PA, Uncle, Anniversary

So here we are at where I call "home" because  although I've been gone from here way longer than as the years I lived here growing up, if I did, it's home to me.  Greetings from the local weather have been cooler and wetter, but the sun is shining again today.  Pennsylvania and it's  multicolored autumn woods are glorious right now, which you will see soon as I get a minute to post photos.  Reds, golds, oranges, rusts, greens, yellows, there is not a color not on display in this autumnal landscape throughout the rolling hills. 

Meantime  my time has been spent back and forth and calling doctors and visiting uncle in the skilled facility where I agreed to for a brief  temporary stay for "therapy" at encouragement from the hospital staff.  I should not have agreed to this because while my aunt got excellent care at Highland SNF last year, they have not done  nearly as well by Uncle Carl.  They warehoused him with others on their 2nd floor and crammed him into a room with another man where there is no room to move.  They drugged him with Aricept and when I arrived Sunday he was in bed midday and just not responsive.  Monday I "attacked" the charge nurse and asked if he was being drugged because I sat with him and he would not eat.  Well they set up his meal in the hallway at a table in front of the nurses station, amidst  commotion and elevator opening and closing.  All that stimulation was not working for him and had I not been there, they would have just let him go not eating. I made them take  him to his room where he'd eat peacefully.  This is not my Uncle Carl who has always been a good eater! I demanded he be taken off Aricept immediately to their chorus  of "it slows the progression of dementia" and because I know about this I could challenge them and say, "slows progression, he is 92 years old, what do you mean slow it until he's 102!"  It was needed  for my Mom who had full blown Alzheimer's and who was agitated, it leveled out her attitude and emotions.  But Uncle Carl is not like that and we made decisions long ago to not drug him!

I talked with the doctor who agreed and who was  thinking they had taken him off Aricept after hospital discharge.  Why didn't the doctor determine he was still on it when he did rounds at the SNF?   By Wednesday Carl was improving after Tuesday's very poor day.  Wednesday he was joking and giving me a bad time and  up to therapy and enjoying eating his favorite Fig Newtons which I took to him.   He gulped those down with  milk and applesauce.  And loved it!

He will be  discharged Friday morning back to  what's home to him, the assisted living at Logan  House with therapy arranged and where the staff know and love him and he they.  Highland will regret their actions as I have seen way too much to let it go.  There will be letters as well as discussions with them.   Obviously they are either not doing appropriate charting or their staff do not read the charts.  Four times they were advised that he has not used  dentures after losing them  and has eaten just fine without them for a long time.  Yet they asked me again.  They don't know how I am checking them out, they don't know about my government background in long term care, or they have forgotten but they will learn.  What has happened with Carl may not be "that bad" but to another resident it could be fatal.

Yesterday while I was there with him sitting at the window in the great room and e was enjoying his cookies and milk, a resident fell from his wheel chair!  I saw it, and yelled for the charge nurse whose seat was right across the hall.  Then had I  not grabbed another old lady resident and moved her wheelchair, she would have run over the man on the floor who lay there yelling and hurting.  OMG!  They could not get him up with aides alone, so called the therapists.  Uncle Carl watched this with interest and asked, ":Aren't they going to call the ambulance?"  They never did.  It finally took a huge device and 4 therapists to get Buddy back into his wheel chair where they left him sit!  How do they know he did not fracture something?  I do not believe this is standard of care at all.  That man lay on that floor  over 45 minutes.  I stayed the entire time because I intend to document this and have their protocols investigated.  I do not like that  2nd floor and God alone knows what happens on the  third floor.  The staff do not pay attention, busy talking to themselves.  This man fell because  they were not attentive; there was/is another  resident in a wheel chair who was sitting in the doorway to the room.  She does that all the time and he wanted her to move so he could enter.  Someone should move her but they do not!  Accidental was absolutely unnecessary!  Buddy  yelled and cussed and threatened to "sue their asses."  I hope he does, he may be demented but he is there for care and they are not doing their job!  I hate this and maybe that is why I am here to uncover and expose this fiasco.  The nursing home administrator is the same lovely woman who was here last year, but she is not all over the facility.

Uncle Carl will be out of there Friday.  The therapists told me I was doing the right thing and that perhaps he was depressed there.  Well no kidding I would be!  There is more to this, but all I have time to blog today.

On the bright side, talking with long time (I won't say old) friends from grade school days1  And last night we celebrated our 43rd anniversary with outstanding dinner at Longhorn SteakHouse!  I must remember to add cinnamon (heavy) with light sugar and butter to my baked sweet potatoes at home, so yummy.  The Caesar salad was the best,  anchovies and all.  And the Cosmo was right up there!  My fillet melted in my mouth  and came with hunks of fresh crab.  Jerry stuck to traditional steak and baked  potato and green salad which was so flavorful, that he said he could not have cooked it better himself.!   Long horn is a chain but we have not found another on our travels.  We surely enjoy this one at the Pittsburgh Mills Mall

More later  keep those good thoughts for this episode as our world turns.  One of the nurses at Highland said, "yes it will be better for Carl to leave.  He is not happy here and needs to be in a more cheerful place." 
No kidding.  He has dementia but he is not ready to be warehoused.  I feel so sorry for those others.  Someone said that no one visits them and he was lucky to have me.  I wish I lived closer now  but I don't want to live in PA.  Meantime Jerry is like a hog in mud clearing thourgh Carl's mancave treasures.