Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbie
After my Gramma took a fall in her bath tub over a year ago, we hired in-home health care. But as time went on, she progressively got worse. In May, after a small stroke, we opted to put her into a rehab / assisted center. It was hard, but on the other hand, we didn't want to see anything else happen to her...and the rehab really helped her improve.
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That is so true!
The man I considered my Dad, was my adopted stepfather, and he was from a much older generation than I (he lived to be 85). Anyway, Dad lived with my brother for ten years before we had to put him into assisted living following a stroke.
Over the years, despite good care, his health deteriorated to the point that he was bedridden. Nonetheless, he was still alert until he died, and could be hoisted into a racing stripes adorned wheelchair, and motor himself to the dining room and rec room to play dominoes, so all things considered, he considered himself generally fortunate and I think he was overall happy.
For decades, I lived several states away, and my brother ended up working all the way on the other coast, but we talked frequently by phone to Dad and visited as often as we could. Fortunately, my Uncle and his kids, who were all close to my Dad, dropped by and visited him on a more regular basis, so he knew he still had family that loved him until the end.
My Mother passed away a long time ago when I was young, so except for the years living with my brother, Dad spent most of his adult life alone, although he was happy that way, since he was always an independent self-reliant man's man that enjoyed spending as long as he wanted in his workshop creating various artworks and projects, and he could do the activities he loved whenever he wanted to, which while he could still get around unassisted consisted mostly of fishing and watching Mariners baseball games. That's the thing I think he missed most when it came time that he needed to settle into a group home with a 24/7 nursing staff to look after him.
Getting to your point, when my Dad was first put into the Nursing Home he had been quite ill and it didn't look like he had much longer to live. Therefore the NH staff assigned him to an area where terminal patients are looked after.
After he had been there nearly a year, and he had seen a half dozen or so roommates die, the staff asked him if he wanted to switch to a longterm patient care room, which he was quite grateful for, since he was able to be around people he could socialize better with, and some of whom he could build longterm friendships with (his biggest complaint was that several of the other patients seemed to complain about everything, all the time - kind of like GFY, j/k).
Dad loved to read biographies and history, and watch TV, mostly baseball and westerns, but although he had a strong engineering background, and loved science and technology (he was a builder and even an inventor of sorts), sadly to me, he just never got into computers, no matter how many times we would make him watch what we were doing with computers, which he enjoyed watching and he asked lots of questions about, and he knew how much easier it would have been to stay in touch. He remained until the end, a slipstick kind of guy (do young people even know the meaning of slipstick anymore - it sounds like a porn term, lol).
I think computers can improve the quality of life for elders, and I'm sure my generation, the first to grow up with PC's in their home, will be wired until we eternally log-off.
I'm absolutely certain that my Father was happier, his quality of life better, and his years alive extended, as a direct result of the care he received in assisted living and in a nursing home, with much of the costs covered by systems which he paid into, such as his years of service as a US Marine during WWII, and his whole life paying into social security, and donating time and money to charity.
I sincerely hope that our politicians, most of whom are quite affluent, will not turn their backs on the generations of hard-working taxpaying working-class people that were the backbone that built much of the infrastructure of this country, and whom paid into important and even vital social systems in good faith that they would be taken care of when they were no longer able to care for themselves.
I'm one of those wacky people that thinks that we can and should be doing more as a nation to create better systems for taking care of one another, and who believes that there is enough money to do that, to get able bodied people educated, trained, and fully employed, and to still allow people that want to make loads of money and make that their life's ambition, to get rich while also contributing to society.
I don't have parents or kids, and most of my family lives in other states, and even overseas (Japan), so I have had to already start making my plans for my later years which for some reason seems to get closer every year.
Well, all I can say is, it sounds like your grandmother is a good soul, taking you in at 15 and all, and she is lucky that you are looking after her now, when she needs you. I hope she gets better and enjoys her remaining days as comfortably as possible.
Edit: Oops...I didn't realize I made this post so long - sorry.
ADG