The Nursing Home Alternative:

I once had the unfortunate experience of having a distraught married couple show up at the Nursing Home where I worked and demand their mothers immediate admittance.

As there was a bed available and the couple had consented to pay privately for their loved ones stay, a wheelchair was ordered to collect mother from the car. The only problem was that mother, sitting erect in the back seat of the car, was very obviously dead. You see, once mother was safely lodged in the family car, her children had informed her that they had had it with her care, and were going to take her to a Nursing Home to live. She admonished them in a very matter of fact tone that if they were to do any such thing, Ill just up and die. She had not been making an idle threat!

The common misconception that Nursing Homes inevitably lead to death has for its basis a small degree of historical fact. Nursing Homes were once upon a time places to warehouse the old, the infirm, or the mentally incompetent. They were at that time also used as a place to send mom or dad to die.

Nursing Home placement, does not infer that death is a soon to follow conclusion. Many residents go on to live full and active lives, even when faced with the very real possibility of remaining in a Long-Term Care facility for the rest of their days.

Today, we are seeing a new trend with regard to the Nursing Home Alternative. Many elders who are admitted to a Long-Term Care facility are able to regain lost skills through therapeutic or nursing interventions and teaching. They then get better and go back home or to a lesser-care environment. This phenomenon is fast becoming the norm, not the exception.

Mother (from my earlier story) may have been spared an early demise had she been given time to get used to the idea of moving into a Nursing Home, or had she at the very least been involved in the discussion with regard to such a move. Armed with present day facts and outcome figures, along with a few telephone numbers and names of satisfied clients they could contact, these adult children could have made mothers transition into a Long-Term Care environment less fearful and non-life threatening.

Even though this couple were fed up with their mothers undesirable behaviors, and were momentarily tired of care-giving; the fifth commandment reads Honor thy Father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.