Rehab Facilities
The state of our rehabilitation facilities:
My mother was recently entered into a rehab facility. On one of the days I went there to visit there was an old woman sitting in a wheelchair. She sort of reminded me of Grandma Moses (if my idea of Grandma Moses was accurate). She sat there in the hallway in her wheelchair looking very old and very decrepit and very, very sad. If that wasn’t bad enough, when I returned the following day, the same woman in the same wheelchair looked to be sitting in the very same spot. I can’t positively say whether she remained there overnight, nor can I say that she hadn’t been moved and then returned to the same position. All I can say for certain is that she hadn’t looked like she had moved very far.
My mom has always been a very active sort. Being confined to a bed with period bouts of therapy didn’t sit very well with her. After having visited four different facilities (the facilities that her insurance would cover) I had deemed the one she wound up in to be the best: that didn’t mean it was great by any means. It had decent food; it had a pretty good amount of therapy time provided for her; and it had activities to keep her amused throughout the morning/afternoon.
The only reason I went to visit the facilities prior is because experience is the best teacher and prior to my mother’s ‘incarceration’ in rehab (as so many there feel it is more like prison than a get-well facility) my dad had also been placed in a facility two years previously. Unfortunately at the time, we did not realize that some rehabs were better than others. His facility looked like it had been built and still lived in the era of the 1950’s. Additionally, cleanliness was apparently not a high priority, as a dead frog remained in the indoor corridor for two days until I pointed it out to the charge-nurse. Even then, it took almost 4 hours for them to remove it.
However, continuing on with my mother’s story… once 4pm rolled around, my poor mom found herself with hours of time left on her hands. Hours which she could neither leave her bed, nor find any activity on-site to entertain her. She would talk to me at 11pm or midnight because she couldn’t sleep and regale me with stories of the woman screaming down the hall in pain who had to be restrained and therefore her nighttime nurse would be unable to assist her to the bathroom for a period of time and ‘would she be okay managing by herself?’
I cannot stress the need or the importance of overhauling the rehabilitation system enough. There are so many people out there entering these facilities who need to get just enough better so they can handle life at home, but they also need something – or someone – there to take their mind off of things. A little more caring and a lot better time management would get the people home sooner and help their mental health enough so the physical healing could happen more quickly.
