NationStates Jolt Archive

So folks i saw this article and it got me thinking.
Would you let your older relatives live in a care home, do you have care homes in your country?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7408110.stm
"If I was told I had to stay here for the rest of my life, I know I would be cared for but when you are sitting for nearly nine hours with nothing happening except for meals, it would be a slow death," she says.

Yup, that doesn't sound like a good place to stay. I find it a shame that even though there's loads of oldies jokes there is increasing numbers of people living to 'old age'.
One last question i have, what would you do with the old folks in your country?

Sure, I'd have no problem putting my folks in a home if I couldn't take care of them (or, more likely, didn't want to). You've just got to do your research first and search for any conduct complaints or anything like that.

The Japanese style of living with older relatives seems very strange to me, and a custom to which I would likely have a difficult time adjusting.

Depends. My grandmother is in a nursing home, but hers is more active. My parents would probably look for a similar one when they retire.

My mother was in a nursing home for the last 7 years of her life (she died at 91). Because she had only her Social Security, her options were limited. Fortunately, the home we found for her was exceptional for a Social Security home. They had a live in dog who made the rounds every day. Each room (shared by three people) had a terrace. There was a community of retired nuns in the area who visited the home regularly to talk to and generally interact with the inhabitants. The nurses were all well-trained and caring. The food was bland (and for my mother, who liked spicy food, that was a hardship). They had a library, a big screen TV, arts and crafts classes, exercise classes, bingo and regular social events. It was well-run and clean. I wouldn't call a nursing home an ideal solution, but good ones can be found.

Ideally, I would have had her at home with me, but I had a full time job and my daughter was in school at the time. We simply would not have been able to devote the time to her that was needed and probably would have ended up resenting her for the limitations she would have put on our lives. It was, overall, the best solution.

I, personally, intend to maintain my mental and physical health for as long as I can and, when I can no longer live on my own, I'll have someone shoot me.

sometimes you have to put an older relative in skilled nursing care. people develop medical problems that you cant possibly deal with on your own.

otherwise, it would be up to them, wouldnt it? dont old people have the right to decide if they want to be in a home or not?

My mother is a nurse in one of these. But I for one would much rather die of alcohol intoxication long before I need such care.

I wouldn't want to be in such a facility, so, I would try to avoid having to put my mother in one, unless she needed the kind of medical nursing care that simply could not be provided in her own home.

Most of the members of my extended family are 65+ to 90+ years old. All express a horror at "ending up in a nursing home." My grandmother was sort of fortunate to die of a sudden onset of fast-advancing dementia. She would have had to go into an Alztheimer's facility except that by the time she was diagnosed, her deterioration was so rapid that her doctors kind of decided to disobey the system and just never discharged her from geriatric intensive care after her first collapse. She wasn't often lucid enough to know where she was anyway, and she received outstanding nursing until she died in hospital, 60 days later. I guess her doctors figured she'd just be in and out of their department every week anyway, so why bother with moving her around? As traumatic as it was, the family all considered it better than sending her to the kind of home Medicare would have required.

My grandfather died several years later, of liver failure. He had been in perfect health. Finished his usual daily 9 holes of golf in the morning and was hospitalized that afternoon. It took several months for the process to kill him, and it was not a fun time for him by any means, but except for four or five hospitalizations, we were able to arrange in-home nursing for him until the last week. I believe the ability to stay in his own home helped him take emotional charge of the situation. He himself decided when to go into hospice, and he died in the hospice less than a week later, very peacefully and comfortably.

My view is, the less unnecessary interference with our lives at the end of them, the better. The longer a dying person can stay at home, in their own environment, the less time they spend feeling like they're dying and thinking about it.

I, personally, intend to maintain my mental and physical health for as long as I can and, when I can no longer live on my own, I'll have someone shoot me.
There's a great book (http://www.amazon.com/Younger-Next-Year-Strong-Sexy%252014Until/dp/076114773X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212613611&sr=8-1) out there, if you're getting up in age...
"Live Younger Next Year..." by Chris Crowley and Harry Lodge, MD addresses that very problem. I've been on the regimen of hard aerobic and weight training for about six months and it feels good to be doing these things again. I might make it to 60.

I'd hate to depend on someone for basic things like washing, feeding, etc. I think I'd shoot myself, too, if I ever got to that point.

My view is, the less unnecessary interference with our lives at the end of them, the better. The longer a dying person can stay at home, in their own environment, the less time they spend feeling like they're dying and thinking about it.
While I personally agree with you I think that depends on the person and situation. It could be lonely and boring to be a prisoner in your own home when you don't have the strength to walk out the door. At least there are always other humans nearby in a nursing home.

While I personally agree with you I think that depends on the person and situation. It could be lonely and boring to be a prisoner in your own home when you don't have the strength to walk out the door. At least there are always other humans nearby in a nursing home.

I agree. I'm kind of a restless person, so I would think that I'd prefer a nursing home (provided it was decent, obviously) than either sit around by myself or just loaf off of my kids. It would be like living in college dorms again, only less sexy. But also less drunk, so I guess it would balance out.