Family/Aging
Dispatch From the Nursing Home
The American healthcare system has entered its Soviet Russia phase.
I mean, it’s my own fault. I looked at the websites, and I read the reviews, and a little piece of me actually believed that my mom would be comfortable and cared for. That the facility would be bright and sunny and welcoming. That I could still have a life and a job and maybe get some sleep after our two-week sojourn at the hospital, where it took two days of asking to get a wash cloth.
I believed the press that “Life Care Centers of America in Medina, Ohio, has been named the 13th best nursing home in Ohio by People Magazine!” (An aide at the hospital told me not to believe the People Magazine bullshit because they use metrics that have nothing to do with a patient’s actual experience. But it was too late.)
Yes, I’m an idiot.
But stress does that to you, and I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)
The first thing the home’s marketing director did was pull a bait n’ switch on me as to which room we were getting. (Spoiler alert: NOT the big airy one she showed me with a desk and the TV that was positioned where a normal person with two eyes, give or take, could actually see it. She actually…
