Excerpt from a recent comment by subscriber “lindad” (she addresses this to “the collective you” in the nursing home industry):
“You are torturing these people to death, most especially the demented, who are already terminal and for whom, without ready access to a support person, will never have a day better than today again. I am personally bitter and a little hysterical about this issue. My husband spent 4 months in SNF 'rehab' in 2015 and ultimately died in 2017 of vascular dementia (at home). I have given thanks every single day that he was not alive to endure the 'protection' that would be offered him now. It would have killed him.”
Impossible to argue with, or ignore, any of this. What have we done?
I feel her. Just found out one of my LTC puts residents in iso and there isn't even a TV in the room. Waiting for CMS/Feds to come (hopefully soon) as way overdue for survey, new admin. Staff has to isolate for 5 days, residents 10 days regardless of symptoms. Thought we were supposed to be "symptom based recovery" but too many NH admin are stuck in CYA mode.
My heart is broken, too, lindad and GeroDoc. I am thankful every day that my mother passed away peacefully in 2018 in a wonderfully supportive LTC home. She had chronic asthma and feared above all the sense of not being able to breath. She was also, like me, severely hard of hearing. I am so grateful that she passed from this world without the horror of enforced isolation that dominates our current 'elder care' landscape.
PS I am also so grateful in those former years that I was able, shortly before my mother and my aunt's deaths, to be with them, to hold their hands, to kiss and hug them to wheel them out into gardens, to tell them the extraordinary gifts that they had given me.
I feel her. Just found out one of my LTC puts residents in iso and there isn't even a TV in the room. Waiting for CMS/Feds to come (hopefully soon) as way overdue for survey, new admin. Staff has to isolate for 5 days, residents 10 days regardless of symptoms. Thought we were supposed to be "symptom based recovery" but too many NH admin are stuck in CYA mode.
An early-retiring nurse told me the lockdown protocols have turned our healthcare facilities into "death processing centers".
I'm starting to grasp what she meant.
My heart is broken, too, lindad and GeroDoc. I am thankful every day that my mother passed away peacefully in 2018 in a wonderfully supportive LTC home. She had chronic asthma and feared above all the sense of not being able to breath. She was also, like me, severely hard of hearing. I am so grateful that she passed from this world without the horror of enforced isolation that dominates our current 'elder care' landscape.
PS I am also so grateful in those former years that I was able, shortly before my mother and my aunt's deaths, to be with them, to hold their hands, to kiss and hug them to wheel them out into gardens, to tell them the extraordinary gifts that they had given me.