Eldercare Blues

Just got Mom out of the hospital again yesterday. It took an entire week at the "skilled" care facility for the nurse practitioner (apologies to those NP's who are wonderful) to believe me and several others of the staff that Mom needed to go to the hospital for breathing problems. I think she would have died if it were not for the fact that she is the Energizer Bunny in disguise. The facility is understaffed, so Mom stays in a wet diaper sometimes. She has another UTI because of it. The staff they do have are wonderful caregivers and try to keep up, but because of the great increase in the elderly population in the US, they just can't manage all the time to get to everyone. Mom knows this and hates to "bother" them. 

Something has got to give with the state of elder care in this country. It's starting to improve as far as assisted living facilities are concerned, but they are prohibitively expensive. Also, once you get past being able to hobble out on your own with a walker, you can't be in assisted living. You then have to go to a skilled care facility. From the one assisted living facility I've seen (that Mom got herself kicked out of because she wanted to go home, which was not good but done anyway), they had skilled nurses and CNA's there. The surroundings were much nicer there. Long-term care facilities are drab for the most part, with a few very expensive exceptions. 

In other words, healthcare for the elderly in this country sucks. I think my generation of late boomers will do things differently. I am not going to one of facilities like my mother lives in without a fight. Fortunately, I don't have children who will have to worry about it. My husband and I will take care of each other. If one of us dies, the other will find a way around the eldercare mess. More on that plan later. Right now, I'm supposed to be working on my fiction and poetry.