Part 7: The Sickening Secrets of Florida Rehabs
Brooklyn, New York, 1959, visiting Aunt Sarah
Here is my mother at age forty-one. She never left the house without make-up. She had her hair done regularly. She took great pride in her appearance. Fifty-four years later she is in a wheelchair in a Rehab Center in Plantation Florida losing hope. Her hair is a mess. Her makeup is tucked away somewhere not even thought of. This is the second rehabilitation center she has been in since her fall in her apartment. The first one was in Margate. My mother complained bitterly that she was being neglected, that she had to wait forever for a nurse or aide to take her to the bathroom. She found the food inedible and tried to get something down so she could take her meds for high blood pressure.
The next thing I knew she was moved back to Northwest Hospital; she was vomiting blood in the middle of the night. No wonder she felt sick and couldn’t eat, she likely had developed an ulcer.
And before we knew it, she was released back to rehab, this time to Plantation as the advocate researched the ratings and this one was “average” and had the highest rating for “dignity. Most rehab centers had ratings of below average and much below average with maybe two stars for dignity. This had four. Bear that in mind as you read.
A Sunday walk to the U.N. from Stuyvesant Town;
my mother looked like she was dressed to go to a wedding in a multicolored silk dress, heels and a
Persian lamb stole: we walked from East 14th Street and Avenue B up to and up First Avenue and 42nd Street
and back
This, my dear reader, is “dignity”: my mother’s teeth hadn’t been cleaned for weeks, her dentures were not removed. The angel of an aide I hired did this for her. No wonder she couldn’t eat properly and everything tasted horrid.
This my dear reader, is “dignity”: the bathroom was atrocious, filthy.
This my dear reader, is “dignity”: the water in the pitcher sat there all day. Warm.
This my dear reader sums up “dignity”: the woman in the next bed was left to lie in her excrement until it dried and caked on her. It’s a good thing my mother has no sense of smell.
In addition, visitors to the woman in the next bed came in with colds and my mother caught one.
Saturday morning my mother could barely talk to me on the phone. The voice that was once hers, that strong Brooklyn voice, was barely a sputter. But she managed to say: “This is just too much for me.”
It would be too much for a two hundred and fifty pound grown man. My mother is now about eighty pounds.
Is it under staffing? Is it negligence? So far two nurses to whom I have spoken impressed me as being professional. But what is a patient to do when they have a fractured right arm and breakfast is left in front of them with containers to open and food to cut?
Dignity.
[This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.]
While reading the entire series it seems like there have been a few kind people. Just not enough of them. The mouth care thing is a pet peeve of mine. It seems to get forgotten unless care givers are reminded. I often wonder how often they brush their own teeth!! This is not just in one place but anywhere I have worked for the past 38 years.
And, Mary, think of how that can ultimately make a person sick: decay, infection, disease.
With my mother, she got dizzy, likely due to blood pressure that is erratic, and she fell and fractured her arm.
These stories are so sad, Dani, send my best to our friend. This is a dreadful story. This is what they call the squeezed generation: us folks who are taking care of the generation before and after. By the time we are finished there is nothing left of us. That poor woman shouldn’t be in this situation; I feel sorry for her family, it’s dreadful. It just goes to show that this is a universal problem.
Believe me I worry about being alone one day and in such a position.
My friend the china painter who illustrated one of your poems is living a similar odissey with her mum. About 4 months ago her 86-year-old, up to then independent mother fell and broke her femur. She was taken to hospital and had surgery. My friend flew all the 1000 km to Sicily, where her mother lives, and stayed with her first at the hospital (3 weeks) then back to her mum’s home (1 1/2 months), until she found a good, reliable live-in carer she could trust her mother with and finally returned home to her husband and son, having aged 10 years in the meantime.
Ten days ago, nothwithstanding the live-in’s constant care, the mother fell again on the operated leg and had to be taken to hospital again. The nightmare is back. The live-in and my friend’s brother have taken turns with the mother at the hospital then at home. He has reached the end of his tether, having a full-time job he can’t leave and the live-in isn’t managing on her own. So my friend is leaving again for Sicily to lend a hand – and waste more precious family life and money. Her mum is a bit like yours: never leaving home without make-up, always prettily coiffed and wearing her best clothes. Now she is utterly dependent and has to forgo her dignity. Plus she’s demented.
My friend sends her love and sympathies. Her message is: Don’t let go.
With a lot of elderly women, the sequence is: they break the neck of the femur (hip joint) and then they fall. The broken bone is often the cause, not the result, of the fall.
oh this makes me so sad then sooo angry