Gen Xers Walking into Nursing Homes

Life, as of late, has been the spiral of mid-life, the realization that nothing is stationary, the same, or the safety your walls are not what they once were.  Apparently the establishment, of baby boomer editors (as they tell me), would like to avoid this issue.  Well, read on.  Look yourself in the mirror afterward too.

Notes: VA means Veterans Administration.  The hospital has been changed to a generic filler. 

There are a number of things we learn in adulthood that we were never taught as children, no matter the socio-economic class we matured in.  Yet, there are some things that have become a growing cultural concern, ones that are creeping into our lives as baby boomers age, mid-life arises, and we must face a growing population of aging and growing older.  We are now facing an elderly population that surpasses previous generations as heart palpitations, diabetes, and other ailments of aging bodies are now maintainable—some curable—with a little help from pharmaceuticals and diet.  In this moment Gen-Xrs—like myself—are awakening to a new era when our parents can no longer fully function at home.  Instead, hospital stays become progressively longer and moments, weeks, and potential years are faced with seeing our parents in the once called convalescent home.  Yes, the nursing home has become the new—well old made new again—spare rooms for parents beyond our own care. 

When our mothers develop pneumonia, and then a week long hospital stay leaves them weak, with a still rattling chest, diminishing control of their bodies to perform simple tasks like walking up and down stairs and folding laundry the transformation is painful to watch.  Yet, the promises of rehab and the auspices of doing that in a home-stay facility provide an element of ease and relief.  Ease that our parents will have stable and consistent care, care that we can not provide, and on a selfish level our modes of care can be lifted for a brief spell.  Yet, the drive of capitalism, the thrust for the dollar, under-staffed centers (ahem, manned to the bare minimum of the law), and institutional cultures alter our securities and beliefs in the medical system.  Instead, as I recently did, we pull our parents from the health care centers as the treatment they receive there is far worse than they would have ever received from a gaggle of angstful teenage children. 

On New Year’s Eve my mother was admitted to the a nursing home in rural Virginia.  Unhappy with the transfer from her hospital, she promised her that she would give it a week.  They wanted her for two, up to six, but as this horror goes we jail broke her long before the forty-five day contract could be fully used.  Mind you, she was there to finish recovering from pneumonia and develop strategies to combat, or slow down, her body’s decline.  A woman who takes breathing treatments regularly was not provided a machine to enable them.  Instead, she had to ask.  Ask she did, and she received one of her treatments.  Yet, her records show that she received all of them.  She sleeps with a C-pack machine, and due to understandable center regulations she was not allowed to use her own.  Instead, an aide went and rummaged in a supply closet to find her a mask and an outside company was called to bring in the machine and oxygen unit.  Did I tell you that this nursing home rehab center knew my mother was coming?

She wanted to wander the halls, ahem walk them, in an effort to have something to do, get out of her room smaller than most college dormitories, and work on that progress to get her home to my Dad and their not-so-puppy puppy.  Instead, she wasn’t allowed to walk alone, yet no aide would amble with her.  Instead, calls and pleas went to the wayside and my mother literally idled time in a bed and chair.  When her bed sheets were changed the clean ones were put over the old ones.  When she needed to shower . . . brace yourselves . . . that was only allowed twice a week.  Yet, the aides attempted to persuade—I would say harass—her into giving herself a bedpan bath the day before showers were available.  Why? Simple tactic of saying she wouldn’t need a shower since she had a bed bath the day before.  These things are not the worst of it. 

My mother, a long-time insulin dependent diabetic, knows how many shots of medication she gets every morning, noon, and night.  She knows to check her blood sugar levels within ten minutes of meals and injections should be given.  At the nursing home my mother’s blood sugar levels were often checked at five o’clock am, her shot not given until two hours later, and then her meal would arrive about an hour after that.  Moreover, my mother receives three shots in the morning.  Hopewell gave her two and documented three.  Clearly, there is a problem here.   Again, this tawdry list does not end here. 

