I started to write this piece with a pounding headache. My husband, Dick, sensing that something was wrong, asked - in the kindest way possible - what was the matter? For reasons I don't completely understand, his simple query set off a rare explosion.
I erupted like a volcano. Using words I almost never use, with tears streaming, spital spewing, "F" bombs flying, I responded with a tirade - half crying, half yelling - that ended with "I'm sick of this sh*t!!"
I apologize for the language but now that I've dropped that on you, allow me to do for you what I had to do for Dick. Let me backup a bit.
My mother has Alzheimers. I've written a little about this in my LA Progressive column but not as much as one would assume given the inordinate amount of time this disease is stealing from me and my family (not to mention that it is stealing my mother away a little each day but that is for another post).
My siblings -- a sister and two brothers -- and I have known about my mother's condition for about four years. For two of those four years, she was in the early stages of the disease which meant that although she repeated herself and spent a good portion of the day looking for things she had "just had in her hand", she was able to care for herself. Today, however, her condition has shifted from mild dementia to the moderate stage of Alzheimer's disease. She can no longer live alone.
To look at her, you'd never suspect a problem. She is attractive, physically fit, and still concerned about her appearance. She can laugh, joke, sing, make herself a sandwich, water the lawn, feed the cat, and do countless other things, but her short-term memory is shot. She can remember the address of the home she lived in at age five, but she can't recall something that happened five minutes ago. She doesn't know if she's had breakfast or if she's taken her medication.
If she walks 500 feet down the street, she won't remember where she is or how she got there. She doesn't know the year, the month of the year, the day of the week, or the time of the day. She avoids conversing with people outside of the family because she knows she repeats herself and feels embarrassed.
Although this may all seem manageable, she also does some things that can be dangerous and life threatening. She has gotten into cars with strangers trying to get "home" even when she's standing right in front of the house. She has almost set the house on fire a couple of times. So, she must be watched or cared for 24/7.
For a while, my father and brothers alternated as her constant companions. But we all knew that that wasn't sustainable, especially as the condition progressed. And it has, so now my sister and I are her caregivers. She lives with me half the month and with my sister for the other half.
Having to care for my mother has opened my eyes to a world I had not considered. Isn't that typical? We don't imagine what people are going through until we walk a mile in their shoes. I will write more about this mile I've been walking with my mother later. But for today, all I will say is that the American healthcare system and social contract are broken beyond anything I could have imagined.
Five years ago, if someone were to tell me that the United States treats its elderly like discarded trash I would have ignored them. Today, I'm seeing it with my own eyes. If we cared enough to do some investigating, I suspect we'd find quite a few homeless people are homeless because first they had dementia. We do not have a national plan that addresses the long term housing needs of people with this condition.
My Mom made her living as an artist. The irony of this is that she never made enough to pay for healthcare insurance and didn't have medical coverage until she turned 65. Then, she was so excited to finally be eligible for Medicare.
So here's the kicker -- Medicare, for the most part, does not cover the costs associated with the type of long term care someone with Alzheimers needs.
Turns out if you don't have access to cash - at a minimum $4,500 a month - and you have Alzheimer's or some other dementia-causing disorder, you and your family are screwed.
So back to my volcanic eruption and my loving, patient spouse.
On the day I got so upset, Dick and I had spent our day publishing the LA Progressive, working on a few causes, and looking for Adult Day Care for my mother. This was our first foray into the world of Adult Day Care.
I retrieved a list of state approved providers from the California Association of Adult Day Services website. In Los Angeles County alone, there are hundreds of these centers. The vast majority of them are owned and operated by for-profit organizations.
Without calling beforehand, we dropped in, unannounced, at three of these facilities. Two of the three were closed and the one that was open should have been closed. I wouldn't leave a dog there.
We'll continue our search during the remainder of the week, but the big lesson for me on our first day of actually visiting these places is the toll the lack of funding is taking on our seniors suffering with dementia and their families -- especially those who lack resources or cold cold cash.
As the day progressed, thoughts of how the future is going to play out for my mom and our family were plaguing me. I thought about the social contract, the terms of which are vague to most of us until we need it. I thought about Dick's father who is living on a pension.
Dick's dad just celebrated his 95th birthday. Dick and I went to Florida a couple of weeks ago to attend my father-in-law's big birthday bash organized by his wife and others at the independent care senior community where they live - in style!!
