So what is the problem? The lack of care. It's beautiful.. it's clean for the most part. It does however have bedbugs occasionally and today I saw a bait mouse trap too in the room my mom was staying in. This building is only about 7 years old now.
There have been a lot of problems over time when I take my mom in for respite. She goes once or twice a month at the cost of $109.02 per 3 days. Why do I send her there then? Because it is the only one she will go to. Because the next closest one her mother passed away in. And the other one about a couple of blocks away is 4 people to a room. This is the only one she will go to.
I have been keeping track of the problems though. So.. finally after yet another frustrating visit to their facility I wrote the following long letter:
April 28th, 2013
Mr. Rod Cartagena,
(Acting) Executive Director,
Wellesley Central
Over time there has been the odd issue but the only one I’ve talked to
Jack about was the lady across the hall when my mom uses room 2054W. The lady directly across the hall has a bad
habit of playing her music very loud.
She doesn’t even close her door when she leaves the room and leaves the
music on. My mom has a hearing issue and
due to the loud music this lady insists on playing with her door open even when
she’s not in her room, my mom can’t hear her phone ring! I call and call and start to get concerned
when I get no answer and end up going over to check on things but the only
issue is the loud music and my mom not being able to hear her phone over
it. If she has the phone close enough
and manages to hear it, she then can’t hear the conversation due to the
music. This is very frustrating for my mom
and at times for me as well since I end up going over there at times just to
check on her or to see if she needs anything.
Occasionally she gets confused, this is nothing out of the norm for an
88 year old with her health issues.. A
while back she fell a few times while there so I asked for a mat for in front
of her bed. They did it for that weekend
but come the next visit I had to ask again.
And the next visit I had to ask again but this time the nurse told me
she documented it so it was always made available for her in case she falls. It seemed most every time I went to visit the
mat was moved or gone. There was no mat
again this time.
Many times I’ve found her still
in her pajama’s at noon and no one ever cleans her dentures either. I spoke to one of the p.s.w.’s about this, a
lovely lady named Pearl and she assured me she would speak to someone.
I’m not saying my mom is a dream visitor. She does indeed have her moments but again,
she’s 88 and has some memory issues. But this visit it seems just about
everything went wrong. She tends to at
times pull the call bell for things she shouldn’t and I’ve spoken to her about
it as well. She tells me she’ll do
better but again… she forgets or thinks
the reason is appropriate.
1) I had to ask for a mat and it was never
provided for the entire 5 days. If there
wasn’t one available, I wasn’t informed.
2)
No one cleaned her teeth again for the entire 5
days she was there.
3) I
found her liquid diet on her night table beside her bed and it was warm so it
must have been there some time. She is
on a prescribed liquid diet that is dairy based and must be refrigerated. I threw out what was left, went home and made
a fresh one and brought it.
4) For whatever reason Norvay (the nurse) does not give her her medications with applesauce. This is a must and tonight (Sunday) while my sister and a guest were there he again gave her her pills with nothing and she choked on one. She has esophageal dismotility and requires applesauce to get those pills down. I don’t know why I can’t get this information passed from one staff to the next but I have spoken about it many times and she always comes with a binder with notes in it as well. And it states right on the top of her medication list that it is to be given with applesauce. She could have aspirated that pill.
5) Again
a few times I dropped in around noon and found her still not cleaned or
dressed.
6) To
try to make things easier for everyone I make a list of activities for her to
partake in. This keeps her busy and to
some extent tuckers her out and she sleeps better. Not only do I make the list for her but I go
over it daily with her and I make a list of activities she’d like to go to and
tape it to her room door so whomever takes the residents sees it. Problem is..
she never gets to the morning things because she’s still not dressed or
has napped an no one will wake her up and ask her if she still wants to
go. But if she’s not even dressed until
noon how is she supposed to partake in these things? Then she gets upset because she missed
something she wanted to attend.
Especially on the weekends when there is less to do.
7) Then
she had to deal with the loud music again from across the hall. I was visiting with her on Friday and even I
was having difficulty hearing her. My
mom doesn’t speak really loud at times.
So I got up, went across the hall and pulled the door ¾’s of the way
shut and then did the same with my mom’s door.
My mom panics when the door is closed so I had to leave it open
some. Well that went over like a lead balloon
and the lady came flying into my mom’s room in her powerchair yelling about
touching her door. I told her that we
can’t hear over her music and she said that she always has it like that then
off she went on a tangent yelling at my mom to close her door. This lady has no respect for the other people
around her. There is no reason why she
needs it that loud with her door open and especially when she leaves the
room.
While trying to write this letter my phone
rang again and I couldn’t get to it fast enough but it was from Wellesley
Central. It’s 8:44 pm. When I checked the message it was the nurse,
Evangeline asking me to call her. I
called immediately back only to be told my mom fell !! And of course, there is no mat even though I
asked for one, even though I was told it was documented that she needed
one. Evangeline told me that my mom hurt
her back and said her tummy hurt as well.
I told Evangeline that I didn’t know what the heck was going on in there
lately but that I was in the middle of writing a letter about her stay. I told her I would call my mom and speak to
her. Which I did.
