Dealing with my mother’s assisted living

Another day, another problem with my mother’s assisted living facility. I feel that everyone who works in that place has several jobs: the one assigned and the one to cover their butts.

I contacted an ombudsman who visited my mother and her aide last week so that my mother’s grievances could be aired. That included:

• rats (I have caught the maintenance guy in lies in regard to the issue of vermin)
• a broken garbage disposal (promised to be fixed weeks ago)
• a cracked sink bowl (I doubt they will ever replace this as it is part of a vanity unit)
• a lousy faucet that was replaced by another cheap lousy faucet–mold on caulking remaining (give me a break, for the rent my mother pays they should give her a gold faucet)
• issues with the dining room (downstairs, community dining–my mother no longer eats down there, the aide picks up the food) including meals not prepared on time, wrong orders given and worse. There are staff members who are rude and inappropriate and my mother’s aide doesn’t mess, she goes straight to the director (burned toast? come on)

When I speak to the director of this facility  I am communicating with someone who has taken a course in the art of smooth manipulation: he can spin your head around like an exorcist and make you wonder why you even approached him. I keep my wits about me the best I can. It seems the ombudsman got a hold of him and gave him an earful and he in turn passed the buck to the guy in charge of the dining room, who, like the maintenance man can spin a web and try to catch you in a crock of bull.

There was a phone message for me when I got home today from the head of the dining services, to please call him. I’ll call him kitchen guy.

Now, my mother’s aide is a good, God-fearing person who does the right thing and who has been loyal and true since day one. I believe she has been victimized by the kitchen staff. She brings the food order down by the appointed time and expects it to be ready at the indicated time as she doesn’t want to leave my mother alone. The food is rarely ready. She is ignored. She goes back upstairs to check on my mother and then has to come back down from the third floor. Today she was accused of not coming down until 8:40 when she was there initially at 8:30. She has been given burned, dried out, rubbery, disgusting dishes of what you wouldn’t feed to a dog. Kitchen guy had the nerve to tell me that my mother changed her order on Saturday (not true, she has a standing order) and sent back what she usually gets. Lie.

The aide was accused by kitchen guy of creating dissension in his ranks. What I believe happened is that she had words with some of the smart-aleck girls saying she does her job and if she didn’t she would be fired, hence they should do their jobs and be grateful for having them. Their interpretation: they were going to be fired.

Kitchen guy had the nerve to tell me that the eggs were rubbery and overcooked because the aide wasn’t there on time, alluding to the fact that the cook just kept cooking them. What are they nuts? I heard some of the stupidest excuses. He was stuttering all the while as he concocted a bunch of ridiculous garbage. And you know what? I called him on many of the things he said, kept my cool, drowned him in honey, demonstrated that I was treating him with respect, indicated gratitude, spoke to him on a personal level and finally said, “so let’s make a plan: how are we going to solve this?”

“Look,” I said, “look at the scheme of things: terrorists infiltrated a city and killed and maimed. Those people don’t have the luxury of being aggravated or annoyed. We are here and should feel lucky to be here everyday. We can be annoyed and that is part of life. So are we going to make a bunch of eggs an issue? All you have to do is your job and the right thing. Improve your quality control–nothing should leave the kitchen unless it is inspected, appropriate and well prepared.”

Maybe I broke through. He said “Amen.”

Getting back to my mother. We had a little conversation. She always asks how I am doing and I say just great. I don’t tell her how tired I am from being on the bomb squad, or how I worry about whether I need to talk to a lawyer about Medicaid. Whenever I call she says, “well, I’m still here.”

Her biggest gripe is the kitchen and the food and service.  Then she will always bring up the time back in the fall when she fell in the apartment and pressed her emergency buzzer no one came up. Not a one. She was on the floor trying to crawl to a phone for twenty minutes. The upper echelon, some of whom were off as it was the weekend, maintained she never rang. They’ll maintain it to the end.

I said, “I got a call from Tim Smith from the dining room. I am going to call back to see what he has to say.” Obviously the big cheese told him to call me to show he’s on this. To which my mother responded:

“Kim? I never heard of Kim.”

“No, not Kim, TIM, with a T.”

“Who’s that?”

“The guy in charge of the kitchen.”

“Never heard of him.”

And then, while she was talking again about how she fell and that no one came to help her, she reflected. She has begun to refer to me as her mother. “No, Mom, I am your daughter.”

“Sometimes I don’t know who I am,” she said. “I can’t believe what happened to me. I used to be able to keep my hair appointments. I used to be able to dress myself and come down to breakfast in my pretty outfits. And now look. I am not me, I have become a different person.”

“I understand,” I said, not wanting to, fearing that I would one day become my mother, terrified that one day that would be me.

People push the elderly aside; age steals their credibility. Roles change. Life becomes a bell curve and the downward roller coaster ride is almost complete. Imagine being ninety-five and not knowing if tomorrow will come, if you will have your short term memory, your teeth, your finances, your wits. The only thing you are sure of is that what is left of your life is a very short journey and you are not sure where you are going but you don’t have a choice. What is most important has become your eggs: you want them once over easy and not rubbery. That your toast not be burned. Not too much to ask.

“Ok Mom, I’ll talk to you later, I am going to call Tim now.”

“Who’s Kim?”

“Tim, the head of the dining room.”

I am a daughter who has become a mother to my mother. A protector and provider of safety.

A bomb diffuser.

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

continued here