Old Folks' Homes

My gran was, before she died. I'm not sure what they were like for her really, but as she declined she went to homes with steadily greater levels of care, and - although because of her increasing senility it became hard to tell - she seemed to like it less and less, and become more depressed, the greater the amount of care she was receiving. Possibly this was because she remained aware, in her more lucid moments, of the extent to which she was losing her health and mental ability. They certainly became more and more depressing to visit, too. I'm sure, from overhearing the other residents' conversations at various places, that many of them resent the lack of control they have over their lives, and most care homes seem to have plenty of security to prevent the residents escaping - it does seem to be a fairly endemic problem, that they all try to get away at some point.

They're all horrible. I've had relatives or connections in swank ones and in gov't supported ones and they're all horrible. Far better, for people who can afford it, to hire a nurse to come as much as needed to the house where the person always lived. They're just shoveled off to die in a nursing home.

AND YET, for the living, there is certainly a time when you just can't do anymore for an old person. It's a hard decision.

one thing that i've noticed is that quite often an old folks' home which is dirty, smelly and poorly maintained can quite often have a better standard of care, with staff who treat the residents really well and don't just see what they do as just another job, whilst many that are spick and span and have wonderful facilities can often have staff who don't give a monkey's. Council-run homes often fall into the former category and private ones into the latter.

I really can't imagine a more depressing place on earth than an old people's home. My grandmother's partner is in one after he had a stroke. They just have this strange feeling of death around every corner. It's a private one, and even then its in no better state of repair than the average council house.

Skottie unbelievably OTM.

I worked in a nursing home for four years, while I was going to high school. It was a very clean-conscious environment, with the majority of the nurses actually giving a rat's arse about the patients/residents therein. (Sometimes, nursing homes will also be used for rehabilitation purposes, so some of the residents therein will actually be patients staying at the home temporarily.)

It still was the worst place I could ever imagine being in.

Nursing homes, even if happily decorated and filled with light colors and with a strong activities department that schedules numerous activities for the residents, are still dark and depressing places to be in. The atmosphere is filled with death and dying. Most of the residents at any given nursing home are sweet and lovely people, but you can't get to get too close to them, because you don't know if the next time you go into the nursing home if they're still going to be there. The number of residents at a nursing home who never get a visitor is astounding and disheartening.

It's also shocking how many facilities there are that are run down, that don't concern themselves with even working fire alarms, that have absolutely no concern for the residents, etc. These people are on their last days. They worked their fingers to the bone for people in your generation or your parents' generation. These people deserve so much more.

I know I will work as hard as I can to prevent Mom from ever getting into one of these facilities. I will hire a live-in nurse for her should she get to that point. I will only do the nursing home thing as a last, desperate move, and only if I'm sure that maybe moving Mom into hospice (which is a much nicer environment overall) isn't what's really called for. And I hope and pray to God that I will never, ever end up in a nursing home myself.

Some are good, some are bad, and the nursing home is the ugliest. I watched an untrained nurses aide actually pull my grandmother's skin *off* in a nursing home, trying to change the sheets. I will not describe the scene that followed.

but it was made worse by the people close to me at the time not giving a rat's ass.