Why I Despise Nursing Homes

[smahala1991]

My grandmother was in a nursing home as a result of a fall that paralyzed her from December 2012 till June 2013 her death. She was supposed to be there less than that and be returned to her home after 90 days. In that time I learned to not like nursing home. In fact I despise them so much now that I will never step inside one ever again.

1. They blatantly lie

All I ever heard from them was lies. The first thing they lied about was her length of stay. She was supposed to stay at least 90 days until she could have learned to walk again and use fine motor skills. They barely ever worked with her fine motor skills. They hardly ever got her up walking either. So as a result she was admitted long term.

Second of all: they promised her that she was going to get approved for home health care by medicaid. My grandmother hated being there in the nursing home and I hated it for her. So the staff brought up the idea to set her up for home healthcare. I thought it was going to be an immediate process, but turned out it was taking weeks and months to hear anything back from them. I started to begin to question if they really were going to order it at all, or were they milking the money from Medicaid and medicare?

The third lie was the worst one that I cannot forgive them for. They called saying nothing was wrong but they wanted to bring in hospice to give her extra care. Now I'm not a medical expert, but It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Hospice is the last resort. In other words they knew her death was coming. They also asked if it was ok to put her on a feeding tube since she wasn't eating. We all said a resounding no to that.

When the day for her hospice evaluation came, the coordinator came in and met with us. The hospice nurse came in later that day. The Hospice nurse pulled us all aside and said that she was actually in the first stages of dying. She even asked why the nursing home didn't even tell us she was dying. I really felt betrayed that the nursing home lied to us about that instead of just coming out and saying she wasn't going to be around much longer.

2. They made her health actually worse

While she was in the nursing home she also had stage two Lymphoma. So she was taking Chemotherapy treatments, or so she was supposed to have been. One of her doctors was actually accusing the nursing home of skipping her doctors appointments and treatments. Because they were responsible for her transport to and from the center. If you skip cancer treatment most of the time you have to restart the whole treatment all over again.

While in the nursing home she also got very delirious. She kept having thoughts that the nursing home staff was poisoning her food, someone was coming after me and my grandpa, that Someone was pretending to be her to claim some money that she was apparently promised from a lawsuit that never even happened, to even saying that I did a crime I never even done which was kick one of the nurses which she claimed I was arrested for. The nurses knew that never even happened and even assured it never did. Even me and my grandpa even knew that I didn't even do that because believe me if I was ever arrested I would have remembered surely.

She also was constantly sick every time she was in the nursing home. One time she almost died from Pneumonia while at the nursing home. They took her to the hospital and kept her there for a.couple weeks. She was on a ventilator for several days and could not communicate very well. She also got bronchitis one other time while there and was taken to the emergency room. She was returned back to the center that same night.

A couple months later, about two weeks before she died, the nursing home doctor told us that she was going to be admitted to the hospital due to blackened stools. They kept her in the hospital for a week doing endoscopies, colonoscopy, and even cat scans to find out the problem where it was coming from. There was internal bleeding but they could not find where from (which was probably the cancer spreading). After she returned from the hospital her health went down for that last week. The telephone calls never came, she wasn't eating right, and she wasn't talking. So when we met with hospice that Saturday they told us her life was coming to an end and we had about another week at best. So we visited her Saturday and Sunday. That Monday morning about 2:30 am she passed away. The nursing home was no longer her prison, her hell on earth, she was finally free.

Of course I had a lot of anger and still do towards the nursing home. I feel like they cheated us. They were using her medicaid to keep her in there instead of getting her in home health care like she wanted. I feel like they could have done a lot more to make sure she was doing well instead of watching her health go down by the day. To this day I still will not step into a nursing home even though my sister works in one as a dietary aide. When I pick her up I always wait in the car until she gets out even though there is a lobby where it is air conditioned. That I guess is just the anger and frustration I had built up from unanswered questions. It could have been the cancer that did the damage, but I still feel the nursing home could have done more to make sure she was ok.

[Doffydood]

As someone who used to have to frequent a dementia nursing home, I cannot agree with this Take enough. Honestly, I'm so glad I never have to go to one of those places again. God's waiting rooms, they are.

The overwhelming smell of boiled cabbage mixed with disinfectant, all of the old people straight up staring at me like they want to eat me to absorb my youth, trying to make the old people eat their lunch to no avail, long corridors with dying orchids and identical doors on either side, each with a poor resolution picture of the person when they were normal printed on A4 paper, the constant 50's and 60's music from the radio, and the screaming...
It makes you wonder where the cut-off point for being human is.

[W31rd0]

Eh. I am going to volunteer at a hospice full-time, doing administrative work, as a way to secure myself a job and make professional connections. I want to find a job before I turn 26.

