๐ณ๐๐๐ ๐ป๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ฏ๐๐๐ ๐ป๐๐๐ ~ ๐ญ๐๐๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐๐ Contest entry
Entry for the final round of the Love Them or Hate Them contest that @erodedthoughts is hosting
How can a building be scary you might think? How can this be a fear? It is my biggest fear you see this building isn't just any other building. It is a nursing home. This is my biggest fear, that one day I will grow so frail and not be able to take care of myself. That no one will want to take care of me and I get thrown into one of these. I know some nursing homes can be nice. But even those nicer ones that are out there, people are forgotten. I don't want my family to forget me.
I didn't even know this was my biggest fear till a couple of years ago. My husband's father was sent home from the hospital into hospice care. He asked us to help him so he could go home and not to a nursing home. We decided to try to follow through with his wish. After a few months we were exhausted, we needed to look at long term care facilities because we were burnt out and didn't think we could do it anymore. And decided to do respite care, where you place your loved one in a nursing home for a few days so you can have a break and to look at other nursing homes for long term care.
Over the first 24 hour period we went to visit all the homes covered by his insurance plan, and we knew we couldn't do that to him. The one we left him in for just a few days was nice compared to the other ones we visited. When we put him in respite care he needed help but he could walk and go to the bathroom on his own. The next day we went to visit him and to take him some things we knew he would want, and what we walked into shocked us. He was sitting in his own urine, and the was a large puddle, his clothing was dry so he had been sitting in it for a while.
We found out that he hadn't been given any of his medications, nor any of his pain medicine. We had brought brand new medications and nothing had been opened or given to him. I called Hospice and told them they better send an ambulance to take him back home or I would be taking him in my own vehicle. He was already dying, but us putting him there for the 25 hours he was there shortened his life and diminished it severely. Their reasoning for not giving him medicine and neglecting him, is he didn't ask for medications.
It was the worst decision ever, he died 3 weeks later, leaving me realizing that I never want to be in a nursing home. It is my biggest fear. Dying alone with strangers. I want to die in my own home surrounded by loved ones or at least in my sleep. So this is my biggest fear.
It's horrifying, what goes on in some of these places.
My grandfather landed in a decent home, but the cost was $400/day and he was in there for several years. After spending a quarter-million dollars, when he qualified for hospice care we were able to move him to a VA home due to his military service - $30/day. I have to say, we were very impressed with the VA facility. It was a much warmer environment with much more personal attention.
Estate planning is key, either way. And I'll never have the resources to end my days in a place as nice as either, so I'm as terrified of them as you are.
I pray that my children or grandchildren take care of me if that time comes.
That would be ideal, wouldn't it? The Wife and I often wonder if we'll regret not having children as we get older. It sounds like you've got a big, loving family!
I have three kids. I do have a large extended family as well but some of the older ones have ended up in nursing homes even though they have kids that could take care of them if they were so inclined. I hope I don't ever have to do for my parents what we had to do for my husband's father, but I would go through it all again to save them from that fate.
They are very lucky to have you!
My mother is paying on an insurance policy that's supposed to provide in-home health care if she ever needs it. They tried to sell her on a much more expensive policy that covered nursing home care, but we said, nope, she won't be needing that.
Thanks, now I am thinking the same thing. I hope at least 1 of 10 will step up in the end or at least my end can go down as @tarazkp wrote it. Damn fine entry, thank you for sharing.
I had to think about what actually freaks me out the most and this by far I think is what I fear the most.
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STOPI will probably end up in the V.A. elderly care system. At that point, I hope I still remember which end of the pistol the bullet comes out of.
My father-in-law was VA. The nursing homes connected with the VA in Indiana makes a kill animal shelter look like the Hilton
Yeah, that's why I'd rather put a bullet through my head than be confined to one of them.
The government refuses to pay for proper care of their veterans.
I was a CNA on and off for 10 years. I worked in good and bad places over those years, ( I never stayed at the bad ones). Even in the good places I never felt like I was given enough time to truly properly care for my clients. In the end it contributed to my leaving the field.