Do nursing homes help people get well or prepare them to die?

Die

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by Candy Jules

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I voted no for one reason, and that is because most people never get out of the Nursing home once they're in there. In this day and age, we have more assisted living places to help the ones who are able to still function on their own with minimul assist. When they can no longer do enough on their own to meet certain criteria, then they are sent to the Nursing home for total care.

I have worked both sides, and before we got the assisted living built on, everyone went to the nursing home side, but some were there to recuperate from broken hips, strokes, etc. So a lot of them did get to go home. Some got increasingly worse, so they remained there for the duration of their lives.

We also had a lot of patients that had slight dementia, what some use to call senility, and it eventually went into advancing Alzheimer's. One side of the nursing home was set up as an Alzheimer's unit with special care and security measures.

I've already lost four of my aunts and uncles with Alzheimer's, so I know how it progresses. Most of them eventually get sent to locked Alzheimer's units at another more advanced facility. It's a heartbreaking disease and there is no cure. Hopefully there will be somedsy.

A lot of people really get upset at the very thought of going to live with those "OLD" people, as they call them. They just don't feel that they're ready to be put in a place like that. It's just as hard on the caring families as it is the resident.

And it would be hard. You raised your family. You payed off your retirement home, and now you can no longer live there because you have health problems from getting on in years. Isn't retiring what you have worked for all of your life? This is what it has come to.

A lot of the elderly people feel that the family doesn't want to be bothered anymore, which isn't true in most cases. But after a patient has fallen two or three times at home, being at home alone, is not an option. Eventually something gets broken, and it's usually a hip requiring surgery and recuperation. Some patients are so traumatized from the fall, that they fear walking and some never walk again.

Most nursing homes are equipped with re-habilitation aides under the supervision of a Physical Therapist. Therapy, such as range of motion, is done daily on each patient requiring therapy. Ambulation is important to keep the patient up and going. No one wants to wind up in a wheel chair any sooner than they have to.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of people really like the care, the attention, the security of knowing that there is always someone around. They have activities, singspirations, parties. Some don't even realize how lonely they are until they're around people again. In a small town like I live in, everybody knows everyone else anyway. It all works out in the end.

Yes, for some, it is the end of the line, and the end of their life, but for some, it is the beginning of a new phase in their lives. I saw people come and I saw them go. It's always a blessing to see someone get to go home, even if it's only for a short period of time.

Nursing homes take away a lot of dignity. Not on purpose, but in everyday living. Some need to be showered, dressed, taken to the toilet, fed their meals. All the things that they did for themselves all their lives. Those generations were very modest.

They grew up in modesty. They were taught to be dignified in their apparell, in the way they lived. That's who they were. Now they are taken to the shower, stripped of all clothing and exposed to the very thing that they have never known. A stranger seeing them naked. Some have to endure someone cleaning up an accident they had. How humiliating for them. Most of them get use to it after awhile. They have accepted the way it has to be. Some never stop fighting it.

A lot of it has to do with the caretaker. The way a patient is treated is what they are going to respond to. I use to just talk to them about things I knew they were interested in. If only to keep their mind off of what was going on. It actually works as long as you don't make them feel inhibited.

People need to live with dignity and they need to die with dignity. They need to feel a spiritual atmosphere because for most of them, this is their last stop before they go on to a better place.

We're all going to be there some day, and I'd like to think that I will be treated the way I treated people in their care. Don't inflict on others what you, yourself, wouldn't want to feel. The way they get treated makes them decide whether or not they really want to stay.

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