[DianeDuffus]

I do not wish to discount your feelings. They are there and there is nothing I can do about them. However you have displayed a total lack of both understanding and acceptance of your grandmothers multitude of problems. You jumble them up so instead of coming to a clear understanding of what is wrong, you focus on playing the blame game. Whether you are doing this in order to convince your audience or because you really don't understand I am not certain. As best as I can conclude you have never unjumbled reality and the chronological events surrounding that reality. Or you purposefully hide that reality in order to play the blame game.
Your grandmother fell but the fall did not paralyze her, rather the stage II lymphoma caused the fall. She was most likely admitted to the nursing home carrying the diagnosis of lymphoma. That you failed to mention but rather brought it out as an aside in passing as if it had no significance. Working on fine motor skills was soon put on the back burner as it is impossible to work on a neurologic deficit that is progressive. So don't blame the nursing home.
Her delirium her paranoia all went along with the spread of her lymphoma, again not the nursing homes fault. But constantly you bring it back to saying the nursing home should have done better when indeed in fact they did the best they could in the face of progressive cancer.
If your grandma wasn't eating and you refused a feeding tube (which I can understand) would you not understand that a progressive deterioration accompanied with weight loss and wasting would occur? One of the reasons why patients are encouraged to sit up in a chair and move around is that to not do so, to lie in bed promotes the development of respiratory complications including pneumonia. Now you present the patient who cannot move who lies in bed and doesn't eat and then you blame the nursing home for her developing pneumonia?
No sir what you are presenting is the progressive decline in health secondary to stage II lymphoma and the ultimate result which is death. I am saddened by your grandma's passing but I believe that most if not all of your lashing out is in anger at her death rather than blatant mistreatment by a nursing home

[smahala1991]

Just one question, how does cancer cause a fall?

[DianeDuffus]

You told me and the rest of the audience that your grandmother was having difficulty with fine motor control and also difficulty walking. That means that whatever process was going on and there are multiple processes currently occurring all at once they affected her neurologic status meeting fine motor control, balance and position sense the position sense and the balance were defective. Hence her fall was more of a "fell over" than a real fall. Have someone put their feet together and close their eyes. They do not fall over because they have position sense. Their brain knows where their feet are and their muscles contract accordingly to keep the person up right. Your grandmother for whatever reason either B12 deficiency or the cancer spreading into that area of the brain lost position sense and balance.

[DianeDuffus]

The other possibility is that she was not drinking enough fluids to begin with because she was sick hence she did not have enough blood volume to withstand getting up. When she got up to move gravity drove the blood to the floor and she felt dizzy. Hence another reason to fall. And of course you can have both processes occurring at the same time

[DianeDuffus]

A bottom line to remember is that elderly people have deficits coming from all angles and from all sides, neurologic, the kidneys fail, the heart fails, the absorption of necessary nutrients fail and that occurs in healthy elderly people. Add cancer to the mixture and and elderly person's ability to compensate just doesn't work..

[Rissyanne]

I am very sorry to hear what your grandmother went through. But you need to realize that just like bad and good cops... there are bad and good nursing homes. My mother is in one. 3 Years ago after my father died suddenly... we ended up putting my mother in one. We never realized what caregiver my father was to my mother. She wanted to live by herself... so we gave it a try. After a couple of trips to the hospital we realized she couldnt stay by her self. She was mismanaging her meds. She is a diabetic, has congestive heart failure. After we put my mother in the hospital for test... we discovered she had dimension. I was vascular dimension... from years of her smoking heavily. She stayed with my sister but she fell and broker her wrist. My sister was a speech therapist in a very high in nursing home. So she put her in there for her to get therapy for her arm. Once she went in... she decided she didn't want to go back home. She couldnt face living in the house with without my father.

She is doing well. Her dementia is getting worse... but she still enjoys herself. She even has a boyfriend in the nursing home. She is always in his room... we are just glad she has someone to keep company with.
But just remember not all nursing homes are bad. Sometimes family have no other alternative. Having a home nurse sounds good... but medicare won't pay for that. And some families can't afford for private nursing.

[smahala1991]

State of Tennessee the Medicaid system since its privately owned in Tennessee will pay for home health if they qualify and she did

[Rissyanne]

In my experience... it is the family that has to push for this. We did with my mother. It is a lot of red tape and you have to be diligent. No one is going to go to bat for your loved ones like their family. Me and my sister had to go above and beyond to get benefits approved for my mother.

[ScorpioMoonChick]

Wow, this hits home.

My great grandmother died in a nursing home; she tried to escape it many times. And a couple days before she passed, she asked if she could see her home, but we couldn't show her it, because it was already emptied and put up to sale to pay for her nursing home. :(
There's this documentary called Time Of Death.
It mainly comprises of people who know that they are going to die. But, it's not that I'm upset because they are going to die, because I know it's eventually going to happen anyhow.
It's the fact that these hospice nurses (some of them) look almost cheery and in phases by the fact that they are dying. I just can't help but wonder, if these dying people were around a more positive aura, would they still be alive today?
Would my great grandmother still be living in her little house?

