Champion of Nursing Homes!

Auntie Jo is now in a nursing home. ~Sigh~

After repeated admissions to Bob's Community Hospital and Hot Dog stand, I invoked my status of DPOA (long story) and had her transferred to ACME. I could do this because my aunt was off her rocket, accusing her doctor of being a Iranian terrorist (he was from India), and had we allowed her to stay at that hospital, I strongly believe that she would have been dead by Christmas.

Nothing like a funeral to set the tone for the holidays!

So, we transferred her to ACME, where the good docs corrected everything that BCH&HDS screwed up. And they found some stuff that was missed, and fixed that too. It further cemented my belief that small town hospitals are really out to kill you.

Returning to the previous facility was out of the question, and when my aunt's marbles finally returned, she conceded that someplace closer to the city would probably be better.

Now, I don't really give a lot of thought in nursing home placement. A patient needs to go to one, we let the social worker handle all those things. Let me tell you, this whole experience has been an eye-opener for me. For the week before Christmas, Mom, Mr. Recommendation, and myself were touring various nursing homes. There's some really nice places out there, and then there are some shit holes. Some places we visited came highly recommended by various people we knew because they had family members there, and after touring the places in question, we wondered if those people actually liked their family member.

We learned the ins and outs of Medicare, Medicaid, and how most decent nursing homes won't even look at you if you only have Medicaid because of recent cuts. Which makes me wonder about the aging boomer population, and that a lot of those women were stay-at-home moms their entire lives, having paid nothing into the system that is supposed to take care of them when they can't do it themselves. What are they supposed to do if no one will take them?

By some miracle (and refusals from at least 40 facilities) we found a place for her not too far from where we live...which is nice because we can drop in and check on her a lot more often. It wasn't a fancy place, but it was clean, and the staff members were friendly. She got a bed by a big window, and her roommate is a lush who goes off during the day to find adult beverages.

Auntie Jo seems okay with the idea of being in a nursing home. She's even started nagging again, which is a good sign that she is getting back to normal. She just stays in her room, though. We gave up on coaxing her out of her room for meals and activities. Her daughter, Rosie the Militant Lesbian, is still being a shit head (which is one of the reasons I am her mother's DPOA). But that is for another blog post.

All this has really got me and Mom thinking about our golden years plans. Mom, who has worked her entire life, will probably have better options if she ever needs to be put in an assisted living situation. I, on the other hand, have decided that since any type of government program for me will be in the shitter, will retire to Belize and spend the sunset of my life in a grass hut, working my own rum punch stand on days the cruise ships come into port.

Make money, drink whatever is left over at the end of the day. I fail to see a flaw with this plan.