I’ve actually been worried about her (well, I mean, I’m not up nights), as she hasn’t been in the society pages since she turned 101. Having an ailing, elderly Mom in assisted living, these kinds of stories hit very close to home:
I’m not jumping to any conclusions on this, myself, there are so many gray areas and we don’t know what’s true here . . . But gosh, I hope this is being overblown. She’s such a nice lady (not that even a bitch deserves anything like that).
It sounds like a fairly high maintenance, high cost lifestyle is being adjusted to a medium maintenance lifestyle for a declining 104 year old woman. Possibly the son is an ogre, but I suspect this has a lot more to do with control of the financial resources. I don’t think anyone with a 24/7 nurse can be said to be uttelry abused, and a number of the abuse claims seem to be based on the lack of access to high end cosmetics & sundries.
But it’s her money, and if that is what she is used to, why not? If her son is paying himself $2 million a year, I doubt she’s on the verge of going broke. Control of financial resources, indeed, but not in a good way.
This made my stomach churn when I read. She is CLASS with all the positive connotations of the word. When her husband died, he left her everything with the proviso - “Give it away”. And she has. NYC has been the recipient of her largesse for decades - particularly the Public Library.
If even .100 of a percent of this is true, her “son” should be strung up.
Of course, her son may very well be in full possession of all his faculties, but my first impression is that, at 82 years old, he is of an age where many people need a caretaker. I wonder, if any of these allegations are true, whether his judgment is impaired by aging related difficulties of his own, or whether he is being influenced by others or poorly advised. I could see legitimate reasons for economizing like this if Mrs. Astor wasn’t an incredibly wealthy woman, but good lord, let the woman have her mani/pedis and her Estee Lauder lotions!
The not wanting to use the more expensive cosmetics, eh that doesn’t raise my ire. Refusing to purchase and give her prescribed medication, without the doctors consent?? That’s horrible and most certainly is elder abuse.
I am trying to give him every break here . . . I am in charge of my mother’s care (medical, financial, etc.). She is not Mrs. Astor, and I do have to watch every penny . . . Having three different doctors tell you three different things can be frustrating. The “not to take her to an emergency room or call 911 without contacting him first” might be a kind of DNR order . . . The Estee Lauder has me baffled; I would never cut off my mother’s access to Elizabeth Arden’s . . .
I will be watching to see how this plays out, both as a fan of Mrs. Astor (a broad who is aces in my book) and as a worried daughter.
My mother never had that kind of money (or anything close to it), but for the whole time she needed the help of her kids to take care of parts of her life, we tried very hard to get her not only what she needed but what she wanted. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to make their parent’s last years as good as possible? I don’t care if she is 104 and in poor health, if some of these things will make her happier or more comfortable, then her son should be doing everything he can to provide them. I’ll be interested in more developments, but at the moment this looks like a level of either selfishness or just plain callousness that appalls me.
I’d hate to see what you consider “abuse”, astro. :rolleyes: Lying in her own piss and not having her medical needs taken care of are hardly “medium maitenance.” Hell, my family certainly isn’t the Astors, and we managed to take MUCH better care of MY grandmother recently when she was dying.
If we could keep my grandmother out of torn nightgowns and a urine stained couch, surely the freaking ASTORS could do better. Estee Lauder isn’t THAT expensive, is it? At least, not for someone of their means.
You’ve met Mrs. Astor, Eve? That’s so cool.
This is so very very sad. May her son rot in hell. :mad:
There’s a big long article in the Times today which is (no!) a little more detailed than the tabloids were. It seems she is in a “vegetative state,” and he keeps her dogs away from her because they might scratch her or injure her (makes sense). If she’s not conscious, that would explain “no new clothes or Estee Lauder,” also discontinuing PT. The hospital rails make sense if she tries to get out of bed: my mother would fall over the rails on her bed and hurt herself.
Now, the medication and the too-cold room are problematic. I want to hear both sides before condemning him . . . What bothers me is the Times quoted friends who said he never visits her, which is bad . . . You can’t oversee someone’s care unless you visit frequently to see what’s really going on.
Part of my reluctance to swallow this story from tip to tail is the fact that she has (apparently according to the story) a 24/7 nurse caretaker and lives in a multi-million dollar luxury apartment on Park Avenue, and it’s made to sound like a filthy tenement. How she is rolling around in piss and freezing with a 24/7 onsite nurse caretaker in a high end apartment is a bit of a mystery.
In review Eve’s additional data posted recently puts some additional light on the case. If she’s truly in a “vegetative state” and the grandson is making these claims about how she’s being abused by the lack of high end cosmetics… well… as I said, it’s possible that her son is an ogre and her conditions are horrific, it’s also possible there’s a fight over access to the estate money, and this accusatory shitstorm is the result.
It will be interesting to see how the hearing pans out.
This whole thing is very upsetting to me . . . The Times also has a sidebar about how common elder abuse is–problem is, I won’t even have family to abuse me should I be unlucky enough to live that long; I’ll have to be abused by strangers!
I see what goes on in my mother’s assisted-living home, which is a very good one . . . But if people do not have family going all Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment on their asses, they do get neglected and ignored, and their meds do get mixed up. Even with me hovering and nagging, I can’t protect my mother as I’d like.
Don’t get old. And don’t tell me “it beats the alternative,” either.
:mad: