If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

33. My mother recently spent two weeks in a nursing facility

Last edited Fri May 25, 2012, 10:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Her doctor recommended it after her bout with pneumonia. She's 92 and I'm her full time caregiver. I told the doctor I'd let my mom go to the facility provided I could stay there with her around the clock. This was supposed to be a good nursing home, located near the ocean in California. I began compiling a list of complaints on the facility shortly after arriving there because things were so bad. First, my mom caught a terrible stomach virus that affected most of the staff and patients and in her weakened condition following the pneumonia it certainly wasn't good for her. The nursing home wasn't even warning visiting doctors about it and they were probably carrying the virus elsewhere to other facilities. Later, I kept complaining to the nursing staff and eventually to management about the fact they weren't changing my mother's catheter every day like they're supposed to. My mother got an extremely bad bladder infection and following her two weeks in the facility, she had to go back to the hospital for another week and antibiotics. My mother had a bad bed sore from her stay in the hospital and her doctor prescribed an air mattress. That air mattress stayed for one week in the corner of her room while I pleaded with her nurse and management to set it up. Finally I was able to reach her doctor who called management. Suddenly, the home decided to clean all the curtains around the beds. Without the curtains, my mother had a bright blinding light in her eyes from the hallway that is on 24 hours a day. I kept shifting her bed around where she didn't have the light in her eyes. Every time I came back from a break, the bed would be back to the angle where the light was in her eyes. This went on for five days before the curtains were brought back. I really had it out with the disgusting woman who was managing the facility because it was her doing. Several times my mother lay in her feces for hours and no nurse's assistant could be found late at night to clean her. The place was extremely understaffed. After this happened several times, I started cleaning my mother myself and getting her out of bed despite the fact I had been warned by management not to do this. I got into conversations with several nurse assistants who told me of how filthy the nursing home was kept and of the corners being cut by management. They worked in several other facilities in southern California and they said most of the others were much worse. I could go on and on. The food was ridiculously bad. One night, my mother's dinner consisted of a grilled cheese sandwich and pretzels. I had to keep reminding the nurses to bring the proper medicine because they kept screwing up. And I could not believe that the nurses seemed to have an aversion to touching a human body. Not once did I ever see a nurse change a bedpan, take a patient to the bathroom. feed someone who needs feeding, or do anything other than bring medicine. Apparently, policy was that only assistants or CNA's could interact physically with patients. Nurses stood by taking notes while I pleaded for someone to come and help my mother. My mother was released on a weekend and the nursing home was supposed to give her some heart medication. They lost it and management refused to make up for it leaving me with o way out because I could not reach her doctor until Monday. I noticed after a week there a thick book hanging on the wall tucked away in a corner of the lobby. It was an endless series of complaints from the federal government for 2011 that the facility had to bring up to standard and which they are required to post on the premises. I asked a friend of another patient who came to visit her from time to time and who had been involved in the healthcare field and she told me that was not unusual.

I'll tell you, if my time comes where I can't take of myself, I'll rent a cabin in the woods to go die a quiet death alone. I do not want to endure the abuse and neglect that I saw. People who actually spend 24 hours in a place like this over several days get a very different and sobering look of what it's really like. Most loathsome was the management.