[ScorpioMoonChick]

*unphased

[smahala1991]

They are really just about like mental hospitals. Both are run by corporations to suck all the dollars out of oeoples pensions, insurance, and retirement funds

[Rissyanne]

It sounds like your grandmother had dementia. There is no way she could have lived by herself. But I do think things should stay as calm and relaxed at the end of their life.

[Stacyzee]

Nursing homes are the worse place for the elderly.
I knew a man in his 80s that said they never took him outside , and left him drenched in his own urine (he couldn't change his adult diaper). They also would ignore him when he asked for a cup of water.
My parents last visit to him , he was not his normal self. He always tried to be full of life but this time he laid in bed and did not seem like he had anything to look forward to.
Shortly after , he passed away.
He had six adult kids , one who cared for him before her death of lupus. The other five only came around for his money.
He was a veteran.

[Victorianne]

I'm so sorry to hear about what your grandmother and family went through. That's so sad.

A relative of mine went into a care home and one day when we went to visit her, she had a black eye. We weren't informed about it, but when we questioned the staff they admitted they'd forgotten to strap her in the wheel chair and she'd fell out onto her face. We took her out eventually because there was too many accidents happening and we weren't happy with the care there

I've heard so many sad cases about nursing homes.

[Coffinspire]

Honestly, I work in a nursing home, and we have had our fair share of cancer patients, all that needs to happen is a stressful event (such as her fall or move to the nursing home) to send her body and cancer into overdrive. Stress decreases your immune system and so does injury. It actually sounds like the nursing home did everything they were supposed to do.

Sadly, nursing homes are almost like schools where germs and viruses congregate, even though staff has huge sanitation rituals (such as scrubbing your hands raw for 2 minutes) and her cancer, which weakened her immune system, made it possible to make her sicker easier.

She might not have been walking because she was not yet stable enough to do so. She might not have been eating (I work in dietary like your sister, I have been for 8 years) because when the patients are not feeling well, they tend to not want to eat or when they do, they say the food is awful.

[confuseddotcomgirl]

I agree. I've worked in nursing homes for around 6 years now, they are disgusting. I'm an agency so I get sent to many different ones and they're all the same. The care is disgusting, and mainly due to the top dogs being money grabbers so there's little funding and adequate care provided.
Granted, i'm sure there are one or two 'good' nursing homes, but generally when someone is admitted to one, they sadly pass away in there and their health deteriorates rapidly :(

[helloitsmethere]

I totally agree... a family friend recently died after being put in a nursing home for a week...
My grandmother died after being put in a nursing home for two weeks...
From seeing two people that were close to me had their health gotten more deteriorated and died in nursing homes, I will never, ever put my parents in nursing homes. The psychological damage it can do to someone is insane...

[fauchelevent]

My granddad actually really really loves being in his nursing home (like so much that he told us he didn't wanna spend Christmas with us because the home was going to put on a meal and do some party games :P ) and damn, I'm a little concerned now.

[SirenDep]

I don't trust nursing homes either. It's a thousand times better to have a woman or a nurse to come in your house every day and look after your grandparents.

[Rissyanne]

Most people can't afford private nursing. It sounds good but unless you have the funds... it isn't possible.

[fueledbythc]

I went to catholic school as a kid and in the 7th grade we had to visit a nursing home and they drugged up the residents so much the old woman who I was playing checkers with ate a checker piece. They abuse the residents there!

[legalboxers]

nursing homes is basically a dumping ground for our parents because the adult children are too busy or lazy to take care of them. This is my take, they brought you into this world, you can at least help them and take care of them like they did us

[thorthorley]

Basically a nursing home is about making money and not about actually taking care of the people. Once they are there, they want to keep them there.

[orphan]

my mom was in a "nursing home" for the last 2 weeks of her life. But i visited her everyday, and would stay until they kicked me out (around 9pm).

[Oram52]

I am honestly not keen on Nursing Homes either. Sadly for many people that is their only choice.

[Byakuyarko]

I still dream of the day I get my mitts on the throats of the sons of whores who own the nursing home where grandfather died...

[Ginnyweasley97]

Wow this is a great my take and very eye opening.

[smahala1991]

I meant to say June 2013 not 2016

[PineappleBreath]

So if you have a crazy as fuck old person who shits their pants am I supposed to take of them?

[Stacyzee]

We are talking about your parents that once cared for your shitty dirty ass , not random elderly adults.

[PersianPrincessss]

I used to work in one and shit got crazy

[Oram52]

Curious what did you work as at 17.