Assisted living facility…

I pray that I die at home in my sleep, of old age. Having to place my dad into his first assisted living facility was the hardest and most terrible experience. I did not have much knowledge about assisted living facilities. I looked into them the best that I knew how. We visited several, considering everything—where was the facility located? Could we visit him without a long commute? What did the facility have as far as activities? What was the meal plan and what time were meals offered? What were the staff requirements? Who cared for my dad’s physical needs? Who cared for his mental needs? Who took care of his medications? Who took care of his room, and how often? Did the residents look happy and cared for? What was the cost (OMGosh!!!!), and what did that price include? What were the visiting hours? What could we do to his room? Could we decorate? Hang pictures? Did his insurance cover his medical needs and prescriptions? When his money ran out, because Medicaid/Medicare makes a person use up all their money before they will cover the assisted living facility, how did he transition to the Medicaid/Medicare coverage and what did that entail? And so much more.
With those questions answered, or at least we were told what we wanted to hear, we chose an assisted living facility. What a shit show! The residents were treated like cattle. Herded to eat and herded back to their rooms. Those in wheelchairs would sit for an insurmountable amount of time, until someone would take the time to get them back to their room. The residents were not a priority, not ever. My father was left with an empty oxygen tank more times than I can count. He was on 5 liters, constant air flow. He has COPD. He would die without his oxygen. Did they care to check on him? No! He was left without proper hygiene. His soiled bedding or furniture was left soiled. The nursing staff was rough with him and did not respect him. Some days they gave him his medicine and applied the topical medicine properly. Some days they would miss his pills completely. Some days they didn’t visit his room at all. His shower schedule was changed often, and they never bothered to tell him. He would just wait all day, in his room for help, and they would not show up. The same was true for his house cleaning crew. I was usually the one to clean his room and bathroom. The staff never checked on his oxygen tanks, I did. They had an excuse for absolutely everything and nothing was ever fixed or resolved.

They have you! You need them—a facility for your loved one. They charge over $5000.00 a month and then they do or don’t do whatever they want. We were there all the time, trying to make sure that he was cared for, and even our abundant presence did not get the staff to take care of my dad properly. On a few occasions, I asked for his daily records and absolutely no one had the ability to get those for me—funny, they had them on the computer, under his profile, on their med-carts, that they were pushing around the facility at all times. Not even the nurse of the facility, or any person in the administration office would get me what I asked for—what were they hiding? More than you want to ever know! That is a fact.

The facility was overrun with the sound of alarms going off, all day, every day, 24 hours a day. The staff would be sitting in the nurses’ station, and the alarms of our loved ones would go unchecked for hours at a time. The staff would get to the residents when they were good and ready, and not one moment before that. Our loved ones are part of a profit-making business that only has one thing in mind…the profit, made at the end of the day. G. A. L. F., you are a complete disappointment to the idea of an assisted living facility. I can only hope that the people in charge of this company have to live in one of its many facilities at some point in time.

This is only a personal account of my experience with this one facility and is NOT a reflection of all assisted living facilities. My dad is now at a different facility and is being well taken care of! We are so  happy he is at his new facility.

This is my personal story. You may have all of it, some of it, or none of it