Dad goes to Long Term Care

January 16th 2012

Today we took Dad to the Long-Term Care Centre, it’s a difficult time for all, and more so for Mom who is wandering around in a daze. Of course, the facility does not measure up to her expectations, - “It’s like a hospital” she frowns.

But the halls are wide and freshly painted and fitted with nice carpets, there are lots of nice-looking rooms on either side. Granted when we go to Dad’s room it is like a hospital ward. Two single beds separated by a curtain, and one large washroom. Naively, I think the aim is to keep the patients active and rooms are for sleeping only – kind of like Club Med (whose rooms are awful).

The process of settling him in was long, from 10.30 am to 3.30pm. and then we left before the financial part was completed which Peggy must finish later today.

Dad alternates between moments of confusion and fear – “I want to go home.” “Can we go home now?” and then the realisation and panic set’s in of what is going on – “I don’t like it here, I’m not staying” and finally despair “Has it come to this?” he sits in his wheelchair, frail, horrified and vulnerable and then he sinks down, defeated. “After all these years they finally separated us” he alarms. Mom stares ahead in icy silence, annoyed, nervous, irritated, devastated. She is “testy.”

We ask a nurse to take him to his room as he wants to lie down. After much more paperwork in the boardroom we visit him, his small, withered frame under the blankets, half -awake not quite asleep. “Are we going home now?” his frail voice comes. I lie on the bed next to him and nestle my head up close on the pillow, I stroke his cheek “No sweetheart” I whisper, “you are very sick, we want you to get better, the doctors here are going to make you strong again so that we can come and take you back home.” Suddenly his face lights up with the sheer hope and anticipation of it “Oh I would like that” he says, “I would like that very much.” “I am very happy.” I will live with guilt and remorse for the rest of my life for the outright lies I just breathed to him. We know in our hearts he will not be coming home again, and silently we leave him there, feeling lost, sick to our stomach and guilty at abandoning him. He is but a child now and, in our hearts, we know that this is the final lap of the long goodbye.

The adrenalin we have been running on all day begins now to ebb and as we walk to the elevator the first pangs of loss start to prick our eyes.

My father died within six months of that day, he made many attempts to “escape” and finally his spirit was broken when we saw him tied to his wheelchair and parked at the reception desk. He became silent, afraid, refusing to talk, he tore up the pictures of the family album we took to him and generally fell into a lasting depression.

Unlike “Club Med” we found there was precious little in the way of activities and entertainment. A chronic shortage of staff and a stark existence is the reality for the seniors who live there. My mother visited every day, and my sister and I as often as we could. The visits were difficult and upsetting, my father was uncommunicative and withdrawn and despite voicing our many concerns to the management, nothing changed in the way of care. Had we had the resources to enlist alternative care and bring him home, we would have done so in a heartbeat. Placing our father in that long term facility was the most difficult decision we had to make, and one we lived to regret. Residents for the most part are not treated with empathy or dignity, and the staff are overworked and underpaid. The result is that residents are sometimes denied even basic care. I have seen my father repeatedly ask to be taken to the washroom and ignored, resulting in him lying for prolonged periods in soiled diapers. When help does arrive, staff are irritable and overbearing, blaming, and treating a frail ninety-year-old like an errant pre-schooler. When I threaten to report the neglect my father panics and pleads, “Please don’t say anything” and the alarm in his voice is palpable. Yes, there are some dedicated staff. As I sat by my father’s death bed for over twenty hours, I witnessed a night nurse spend more than thirty minutes trying to coax a senile patient into the next bed. Her care and patience deserved a medal. That one nurse is an exception, with the limited staff its simply not possible to give that kind of care to every patient.

The problems of Long-Term Care in Canada are many, they are not new, they have existed for years. It is an area that the government does not yet seem to have any interest in. It is not Long-Term Care; it is merely Long- Term Housing.

#long Term Care #Alzheimer # Senior Care #thelonggoodbye#Canadalongtermcare