Where's Granny?
Thank you Rachel @maddow for talking about nursing homes but they are the tip of the iceberg as to how USA treats aged. Nursing homes are rife with abuse and neglect. 250,000+ seniors aged 50-80+ have NO HOMES in USA.I am 70, I know firsthand. ER docs @KellyDoran and @MKushel are great advocates for seniors without homes. They treat patients every day and know what is going on. My story is further down.
This city planning chairman in Antioch sums up the attitude of too many people about folks without homes. (Thankfully he was fired).
Ken Turnage II was chairman of the city’s planning commission.
“Turnage characterized people with weak immune systems as a drain on society.
“He wrote on Facebook: “the World has been introduced to a new phrase Herd Immunity which is a good one. In my opinion we need to adapt a Herd Mentality. A herd gathers it ranks, it allows the sick, the old, the injured to meet its natural course in nature.”
“As for homeless people, he added that the virus would “fix what is a significant burden on our society and resources that can be used.”
“Turnage later deleted the post but refused to resign or back down from his comments.”
20,000 Americans have died in nursing homes already.
“We have thus far been able to identify at least ten states in the United States of America where the statewide death toll from coronavirus is mostly made up of nursing home residents.” said Rachel Maddow.
My beloved grandmother believed that she was dying from cancer but no one was telling her. She did not have cancer but within a few months she died of an aneurism or embolism (I get them mixed up) in her heart. She was flown from New York to Houston. The now famous heart doctor Dr. Christian Barnard opened her up and closed her down because there was nothing he could do to save her life.
Our thoughts, beliefs, fears and stress can kill us.
Rachel Maddow has been talking about old people getting sick and dying in nursing homes in Hayward, California and beyond.
Imagine that. I have written a lot about elderly homelessness on the rise and how instead of housing seniors like they should have done a long time before now, instead callous indifference about the plight, particularly of older single women and others without homes, has been increasing. Shoving people who already have underlying medical conditions into crowded shelters (or nursing homes) only spreads the virus and people get infected and die.
Elder abuse and neglect is a widespread problem in America and has been for years.
OK Boomers shows that ageism is alive, well and doing fine. It is also killing people. Some GOP leaders have said that it is just fine for seniors to die because they are soon going to die anyway. Elderly people are blamed for everything from Trump, economy racism, injustice and inequality. But the truth is that old people are not the problem in America. As with women who have been raped being blamed for being assaulted and abused, too many people in the media and beyond blame the victims of the problems instead of the perpetrators.
“They were just overwhelmed by the amount of people who were expiring,” said the police chief in Andover, a small township in Sussex County, New Jersey's northernmost county.
I have always liked this poem and thought that as I aged, I would have it made.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Acknowledgement:
© Jenny Joseph, SELECTED POEMS, Bloodaxe 1992
But when I had to sleep in my car in my late 60’s, for the last 3-5 years, like 50% of those without homes who are seniors in the USA, I kept getting sicker and sicker. I would end up going to the hospital, ER, and be admitted. Once there for a week or 2 or 3, depending upon what was happening, when they discharged me, where was I to go? Back to my car?
In California, there is a law saying that hospitals are supposed to give people without homes food, appropriate clothing and a PLACE to go, not a car. Many do not do the latter. Somehow they get away with it. A few times, if I met the requirements, a discharge planner arranged for me to stay at a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNIF) aka old folks home aka nursing home.
Three of them were so horrible, I got myself out of them within a few hours due to broken beds, theft, cramming 5-6 people into a tiny room, having to share a bathroom with 4 other people, and more. I would not send my worst enemy to any of those places.
One place I managed to stay two times, for a week or two each time. Each time though there were issues with my dog not being allowed to stay there and having to stay in the car during a heat wave and the last time, other issues.
What I found out is that through my own experience and Google:
Many nursing homes are rife with abuse. Here in Monterey, one did not pass a health inspection. I never saw a doctor in five days, received no medication or physical therapy. The food would make anyone barf. And they left me in hallway on a gurney for three hours. These are places for low income seniors who have no other options to die. Owners and politicians care about $$$ not people.
Yes, it would be so much less expensive and more respectful to provide in-home care for people (who have homes - and by law, EVERYONE should have a home). The nursing homes are vile money-making machines that take advantage of the vulnerable. via @PennyAdrian
Good luck with investigations
Interested if there will be some investigation and reporting on differences on how the rich ( private nannies, cooks, house cleaners, chauffeurs, etc) vs working class and poor experience Covid 19 stay at home orders and health concerns. via @BarbWeigel
I'm thinking that we might want a major national investigation into the hygiene and general practices of long-term and elderly care facilities given that they have become clusters of disease & death during this outbreak. Something is deeply wrong and stricter regulation needed. via @djrothkopf
Trump loosened regulations for adult care facilities but it was very very bad even before Trump.
Here is what I wrote a few years ago:
You’ve probably seen those ads with Joan Lunden saying how wonderful it is and caring these great places for senior women, moms, grannies, aunties, who need them. A PLACE FOR MOM. WOW REALLY. What the commercials do NOT say is how much the places cost, which is between $3-8,000 a month. I know since inquiring minds want to know such things.
For five+ years now, I have been researching AFFORDABLE places for single senior women, women over 50, to live in the USA. Still, have not found much of anything except in out of the way, remote places. Who can afford $3-8,000 per month for rent when your Social Security check is less than $1,000 a month? If you have a benefactor, family member, children who can take care of you, you are truly blessed and lucky.
Women friendly cities and countries
We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment.
In the book Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city.
Two other important books about women
(Invisible Women: data shows how women are living in a world designed for and by men)
If Phyllis Schafly had not rallied women who can be their own worst enemies in the 70’s, the Equal Rights Amendment would have passed and much of the abuses, inequalities and travesties against women would have been solved by now. Watch Mrs. America with Cate Blanchett on Hulu for more about this.
