My grandmother is in her mid-80s. She has had a number of health issues the last few years, including a couple of mild strokes and a wonky pacemaker (possibly related). Her short term memory is failing; she’s always cold; she can barely get around, even with the aid of a walker. Yes, it happens to the elderly. No, it doesn’t mean you should sacrifice your dignity. And my grandfather, bless his soul, has done everything he can to keep my grandmother’s life at least modestly tolerable, chauffering her around and managing her medications and otherwise providing love and support and assistance.
Her most recent health crisis: shingles, which after a few days turned into viral meningitis. She wound up in the hospital, again, about which she’s made no secret of her displeasure. I’m tired, she says. I just want to go. I don’t want to fight any more. And yet she keeps scraping along.
The meningitis, as it happened, didn’t endanger her life. A few days of medical care, and it was time to transition her to a halfway facility, a hospice or a rehab center or something similar. My grandfather looked at the top facility in the city. Nothing available. Then the second choice. Nothing available.
Wound up at the third choice, and that’s the subject of this rant.
She was checked in on Wednesday in the mid afternoon. My grandfather seems to believe that the orderly who pushed her wheelchair was under the influence of something; I’m not sure I trust his opinion in this regard, but as things developed it becomes somewhat more likely. She was in her room by 3pm.
When my mother and stepfather arrived to visit at 8pm, they saw that my grandmother was lying a pool of her own urine. She was too weak to summon the nurse herself, so my mother rang the call bell.
No response for 45 minutes.
My grandfather had to go to the desk and fucking nag them for fifteen more minutes to get somebody to show up and help. And when they started working, they found that my grandmother hadn’t just pissed the bed, she had shit herself as well. And laid in it for at least a couple of hours.
So that got cleaned up. My grandfather stayed until they kicked him out at 10pm, when visiting hours ended. He didn’t want to go, but he didn’t have a choice. He stayed up all night, worrying if this was a bad sign, worrying about the care his wife was getting, worrying about whether he should have taken her out of the facility right then and there. And, as it happens, he was absolutely correct to be concerned.
At a quarter to eight yesterday morning, his phone rings. Some guy from the nursing center tells him that my grandmother is injured and needs to be taken to the emergency room.
Forgive me if I start to lose coherence. I’m nearly blinded by fury. I’ll try to write slowly.
What happened was this: They were doing something in the room. They needed her out of bed. They took her into the bathroom and propped her up on the toilet. They left her alone. She fell off. Bruised her leg. Hit her head. Cut. Bleeding. Don’t know how long she lay on the floor. Doesn’t fucking matter. Christ, I’m angry. Okay. Back to the story.
Grampa springs into action. Calls gramma’s doctor. Coordinates trip to ER. Get X-rays of head and leg. Nothing broken. Cut requires five stitches. Five goddamn stitches over my grandmother’s right eye because the fucking pusbrain orderlies can’t be bothered to monitor their fucking patient.
She went from ER to home yesterday evening. No fucking way she was going back to that hellhole even for one infinitesimal slice of a nanosecond. Grampa arranges to have a hospital bed delivered to their house, plus a home nurse and a home therapist. Not covered by insurance. His own expense.
Or, it will be until the lawyers finish ripping out the rehab center’s vertebrae with their teeth.
How, in a supposedly civilized country, is this shit even remotely acceptable? How is this bastion of incompetence still in business? Why hasn’t it been bulldozed and replaced with a plaque commemorating their arrogant ineptitude? Why is the board of directors not in jail for maltreatment and neglect?
I’m going to stop here, because all I have left is unfocused stream-of-consciousness venom that wouldn’t be coherent let alone grammatical. Besides I’m supposed to be at work and if I don’t get my mind off this rage-inducing horrorshow I’m going to start breaking shit because that’s the only alternative I have since I’m not able to drive down there and kidnap whoever’s in charge of this place and wrap them in duct tape and beat their bones into shrapnel with a piece of rebar and then shove them down a state park outhouse hole so they drown in the piss and shit raining on their face for the rest of their miserably shortened life and all right that’s enough of that.
I’m done venting. Back to work. I hope.
Fuck.
