I shared a few links last week about palliative care, assisted living, hospice, terminal disease, etc. Here is another one on nursing homes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/health/24nursing.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I don't know how many of them are single, married, divorced, widows, widowers, etc., but there are in nursing homes, some by choice and some by the choice of their family. Recently my colleague's father, diagnosed with brain tumor, malignant (final stages) moved into a hospice because her mother could not take care of him single-handedly and both girls were working in different cities. It can be both emotionally and physically draining to see a close family member every day suffering and sinking deeper in the jaws of death.
My dad's grandmother lived till 90, but her last year was in bed. We were in a joint family and we took turns and attended her. Awareness about simple old age disease like Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Dementia, etc. was not there. We failed to understand her illness and rather attributed to personality and behavioral traits from youth. In India we don't classify illness and understand the seriousness of it, rather we park it under the umbrella of "Old age", "senility", etc.
Today India is rapidly progressing towards the western lifestyle. In most cases both spouses are working, in some cases children are far away busy earning in various foreign currencies and in some cases people don't want to deal with the physical labor of nursing an ailing family member and take care of daily chores. In another 5-10 years we will soon have a great demand for such facilities. Since I have decided to stay single I may end up in one of these centers and who knows, I may be battling something as simple as arthritis or something scary like prostrate cancer , I don't even know where the hell prostrate in my body is. All I know is to prostrate. :-)
I am keeping myself abreast of what is happening in the West, and I don't want to wait for my turn to learn about it. Now you know why I read such articles and generously share it with you. Sometime it is better to be self taught rather than wait for life to teach you. Even if you don't get a chance to live, you can still reach out to people and help them.
BTW, I have a plan to start something for elders along the lines of palliative care, assisted living, hospice, etc. Irrespective of whether you have a family or not, spouse or not, people end up here because they need attention, care and emotional support that is not available at home. For
someone like me who will have no kids and wife, this is my destination baby. Growing up is not mandatory, but growing old is.
Apologize, if I am sounding pessimistic, self loathing and cruel, but journey of life is such. If you wish and think along the same lines, we can engage in a discussion and start volunteering our time at a hospice. We will get to meet older people with debilitating disease, their families
and importantly what it takes to run a hospice.
If this interest you then we can talk, if this email threatens then you can ignore, you never received it and the delete button is just a mouse click away. But remember what goes around, comes around!
Here are the other links that you may want to read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/health/09sisters.html?ref=health
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/health/20doctors.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/health/policy/17untested.html?ref=health
I will stand by to hear from you.
Good post. What do you think would be the cost of living in a old age home?
ReplyDeleteChandron,
ReplyDeleteI will always be there to support people in hospice,a volunteer my brother for all the people who are suffering like us.
You have been of immense help ever since my dad is diagonsed.Life offers only two choices, either live through it or Die with it.
I choose to live through it, its still a bad dream when i think that me and my family have to be all alone in this journey,the emptiness is so vast that nothing can fill what we(my mom,my sis and self) hold.
Thanks for being with us and many others...
Anitha
dear its very good to start such hospice when u have time ,will n resources,,but one thing that sounds bit absurd is that who r u to decide that u will remain single n with no wife or kids do we humans r so powerful to decide things??????
ReplyDeleteisnt someelse had already decided things for us,,,,
anyways keep helping ppl may b u never need need one hospice for urself
WOAS. i'm totally against nursing homes. if you have an elderly relative take care of them in your home. i can say in the usa this is a HUGE problem, and i use to volunteer in a nursing home. first they are MISERABLE and the elderly woman i use to speak to there HATED her son for putting her there.
ReplyDeleteoh where to begin.
it was so sad volunteering there i had to leave. its like a prison!
oh, they abuse the elderly so bad.
they are getting uncessarily drugged, injured, beaten, yelled at, neglected. they're treated like a problem no wants to deal with, but there is so much money to be raked in.
MESSAGE TO INDIA, TAKE CARE OF YOUR PARENTS PLEASE DO NOT PUT THEM IN A NURSING HOME! women are working because they're not valued as housewives. MAYBE HOUSEWIVES SHOULD GET PAID. the kids are messed up getting drugged and drunk because no one has an eye on them, no one cooks so everyone eats junk food high in salt and whatever garbage and junk food is pretty much anything you eat outside of the house including fancy restaurant food which is actually frozen food heated up and stylized for you to think its fancy, dry cleaning in facilities that don't really clean your clothes to remove the smell but they look clean, nursing homes that neglect and abuse the elderly, i mean the society is getting out of control simply because a woman's presence is not at home and is not valued if she's at home.
what would be ideal is if people could work from home from their computers. that way they can take care of their parents and children and still make money.
india is getting so bad....