Oldbear83 said:
One thing which bothers me a lot is the deliberate neglect of the elderly.
My wife works as a nurse at Assisted Living centers, and she has told me some horror stories, from facilities cutting back on food quality to save money, on caregivers ignoring residents because they don't feel like changing or bathing them, and on children who put their parents into Assisted Living so they won't be in their way at home, and never visiting them. In one macabre case, a woman started visiting her mom and began to complain repeatedly that she was in pain and tried to talk the nurses into administering morphine. Later she kept trying to up the dosage well past safe levels. When the DON tried to explain to her about medication protocols, the truth came out - she was worried that her mom was spending so much as a resident that there would not be much money left for her daughter when she passed.
I lack the ability to convey the hopelessness in so many of these places, where folks are focused only on how much of your money they get, the workers will feed you poorly, ignore many of your needs and just do enough to stay out of legal trouble, and your own kids won't visit more than twice a year, if that.
My wife and I promised each other to stay out of such places. Not everyone is able to do so, however, and many do not see the danger until they are prisoners in such a horrid place.
My mom had alzheimers for 20 years and I kept her in my home. I did have to leave her in Adult Day care fairly often with our work schedules, but would promptly go get her after work every day. Even with me being there twice a day on the days we had to take her in, the care wasn't great and she would have the same depends on, that she went in there with 9 hours earlier, way too often.
I would hate to think how it would have been for her, if we would have abandoned her in there, like so many of the people living there were. The money did run out eventually. We just had to deal with it.
It is a terrible way for someone to live out there final years, if the facility isn't run by exceptional people. Which I'm sure there are those places. But, all of them are not good.
