Mom (ROSA)is going to be 87 years old, she fell in her Bronx apartment on March 3, 2006, she had a hair line fracture in her right knee and went to a nursing rehab for 3 weeks. She was then taken to a hospital for two weeks, one in ICU and the other on the ward. 

We wanted to take her home for rehab but Medicaid/Medicare denied us and said she was in the nursing home system now. The excuse was  that she was not safe at home.

She went to another nursing home: two weeks later she was in another hospital with dehydration. I thought from this hospital we will get her back home, my house in Yonkers or her apartment. Again Medicaid/Medicare Visiting Nurse Service denied us. She went to another Home in the Bronx. A friend who is a nurse said I will get her out, it was like being in jail. She evaluated her and said she was ready to come back to her apartment and her agency would take the responsibilty. 

The rest of the story is great be sure to read it!

Daddy: Be Careful, VERY Careful Selecting Caregivers

When my father was 87, we had the first of several care givers for my mother.  She had fractured her hip one night after getting out of the car, trying to walk up a step in the parking lot.  My parents were living in a rather unappealing furnished apartment in Las Vegas while waiting for their model home to be available in a suburb to the North of the strip.  It was not a well lit area.  My mom tripped and fell.  At the time, I didn’t realize how serious this sort of thing could become.  The brittle bones of an 82 year old woman who had never taken calcium, exercised or had eaten all of the right foods were a recipe for disaster.  This soon became evident.

By the time I arrived from Dallas, my mother was in the hospital.  She was soon moved to a rehab center and was given drugs that made her groggy and kind of made her write in the air, completely out of it.  Soon though,  it was time for physical therapy.  Sometimes she tried to walk with the walker or the support of rails.  Other times, she refused and sent everyone away in her gentle manner, “get out of here, I’m not in the mood.”  I begged her to try hard because otherwise she would not walk again.  Being the rebel, she wouldn’t try out of spite or who knows what.  Well, she never walked again unless she used a walker.  After three months or so, it was time to go home.  Daddy said, “maybe, we should just leave her here.”  But that was out of the question, both from a caring standpoint and Medicare’s views.  I think they allow 100 days and then it is time for the family to pay up.

Being the responsible daughter and oldest child, I found an agency called Home Instead, which means, old people get to stay in their own homes and have a “caregiver” come into their home to help with the everyday needs of the person, except, do housework and give shots.  But, they can wipe their tushies and cook.  These “caregivers” come from all avenues of the possible world.  The one they sent, “Suzette” said she was from France.  She was about 50 years old and wore lots of eye makeup, fluttering her eyelashes at daddy.  My parents were very amused by her stories and photos of her life in France as an aristocrat.  Her father was a diplomat during World War II in France.  She was also Jewish.  A Jewish diplomat during WWII??? Ohhh, I said to myself, something is weird since the French were involved with turning in every Jew they could find to the Nazi’s.  But, oh well, let’s go on with this story.  By the way, she drove a Rolls Royce.

Thinking that the Home Instead Agency had screened Suzette, I went home.  Every time I called my parent’s home, it sounded like a rollocking party was going on with a great deal of laughing and fun in the background.  First clue to something amiss.  How much fun could be going on with one old lady who couldn’t walk any more and an old man with a heart condition.  Daddy was still driving but a menace on the road, couldn’t get those keys away.  Actually, I did take the keys away but daddy and Suzette went to the dealer in a cab and replaced them.  He and Suzette did the marketing.  One time Suzette bought treats for her kitties that she sneaked into her room and daddy ate one and thought it was a very good cookie.  hahahahaha, the funniest occurrence, hahahaha.  Everything with Suzette was a laugh a minute.  Of course, first child responsible daughter was getting aced out by Suzette.  A favorite discussion topic Suzette brought up with my mother was discussing the mother-daughter relationship which had never been easy, “you never did get along with Robbin, isn’t that right?”  Pretty soon, it was evident that daddy needed care too.  Of course, Suzette needed double the money that she was being paid behind the backs of Home Instead--and a few days off during the week,  leaving mom and daddy alone.

The other interesting thing about Suzette was that she wanted to go on dates with daddy, like to the movies.  She also tried to get in bed with daddy and kissed him passionately.  Daddy said, “you know how it has been with your mother, so this is really great.”  He went on, “I called some of my friends and they said I would be crazy not to have this experience with Suzette.”  My daddy was 88 by then, could hardly walk and was really skinny--a little old man with some bucks.

