For a certain segment of the population nursing homes can be as much of a prison as the meanest maximum security penitentiary.
It’s the situation my 61 year old roommate currently finds himself in.
"I’m just afraid I’m going to die in here. There’s just no way I can figure out a way to get out." he said during a late night discussion recently.
This Vietnam War veteran, whose survived having a helicopter shot out from under him, was as near to tears as I have ever seen him. His voice cracked with frustration at friends and family who have let him down or abandoned him.
Here’s how it happened: Before taking a fall that left him unable to care for himself, my roommate was living on about a thousand dollars a month. His situation was made somewhat easier through Section 8 housing which left him with enough money to take care of his affairs.
Once he was in Hillcreek Manor for eighteen days he lost his qualification for Section 8 housing at his apartment. In the meantime, the friend he had entrusted with selling some of his possessions to raise some capital has done a good job of getting those possessions into the hands of other people. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done near as good a job in collecting money for those items.
And now since he is living in a nursing home, the nursing home is entitled to take all but forty dollars of his monthly check. Although he could make it on his own, the nursing home won’t release him unless he has some place to go. But with only forty dollars left to play with he has no hope of putting down the security deposit and first months rent that is typically required.
And that doesn’t even take into account that he has to re-qualify for Section 8 and find a complex that accepts Section 8 payments.
So this then is the classic catch twenty-two: He can’t get out of here because he has no place to go, and he has no place to go because this place claims the lion’s share of his monthly check.
So what can my roommate do? He points out, quite correctly, that if he were being released from prison, there would be the possibility of living in a halfway house. If he were an abused mother with children, there are groups that would give him shelter. But in his current situation he can’t find anyone to take him in.
"I keep looking around and wondering, what did I ever do to deserve this? I feel like I am a prisoner and I can’t get out."
The irony here is that my roommate and I currently reside in a facility run by a business called Golden Living. To date there has been precious little evidence of anything golden or much living going on here. Instead, my roommate and I are subjected to the intrusions of nursing home staffers into every segment of our lives. Not even our mail is sacred. Staffers feel free to open anything bearing the return address of a government agency on the grounds that the envelope might contain some money to which they are entitled.
With a system like this, there is very little for any nursing home to let their residents become independent. Instead, there is every reason to keep them dependent on a daily routine of medications and substandard food.
Perhaps a dozen of us in the facility are lucky enough to be able to see a way out. But someone like my roommate, who has given up so much for his adopted country, deserves better.