For five days my mother asked for a headache reliever.  The nurses aide response: “we need an order from your doctor.” The order never came, and my mother was in this so-called health and wellness center for five long days before seeing a physician! Here, her allergy prescription was FINALLY written, but it was not started until the next day.  The Aspirin? It never came. 

At this point I should note that my family and I are not of upper class means.  My parents are retired military, and my father later retired from teaching high school ROTC.  They are largely representative of working class means, thus these complaints are not falling from the mouths of those with wealth, privilege, or even power.  Instead, two veterans of rather moderate, and a-typical, socio-economic means are merely seeking medical care, treatment, and even elements of humanity that should be a given.  Treating someone the way the center did my mother is morally corrupt, and it is also a violation of medical standards, mandates, and legislation.

Faulty apparatuses, glucose machines that failed (causing three machines to be used for one reading) to procure my mother’s readings, and the long list here seems it would be enough.  Yet, this onion of horror has more skin layers to peel off.  Meal trays would come late, after my father or my mother would ask for them again and again, and items would be forgotten.  Lengthy waits, of twenty minutes or more later, would finally see an aide coming to slap my mother’s milk on her tray or provide the side of vegetables.  Of course, hospital food has a legacy of its own as being—well—not very good.  Yet, the food at this health center smelled, looked, and from the expressions on my mother’s face and other patients it tasted just as bad.  As the bowls of lumpy green sludge, plates of dry white bread holding bologna and cheese sandwiches, and the serving of “barbeque” that made my mother question her belief in eating meat passed before her she continually opted to not allow my Dad or myself to bring her a meal.  Why? She wanted to give an earnest try and not enable someone to say she circumvented the system.  My mother’s VA benefits covered her stay, and aside from humanity and questioning if these caregivers have lost their souls, the question remains why are federal, state, and local monies be so carelessly mismanaged?

Finally, to help paint this picture note that the other patients left there made my heart bleed just as much as having to leave my mother there.  The elderly man who laid in his bed day after day moaning…I wonder how often he didn’t get a pain med that he was prescribed? My mother’s roommate, with a broken leg and mostly alone, couldn’t walk on her own.  Getting help to the restroom happened regularly, and an aide had her using a bed pan with the dividing curtain and hallway door open.  Though, perhaps most telling . . . in the elevator two staffers were openly discussing another patient (not my mother). What was their discussion? How to to get Medicaid to cover the costs of a patient already covered under a full VA contract.  I sigh. 

My family is lucky.  My Dad, no spring chicken himself, is still capable of aiding my mother.  Since her stay was intended for depth perception rehab, and there was none given, and the other horrifying issues continued to crush my mother’s soul and spirit we brought her home.  She’ll do out patient rehab with the VA, having my Dad drive her roughly an hour and a half one way for each session, and she’ll stay at home.  I’m soon off to return to my life in NYC, and as it has been for a couple of years now I fly to parents when needed.  Again, we are lucky in that my parents—at least—have the medical care they need and moderate financial means to afford the daily accruements of life.  My parents live on an acre or so in a rural town, and the peaceful nature of the town eases the soul just as what seems like a short walk to the mailbox—for you and me—is becoming a daily exercise for them.  Yesterday, as they walked out there and back, for all of us it was just a reminder that resolve matters more than the promise that things will get better when systems and plans fail you. 

Helping your mother go to the bathroom, dress herself, and perform functions of daily life brings you to a new level of humble.  Of course, it also hits and shocks your soul as I doubt there is really a way to prepare yourself for such things.  Though, this is the phase of life we never really talk about, we certainly didn’t have extended lectures about in school like we did about sex and menstruation, and now as our parents—and the larger population—grow old and stay alive and expanded rates instances like the one my family just endured should not be the common discourse of the narrative.  In the past few days friends, colleagues, and relative strangers have all shared stories of parents being dropped, covered in sores, and left to decay in these nursing home facilities.  This is a problem, a social concern that we should not ignore, think it will not happen to us, and push to the wayside.  Everyone grows old.  Everyone ages.  In the end, we all will face these end of life dilemmas.  The question is do we ignore the growing problem now and hope it won’t happen to us or become proactive and force change and examination of a system that is failing us all?