This is an editorial to the Miami Herald written by H. Frances Reaves, Esq., President of Parent Your Parents, in October of 2017. This was written after Hurricane Harvey and Irma and the mirror placed on Senior Services. As we suffer through a very cold winter these words are still prophetic.
IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN the video of the residents of a nursing home in Houston, Texas sitting in waist high water simply search “video of seniors in waist high water” in your browser – the You Tube video comes right up. School children were evacuated, families were evacuated and who was left behind . . . seniors. Two weeks later, in the aftermath of Irma, 14 seniors die from overheating in a Broward County Nursing Home.
If these seniors had been children the outcry would have been much louder and punishment swifter. An excellent example is the most recent earthquake in Mexico. The school caved in on top of 24 children and four adults. The volunteer rescuers were there within minutes and the TV crews transmitted the entire search and rescue for more than three days. That would not be the case if this had been a senior citizens facility.
Fariola Santiago wrote in her September 24th column that “the elderly are like children, frail, unable to care for themselves, and vulnerable to abuse and negligence. Those who don’t have money or advocates and require round-the-clock care end up in places with deplorable conditions . . .” I agree with Ms. Santiago regarding the elderly but disagree that all nursing homes have deplorable conditions. We also need to remember that, with the exception of one “lonely soul,” everyone had a family . . . and the family did not take them from the ‘deplorable home’ even after they knew about the power failure.
Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials beware — you, too will be a senior! Seniors, are an older version of who we are today. We espouse the sentiment that, “I only want to live a long life if I have a quality of life” but legally we don’t have a choice once our mind collapses.
What we don’t discuss is that dementia does not take away your intellect, mental pain or physical pain. Dementia takes away the ability to communicate effectively. It also absconds with your memory – which allows we the children to believe that with memory loss there is a loss of all senses. That is not the case. The 14 elders who died felt pain and the first to die truly suffered because they did not have the benefit of hospice care.
No doubt, the staff at this nefarious nursing home was negligent, incompetent and uncaring and they were allowed to function as “caretakers” for years. It took a hurricane and power outage to bring it to light. Had this been a daycare center the negligence would not have been allowed to continue.
As the President of a company who advocates for seniors, finds resources, counsels families and assists in medicaid preparations, my experience shows that most of us face living in a medicaid facility. Unless you have a healthy pension or half a million dollars you will not have the money for dementia care in a private facility. Today that runs between six to seven thousand dollars a month. If you qualify for medicaid, nursing homes run about $700.00 and medicaid picking up the balance.
We must look in the mirror! let’s begin the process of treating our elderly loved ones as our children. Treat them as you treat those around you. Hold the Assisted Living Centers and Medicaid Facilities accountable and — START SAVING!!