I've cared for residents who are virtual vegetables, kept alive by feeding tubes. They are so contracted because of their diseases that they can't get out of bed to sit in wheelchairs. They cannot talk, they cannot swallow, so imagine the extreme discomfort of having saliva, etc. building up in their mouths till an overworked aide has a chance to clean and suction their mouths.
This issue is so very complicated. By the time residents have been in a nursing home for a few months, the average monthly cost of around $5,000.00 plus hundreds for medicine has depleted their assets. The home then gets medical assistance from the state, medicaid and takes their social security checks and any pension checks they may still get. Taxpayers pay for this.
My father is in the nursing home I work at. He had his stroke in 1998 and lived in assisted living till the past year. Between the assisted living and the nursing home, the prescription medicine cost and doctor and hospital bills and medical insurance premiums, his liquid assets are gone. All that's left is his house, that I live in.
His social security and pension checks go to the nursing home. They let him have $30.00 a month for spending money.
I make $10.05 per hour as a certified nurse's aid and I can't afford to pay the taxes on this house. However, when I sell the house I have to turn over the proceeds to the nursing home - all of it. When he dies, if there is anything left from the proceeds of the home, the home will keep half and my sister and I will get the rest. But at $5,000.00 per month, I doubt there will be little left. But that's OK with me.
However, I won't deny that dealing with my father who is paralyzed on his right side, seeing the effects of his brain deteriorating (he's extremely confused and has turned into a very combative resident to care for) and then seeing all that he saved for turned over to a place that cuts costs any way they can, has been an emotional rollercoaster for me and my sister.
When Dad gets a few lucid moments, he doesn't want to live anymore. He got a living will years ago, but he is not at that level where he's on life support or kept alive by a feeding tube. And I could never ever bring about circumstances to help him go home to God.
There are those in the home that have brain damage and cannot express if they are uncomfortable. As an aid, I have to imagine myself lying in bed and if the position I put them in would be uncomfortable to me.
The physical therapy department makes us put splints and braces on some of them to prevent further contraction. These things are hot, hard and I resent having to make a resident sleep with them on and they can't tell me they hurt.
I've gone on and on too long and I'm forgetting my point.
Suffice to say, if you have elderly parents who can still get around and function, it's hard to imagine that there are some don't want to live anymore. I'm OK with living wills, but euthenasia (sp?) is a very complicated issue and not one I'm ready to see applied willy-nilly in society.
And yet I imagine that the ones being kept alive in a vegetative state, lying in bed day after day, month after month, year after year, are using that time praying to God to please release them from this life on earth.
Our medical advances have kept alive people who God would've taken home long before, but have not improved the quality of their lives. Imagine not being able to dress yourself, to get to the bathroom when you want, to have to have someone clean you after you defecate and urinate. To not be able to scratch an itch or feed yourself. To be thirsty and not be able to get some water till an overworked aid can pour you a small glass. To be woken up every 2 hours during the night to get change the pads you urinated on. To be dependent on laxatives every 3 days because the food is not conducive to healthy bowel elimination and the medicines keep you constipated.
No, I do not want this for me when I get old. When I write my living will, I plan to specify that if I end up in a nursing home, all I want is painkillers, a handful of anti-depressants every day and about 4 ounces of Drambuie every night to sleep.
I'm scared of getting old now and would rather go in my sixties then have to endure my body's breakdown and being kept alive for years in my 70's and on.
<big snip>
I enjoyed reading your post. ("enjoyed" might not be exactly the right word, but it will have to do.)
I am in EMT training myself. Some of these issues do come up. You definitely do not want to play God, but there can be situations where attempting to resuscitate someone is not a humane thing to do.
There can be DNR orders, as you undoubtedly know. But in Virginia you have to see the originals. Getting a photocopy would not be good.
All this has been on my mind a lot recently. So has religion. It all ties in.
It's not real neat.
The pay certainly is great tho, isn't it? Just wonderful.
The EMT's around here all work for free. It is all volunteer. I figure anyone who goes into doing something like this must be brain-damaged. Me included. You get yourself into some bad situations. People may even try to kill you.
They talk in the class about "bad calls". Those are the kind which require psychological counseling.
All kinds of fun.