It was a great party. They are living well in a community planned for the final phase of life. Their surroundings are beautiful. The staff is kind and helpful. There is plenty for them to do. They are safe and they are happy. You really couldn't ask for more.
My father-in-law and his wife love living in this thriving senior community. At the birthday party, lots of their fellow residents took turns standing up and telling my father-in-law how he had touched their lives. His best friend and neighbor, a man who is also in his late 90's, stood up and made a toast attesting to the vitality that he still feels jokingly saying, "I want to die at age 105 of a gunshot wound inflicted by some woman's jealous husband!". The room roared with laughter! Then the 40 people in attendance had cake and punch, sang karioke for a while and then it was time to say goodnight. We all had a great time.
What I witnessed was a model that works -- for now. On the surface, everything looks fine, in fact, better than fine, but the biggest problem with this model, from a casual glance, is that it is connected to a for-profit corporation. The owner/operator of my father-in-law's senior living community trades shares of this community on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This corporate owner/operator has to answer to its shareholders. Protecting the common welfare and the principle of the public good are not the primary motivators of this corporation -- the profit margin is. As legal scholar, Kent Greenfield of Boston College once noted, "'Corporate social responsibility,' in the eyes of U.S. Law, is an oxymoron."
While we were in Florida at my father-in-law's senior apartment, he pointed how his community has been affected by the recent economic downturn. Vacancies in the complex are approaching an alarming rate. On his floor alone, more than 30% of the units are vacant. Most residents use the proceeds of the sale of their homes to buy into the community. Now that so many houses have lost value, particularly in their part of the country, the pool of potential residents/buyers has dwindled. This can't continue without there being an impact on the services provided.
Dick's dad is 95 years old. And even though his 90-plus yr old brother just had a bicycle accident (no lie, Dick's family is amazing), we have no illusions about my father-in-law living another 20 years. We suspect that he won't have to be concerned about the future of the corporation or the shareholders. But my mother is another story. She just turned 74 two weeks ago.
I started this piece telling you about my headache and tirade. Aside from what I've already told you about my mom and the adult day care search, another thing that may have set me off was a series of comments made in response to an image posted on the LA Progressive Facebook page.
I was going to post the image here but haven't figured out how to do that yet at Daily Kos since this is only my 4th post but here is a link to the image.
Several of the comments posted below this image reminded me of the vigor the Right invests in protesting against a woman's right to choose. I thought about how they so ferverently protect zygotes but seem to ignore the needs of fully formed humans, especially those who are aged or ill.
We have all witnessed the screaming matches over Obamacare while at the same time you don't hear a peep about the for-profit medical industrial complex or the Department of Defense with its mega defense contractor corporations that have gobbled up in excess of $1.4 trillion dollars since 9/11 -- enough to provide 283.5 million people with health care insurance for a year. (Per data published by the National Priorities Project)
Doing the work we do at the LA Progressive can be exhausting, but it can also be rewarding. Unfortunately, the rewards have not been financial. While I am unsure of how this is going to play out with my mom, I do know that there are a lot of smart people who see what I see -- our nation's economic model is not sustainable.
I've been fortunate enough to cross paths with many of these people because of the LA Progressive and I am grateful. One such person is author Marjorie Kelly.
In her acclaimed book, "The Divine Right of Capital", Marjorie Kelly wrote the following: "At the time of America's founding, corporations were created by state charter only to serve the public good. As an 1832 treatise on corporate law put it, 'The design of the corporation is to provide for some good that is useful to the public.'"
Kelly goes on to say, "concern for the public good is the animating force of the democratic order and it must become the animating force of our emerging democratic economy. We must have a conscious and deliberate concern for the public good built into the system design."
As a member of the middle class, my tax dollars have helped to pay for the prison industrial complex, the over-bloated defense budget, the bank bailout, tax subsidies to oil companies, corporate welfare and a bunch of other things that Mitt Romney and others avoid paying towards by keeping their money in off shore bank accounts. We seem to find a way to carve out more than a trillion dollars for war but can't seem to care for our most vulnerable elders.
The Right is fierce and unyielding when it comes to the stance they take on protecting zygotes. I just wish they were as vigorously protective of those zygotes a few years down the road.
Still, I'm left wondering, "What am I to do about mom?"