I'm going to try to keep track of this nursing home experience. To be a 'social witness' if you will. It is not so much that I worry about D there (yet), but that I'd like to speak on behalf of those that may not be able too. I'm going to look at what happens to D, and observe as much as possible with what happens to the other residents without invading their privacy. I'll try to report what I see, both good and bad. Because this affects us all. We all might find ourselves in the position of placing someone (or being placed in) a nursing facility someday.
D got admitted today, and the first thing he noticed is that the mattress is not the one that was prescribed and that it is not as good as the other one, but he thinks it will work okay.
But the thing that is making him mad is that there is no telephone in the room. In order to make a phone call, the residents have to push the nurse call button and the staff will bring him one of three or so cordless phones that all the residents share. To call him, I have to call the nurses station and if there is a phone available, they will take it down to him and he has to call me back. Today, he called me on his cell phone.
Now before you all tell me that this is no big deal and that anyone with a cell phone can get around it...think about this way of living. Because many people live there, and with no outside income, many people cannot get a cell phone. You can never privately make a phone call, and essentially, you can never make a phone call without the staff's permission. Now it may sound like just an inconvenience, but what if you felt that you were receiving low quality care and/or even were being abused? What if you received no visitors and your only recourse was to use the phone to try to get outside help and change your situation? To me, this is an important power issue. This is stripping the person with a disabilities link to the outside world and taking away the power to advocate for him/herself.
I also feel a bit deceived. The admissions director and I talked about phones and phone lines in relation to dial-up yesterday. Now, because I am hearing impaired, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that I misunderstood her. So at this point I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. But we did talk about phone lines and she indicated to me that he had a dedicated phone line in his room that he could use for dial-up. I assumed that also meant he could use it for a phone.
If I ask her about it, she will probably indicate costs or the safety of the patients with dementia. Cost seems ridiculous to me because at $3000 a day you think they could spring for a damned phone. And the Dementia patients seem like a really convenient excuse for everything. Why wouldn't you remove the phone if it became a problem for someone rather than take everyone's away? I still think it is a power issue.
I'm going up there with D's sister tomorrow and with the kids, so I will try to make it a pleasant and non-controversial outing for everyone. If I get a chance, I'm going to ask about this phone issue. You know, because I'm a bitch that way.
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