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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/02/2003 3:56:20 PM PDT by MarMema
It's been almost two years since my mother woke up one autumn morning in the apartment we shared and said she didn't have the strength to move. It was a couple of months before her 96th birthday and her dementia and frailty had been getting worse.
I took her to a downtown hospital and, after a night on a stretcher in the emergency room, she was transferred to a room on the geriatric floor.
I knew, of course, that she might never come home again. But I also knew that she would choose not to go gently into the night, that the same fierce will to live that had sustained her for 95 years, including 90 winters on the Prairies, would be a force to reckon with.
What I didn't know was how horrific the last six weeks of her life would be in the hospital as she fought to live — or that the health system to which I'd entrusted her would not always be her ally in that fight, but would declare it to be over well before she had given up.
David Globerman, who is 51 and trained as a social worker, knows what can happen to the elderly when they become patients in Ontario hospitals or nursing homes.
He talks about withholding of tests, about "passive euthanasia through omission — what we're talking about are not errors." And he refers to "horrific acts of dehydration, lack of feeding, lack of attention to bed sores, allowing people to lay in vomit and feces, using drugs to dope people."
This week, the Running To Daylight Foundation which Globerman founded five years ago co-sponsored a forum at the St. Lawrence Centre on Ageism in Health Care. It took place on the 7th anniversary of his father's death, at age 85, in an Ottawa hospital after a stroke that was not diagnosed because a CT scan was not deemed necessary, despite the family's pleas.
When Globerman surveyed people at the forum — about 85 attended including hospital reps, health care professionals, elderly people, and family members of elderly patients — 100 per cent responded affirmatively to the question: "Do you believe that some health care providers would have treated you (or a senior you know) better if you or they had been younger?"
At the forum, they talked about what Globerman calls "age-inappropriate care" at best and "conscious neglect and elder abuse" at worst.
I call it unacknowledged rationing in an underfunded health system.
"It is rationing," Globerman agrees. "At a time of scarce resources, the elderly fall to the bottom of the barrel. It's a glaring double standard.
"There's huge abuse and neglect going on in health care institutions and it should be addressed by all those existing initiatives that currently deal with elder abuse. It's plain dangerous to go into hospital if you're elderly. And it can be dangerous and a threat to health if you go into a long-term care facility."
One speaker at the forum talked about a 79-year-old woman with Alzheimer's whose broken arm wasn't set properly and the bone finally protruded, causing a life-threatening infection. "No doctor visited the patient throughout the hospitalization," recounts Globerman.
Other speakers talked of substandard care in nursing homes, with elderly relatives left to lie in their own waste or vomit and going for days or even weeks without baths or showers.
In some, if not many cases, the care and treatment of elderly people in hospitals and nursing homes "is not meeting acceptable standards," he says.
"If it were a child receiving the same care, there's no way that people would accept it."
He says, "There is no mechanism to ensure accountability."
Globerman's goal for Running To Daylight is not only to continue questioning standards for the care and treatment of elderly people but to provide independent patient advocates for them.
He can be reached at 416-782-3249 or at rtdlf@aol.com.
There's another outstanding, compassionate organization in Toronto that I'm glad to know exists.
It also helps people when they're most vulnerable, confused and trying to navigate through the health care system.
Willow was founded in 1994 to provide up-to-date information, personalized research and empathetic listening to women living with breast cancer.
This year, more than 21,000 Canadian women will discover they have breast cancer. They'll want information and conversations with other women who have had breast cancer.
Willow was created to meet these needs. Their toll-free number is 1-888-778-3100 and their Web site is http://www.willow .org.
But even though it's largely a volunteer organization, Willow needs financial support from the community, as well as from its many generous sponsors.
On Tuesday, Willow will hold its annual major fundraising event. Eat to the Beat features 40 Ontario women chefs creating snacks for sampling, tastings from Canadian wineries and breweries, live music by several bands, a martini bar, a chocolate fountain and a silent auction stocked with desirable goodies. Tickets are $135.
So many fundraising and charity events throughout the year are worthy, but this is the one I, and many women I know, try to get to.
When my mother, a breast cancer survivor, was able to get around, I took her to this event in her wheelchair.
Eat to the Beat starts at 7 p.m. at Roy Thomson Hall. Call Willow at 416-778-5000 for tickets.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Are these people nuts?
Shall everyone be given
everything? Always
_someone_ will get "less"
than someone else. Do these nuts
think we live within
a perfect world,
where somehow everyone could
just "have" everything?!
Listen, idiot,
at some point, reality
takes on the sad job
of culling the old.
It's not young people killing
the old. Everyone
gets old. Everyone
dies. Blaming MTV-heads
is really insane...
Our problem was keeping the hospital and doctors from going against his wishes. He was 92, had a stroke, then had surgery, contracted an antibiotic resistent pneumonia, was unable to communicate, and yet the doctors kept pushing us to allow them to insert a feeding tube and put him on a ventilator.
We made every decision based on his desires that had been expressed in his living will (which he had had drawn up over 10 years before.)
It was a battle, and once the hospital/doctors realized we weren't going to give in to the feeding tube and ventilator, then they wanted to withdraw hydration, which his living will had specified that he wanted. So we had to once again make clear his wishes to be hydrated until the end of his life.
What we are is p*ssed. The women of the Boomer generation needed to work. They needed their space. They needed to FIND themselves, almost always at the expense of their children. The men of the Boomer generation were hardly that. They ran off and forgot their spawn as if we were trash. The Boomer generation sucked dry our childhood and now they're going to go shrieking into their old age about how WE OWE THEM.
Now they want to suck our paychecks into a Social Security fund that won't even exit for our own old age. My mother's ex husband complained endlessly how it was UNFAIR for him to have to wait until he was 65 to get FULL retirement. (He ended up collecting early at 62.) My husband and I won't be able to collect until were 70, if the option still exists by that time.
Perhaps, if the Boomer generation had spent more time raising and loving their children, my generation would feel more beholden to our elders. Perhaps we would take care of our OWN parents rather than leave them at the mercy of The System. Perhaps, if we weren't so busy trying to clean up the Boomers' mess (social, political, moral), we would feel more altruistic to the ones who screwed it all up in the first place.
But who cares? It's "free"!
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Which resources are scarce aside from skilled labor?
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