I was going crazy imagining my inheritance disappearing into the Rolls Royce with Suzette, plus the iffy care that she provided was a concern too.  Finally, after a few months of this torture, going to Las Vegas (my most hated destination) every 2 weeks to check on things and keeping Suzette off her toes, it was Thanksgiving and family time.  Don and I, plus our dog Charlie, drove there and arrived a few days ahead.  Into the house we went using our key and what did we find?  Mom and daddy all alone, the blinds shut and a disagreeable smell of feces in their bedroom.  “Where is Suzette?” who was now being paid a King’s ransom.  “Oh, she is off today.”  We opened the blinds, cleaned up daddy and got mom up too.  The next day Suzette was surprised to see us there.  Pretty soon, she came into the kitchen like the lady of the house and told the responsible first child, me, to go and pick up daddy’s cleaning.  I just snapped and started yelling at her to “get the #$%& out of here” and “take your damn cats with you.”  My dad witnessed all of this and was like, whoa, what a show is going on now.  He snapped to it.  I said again, “get out and don’t come back.”  Suzette bided her time and asked my parents if she had to really GO.  I had told daddy that we would move in and take care of them.  They knew we would work for free so there was not much consideration given to their decision.  After a few days with Suzette in a most unbelieving manner, because she never thought I would give up my life actually to do this caregiving, she finally saw it was for real, started packing and thankfully left the house.

This site is a nice fit with my own - www.boomeralert.org - established because of the same concerns noted here.

My mother-in-law was in the hospital, rehab and home care this past winter and it opened our eyes to what awaits us boomers down the road. The delivery of health care needs an overhaul.

Everyone is focused on the cost and finding money to pay for medical care - the more important step right now is re-envisioning what health care looks like and then finding the money to pay for it.

There are different models of nursing homes that need to be encouraged. There are new inventions that will keep people in their homes that need to be publicized. There need to be new innovations that use technology to make a long term care facility less demeaning - someone has to invent a way to get a person to the bathroom without having to wait for an aide who never comes or comes too late!

Boomers need to re-design the medical care of the future and that's what my husband and I are trying to address. Let's start a national conversation about the kind of care we are going to receive and not just throw good money after bad by replicating the care that's available now.

Maureen Flanagan, BoomerAlert!

We are still in the midst of trying to figure out how to care for my father - who at age 80 had to have his lower left leg amputated due to complications from a broken ankle (3 years ago, multiple ankle surgeries, and type II diabetes).

In March of 2008 I visited my parents at their home in Michigan, and all was well - my father sitting in his chair, cast on his foot, not moving much - but by all appearances hale and hearty. He has only walked a little for these past 3 years as his broken ankle was repeatedly tried to be repaired.

A week or so later my mother said my dad's blood sugar was way out of whack and they were trying to get it back under control.  He is losing his appetite, but their doctor thinks they can get the blood sugar back under control and all will be well.

Another week - my father is in the emergency room - he has a massive bone infection and the doctors say amputation is his only choice.

I am in MI for the surgery and stay there for the next week as we fight to keep the hospital from killing my father.

First - they won't let him eat before the surgery because of typical anesthesia fears -- however the surgery is delayed twice.  He now hasn't eaten for nearly 48 hours.  Then they won't let him eat after teh surgery because no one knows what his post op orders are. They won't let him have water, so my father desperately grabs a "moistener swab" and sucks it like a dying man.  Of course, later that night - it turns out there was no reason for him to be denied food or water after he came out of surgical recovery, it was just miscommunication in the hospital.  Then - the next day, when he is too hopped up on morphine after the surgery to have an appetite, they will not supplement his
nourishment.  He becomes too weak to feed himself.  He goes 5 more days at the hospital, barely swalling a spoonful of sugar free (calorie free) pudding before they finally do something at our insistence!

He gets bed sores because no one realizes he is too weak to move himself.  They prop his cast-stump onto his "good" leg and leave it that way for hours - causing an abrasion wound on the good leg.

We beg the doctors for nourishment assistance - we say "if we can just get his strength back he will eat on his own" - and I am left with doctors who DO NOT KNOW my father shaking their heads and patting me on the shoulder and telling me in so many words that I am just a hysterical daughter who refuese to let go of a parent who is ready to die.  One doctor even said "There is no reason he cannot eat, if he wanted to eat - he would".

