My profile spells it out, I'm a 57, married, and am the full time care-giver for my 88 year old mother. She has been living with my husband and me for about five, maybe six years.
My mother is old and infirm, but don't confuse that with diminished mental capacity. She may have both hips replaced twice and other issues, but she is sharp and stronger than she looks, and she is my mother.
We have experienced inadaquate care before, but seldom has it gotten as ugly as this.
My mother makes no red blood cells, every three months she needs to go into hospital for a fill up, two units. Blood transfusions are dangerous and hard on the elderly. But, guide lines dictate that it's done as an out-patient procedure. She went in on Wednesday at ten in the morning, we got the call to pick her up at four. We wheeled her to the car, leveraged her into the car.
And then she died.
It was one of those moments when time slows to nano-seconds. My sis ran screaming into the hospital, I was upside down over the seat trying to get oxygen into her blue lips when the door flew open and a young man picked her up and they were gone. By the time I turned myself around she was in the ER and they had her back.
Mom was alive again!
After much hemming and hawing they said they would admit her, like it was a favor or an option. When someone dies directly after leaving your care, Gee, I don't know, do really think you should?
The next morning I found out that she was being discharged. I talked to her doctor and we began the dance we care-givers know so well. "No. I want her there for another night." "Are you sure this is what you want?" "Yes, I'm sure. Now justify it to Medicare and Ins." "OK, one more night, but this time in Med/Surg not ICU."
Friday morning we arrive to pick her up and she was really anxious to get home. Of course she wanted out, she had crapped the bed and instead of washing her they had covered her with Calmoseptine and covered the filthy bed with pads.
She was covered with shit. I'm being crude here, but letting an old woman lie in bed smeared with shit from shoulders to mid leg and then covering it up with good smelling zinc oxide is crude. There's more, we found out they messed with her meds and she was up talking to invisible people all of her first night home. It took all day to get her back to normal.
This is not new to me. I've been told that "she's old and people wear out and she will die someday"
Yes, but what about now?!
"I know you said not to change her meds because it throws her off, but we thought that substituting this for that...."
Oh, so that's why she's totally out of her mind.
But, hey! She's old and in the way. Why go the extra mile of cleaning the crap off of her, why clean up the bed, she's leaving anyway? She is just an old woman, why not just ship her off to a nursing home where they can give her sedatives and a diaper?
Health care for the elderly, is ugly. There are millions of us boomers on the verge of overloading this dysfunctional system. Our candidates talk about access to insurance but, I haven't heard much about how we are going to handle long-term care. There is long-term care insurance, but it is cost prohibitive for most.
Right now the Government pays private facilities millions to warehouse the elderly, but for those like me, someone who is saving the people's money, zip. We need to encourage those who are able and willing to care for their aging parents and we need to give them better tools to do so.
I'm tired of ugly. Frankly, I just tired.