I do a little magic dance trying to set off the buzzers that will let me out. I think it’s funny, at least.
This place costs $10,000 a month, a figure that isn’t real for me yet because we’re still swaddled in the safety net of “skilled nursing”, which is covered by Medicare.
$10,000 a month to lie in your own shit and maybe get some food once in a while. I mean, I guess the other option is being pushed out to sea on an ice floe.
I just have real concerns for the people here who don’t have a family member glued to their side — are they eating? I have to feed my mom — who is feeding them? Are they being cleaned? Do they press their button because they’re in pain, or they’re thirsty, or they need to go to the bathroom, and maybe somebody shows up a half hour later?
Oh, and this is fucking great — now she’s on contact precautions because they’re going to test her for C. diff for the fourth time, which she doesn’t have, which means the aides have to moon suit up before they come in.
We’re 100% on our own until further notice.
I’m clearly going to lose my job, even though I’m going in seven days a week for a few hours at a time(at all hours) and can do most things remotely. My boss is a chaotic disaster on legs and can’t function unless I’m within screaming distance. I’m only hanging on because he’s in Europe claiming to walk 20 miles a day. (Yeah, no.)
But I’m here with my mom, and Hersh can be here too (!), and that’s all that matters.
I’m sorry for you and your mom. Awful.
You'd probably only have a slightly better experience if you were here in Canada, at least if you were in one of the government-funded homes and not the for-profits. And you might (might) not have to pay as much...