I explain - "1 month ago he was sitting up in his chair, hobbling into the kitchen to get his nightly bowl of sugar free ice cream, yelling at the baseball game on the TV".  They ignore me.  These doctors who don't know my father think this ill shell of a man is he.  They think the man dioriented (because he is in a morphine cloud), who is so weak he cannot hold a fork, is my father - instead of the man we know him to still be.

The finally give him an NG tube, though they are against it.  After 4 days of it and some actual calories, my father is feeding himself food.  The NG tube gets in the way and he pulls it out himself in the  middle of the night.  Now the doctors want to rush to put it back in..  but we tell then "NO" - he is eating on his own now, let him.

He is finally transferred to a specialty  hospital for wound and nutrition care.  The doctors feel they are sending him there to die, though none will say it to our face.

I visit him there, he is dad again - if a thinner (he lost 40 lbs in the course of 6 weeks!) weaker version.  He talks, he jokes, he smiles, he EATS!

He is there for one month, and does physical therapy each day.  They still do not feed him regularly, and he often is forced to skip meals due to being in dialysis or at PT.  The doctor from the original hospital comes and asks how he is - he is startled when my father says loudly "I'd be better if they'd give me some lunch!".

Finally the man turns to him and says, "You know we sent you here because we thought you were beyond saving"..

After one month at the specialty facility, he has moved again to a rehabilitative wing of a nursing home.  He eats 3 hearty meals a day.  He does his PT.  We hope in the time he is there (90 days per insurance) he will learn enough to be able to use a prosthetic and be able to transfer himself from a bed to a wheelchair or sitting chair.

If left in the care of the doctors, he would have been dead 3 months ago.  It is my mother's dedication (she has been at his bedside every single day) and our questioning of their practices that has him here with us today.  We are in the middle of this saga, and whether there is a happy ending remains to be seen - but I am optimistic.

Modern medicine is great, but for the aged, too often they are written off when a younger person with such a problem would be fought for with fierce tenancity.

In the summer of 2003 my father in-law died two days after we had just spent the week with him and his wife, 2000 miles away. My wife and I were barely unpacked when we returned to Spokane Washington for his funeral. One day after we arrived; In the afternoon following my father in-laws funeral that morning I received a phone call from my office--- someone was trying to reach me and wanted to talk to me ASAP!

As a clinician, and a researcher whose articles were on clinical issues I was used to being called and being asked for input, and so without hesitating I took the phone out to the patio and called an office in New York. Once I was connected to the party I was calling I heard the words “I found you on the internet and have read parts of your books and I think you can help me.” I could immediately sense that this was no ordinary call for advice—this was likely a crisis. No one had ever called me and said “oh by the way doctor, I’ve read your work…”

CARE GIFTING: The Gift of Providing Care for a Loved One
Cheryl Deep
Institute of Gerontology

A full-size Christmas tree adorns the spacious living room of Pat Rencher’s large Detroit home. Christmas has passed, but this tree has been up for a few years. Its presence reminds the family of an important absence: Pat’s mother Dariel, 78, has been in a nursing home for the last four years.

“Mom loves the holidays,” Pat says. “She decorates everything, a tree in the front hall, one in the living room. She makes everything beautiful.”

Pat, who recently left her position as vice president of programs for the Detroit Urban League, is the older of two daughters. Her life changed dramatically a few years ago when her mom, a diabetic, was hospitalized with severe pain and swelling in her left leg. “Some of it is a blur,” Pat recalls. “Phone calls, fear, emergency procedures, life support. I had just switched jobs and was trying to prove myself at work. I’m not sure how I got through each day, but I did.”

In May of 1999, my grandpa got very sick and was in the hospital for 3 1/2 months. He was in and out until July 27 2006, the day he went in and never got to come home again. He had a very bad infection in his knee that resulted in him having his leg taken from him.

He was not just my grandpa but also may dad. He took care of me, just as I took care of him until the day he left me and went to be in a better place.

In 2001, he moved in with my mom, his oldest daughter, and we took care of him. We had to change our lives for him like he changed his life for us. He had a very bad heart from the infection that he had. In the time he was sick he had to have his real knee removed and spacers put in to help him fight the infection that he got. With that brought lots of dressing changes and many trips to the doctor for IV antibiotic. WE did it all.