Mis-Treated Elderly........

I have visited several during my years in this world and am disgusted with the atmosphere, the patients live in.

If you go in the front door of the places, there’s a stench that captures your nose immediately. Urine, is the first and is accompanied by other body odors. Occasionally, you can catch a hint of food, above the other smells. That’s only if you go during feeding times, and that’s a trip, also.

The sounds that come from down the halls, are excruciating to the ears. Many times they are screams, moans or people yelling at another patient to move. There is so much disdain, along with hateful actions by personnel, toward the patients.

I understand that the personnel, are paid poorly and this can cause them to be more uncaring than if they were paid well. The government income’s these patients’ receive, hardly supplement the needs these institutions have to provide ample pay to their employees. This causes a lack of concern, for the patients involved, when service providers are called upon for help.

There is also a need for more caregivers, leaving these homes, without adequate help to watch over the patients. Therefore the patients are left alone all too often, and allowed to lay in their wet and dirty clothes, till an aide can get through with the other patients and make their way to the next room.

You have the ambulatory patients, that often stray, have to be found and brought back inside the facility, to protect them from harm. There are patients that are allowed to roam, have freedom to smoke or sit outside on good weather days. They are less demanding clients and more able to get their needs met.

If family’s would consider what this means to the patient, they might consider other means of help for their loved one. I realize that some families have to work and are unable to take care of their loved one, but if there’s another way, I suggest searching for it.

It’s no way to have to live and is very demeaning to the patient. They are horribly depressed, deserted by families, under fed, and left alone to die. Some patients haven’t had a visitor in years. What does that say for our society? Are we so cold and uncaring that we can do this to our own loved one’s?

All too soon, it will be our turn to wait on our children or extended family to decide our fate, during our final years. How will we handle the horrible life placed upon us then? If it’s possible, we need to take our own matters into our own hands before it’s too late, to have a say in our outcome.

Finding a retirement home ahead of time, that has a good reputation can be what it takes, for us to survive in later years. Hopefully, the state and local agency’s will place better rules and laws in effect to govern these places.