My mom told after her fall they put her in her
wheelchair and then into her bed. She
got too close to the edge because she was trying to get someone’s attention to
change her undergarment and into her pajamas.
She was tired and wanted to go to bed but couldn’t get anyone to respond
to her. When you take into consideration
the time… my mom was clothed less than 9
hours today. She got dressed just before
noon and it was now going on 9 pm and she wanted/needed to be changed.
Anyway, she said she was in pain, her back
especially. I asked her if she asked for
a green pill. It’s her breakthrough
medication, her hydromorphone. She said
she did but no one brought it. So at
8:53 pm I called back and no one answered.
I called 3 times and finally Evangeline answered and I asked her to
please have Norvay give my mom her breakthrough medication as she was in pain
from the fall. She said she would.
Now.. I
had asked my mom to call me when she got her medication for the pain from the
fall.. she called me at 9:15 pm, about a
½ hour after the fall and from the time she originally requested the pill. When Norvay came in and gave her the
medication at 9:15 she also asked him for her other prn medication for her
stomach. He told her he gave her one
when I was there earlier. No he
didn’t. I was there at just after 7 pm
and I only saw him in the hall and briefly to see if she had enough of her
prescription diet to last the night. I
never saw him in her room, nor did I see
him give her that medication. And even
if I did see it, she has severe nausea, severe enough to take Ondansetron and
that’s what she was asking for. Even if
she had taken it when I was there, which she didn’t… there is no reason to deny her another one 2
hrs later if the nausea still persisted.
I’m not understanding why she isn’t getting prn when she requests
it. And hopefully he leaves an hour
between the hydromorphone and her next set of codeine. I’ve gone
over this many times too, there has to be an hour between the two. I’ve even made a large note of it with her
med chart.
It’s now 9:31 pm and still no one has come
with her ondansetron so I’ve called yet again and requested it. Evangeline told me Norvay gave her the
hydromorphone and I told her I knew that however she is allowed both, they are
different pills for different things.
She also told me she got a mat for in front of my mom’s bed.
At 9:50 pm she finally got her
ondansetron.
It was a rough 5 days to say the least and I was there a lot more than I
wanted to be and on the phone a lot more than I wished to be.
When I went to pick her up the next morning
the room smelled a bit. I know that
smell. She was not dressed, only partly
dressed. Quickly I got her dressed
because I had to have her out early that particular day. The person that wheels her home for me had an
early appt so that made it an early morning.
I had let Evangeline know I would be there by 9 am to pick her up. I started to collect her clothing and
discovered her pajama pants on a cloth chair in the room and that is where the
smell was coming from. There was feces
on her pajama pants and they were on the chair!! This is unhealthy to say the least. What if she had some infection or something
and now it’s on the chair? Couldn’t
someone rinse those pants out? The mat
was there, but it looked more like a door mat but long then one that would
protect a person in a fall. It was dark
blue, thin and rock hard. Not the beige,
soft mat.
If this can be looked into, I would appreciate it. It’s not very hygienic not to have ones
dentures cleaned in 5 days, nor is it healthy to be in dirty undergarments. It tends
to confuse her to be in her pajamas most of the day too. It throws her off, not knowing if it’s day or
afternoon. The dirty pj’s on the chair is another health issue. I want her to participate in the activities,
it’s important that she is stimulated mentally and physically. Those that fall
get a mat after the fact…. Etc. That poor woman comes home with bruises half
the time. And due to the noise issue, in
future, if possible I would greatly appreciate it if she could have the room on
2 East instead of West.Sincerely,
so I waited for a response... and I waited longer. I hand delivered that thing. Over a week later I get a call from some woman named Natalia (or Natalie) and she informs me that Rod handed it over to her. Nice of Rod not to even call or acknowledge the letter. She tells me she left me a voice mail some days back but I never got it. Anyway, she tells me how important all these matters are and that she is going to look into it all and will absolutely get back to me. She also said she knew my mom was coming back that weekend and that she would meet us in the home lobby when we get there. She asked what time we were getting there so she could meet us.
So Friday comes and off we go to the home and we wait in the lobby.. and we wait some more.. no Natalia. I ask them to page her.. they do.. no Natalia. Then I find out that they have put my mom back in the noisy room. Wonderful. We get up there, (I'm tired of waiting for Natalia and my mom wants to lay down) only to discover no mat and the music from the next room blaring.
We page Natalia again.. nothing.. and again.. and nothing. I need to leave and finally she pops her joyful little head in the door greeting everyone like it's Christmas or something. Says she'll get a mat (which came many hours later after my mom kept asking for it) and she will take to Bernadette the noisy lady. I hear her conversation with B. "Please don't be mad at me Bernadette but can you turn your music down a bit?"
This place is something else.. the inmates run the asylum. Bernadette blasts her music and it drives all the rest of the residents crazy but she's allowed to interfere with their lives on a daily basis. There's another one that goes out and gets stuff from who knows where but has brought bed bugs back into the unit too. She has a room like a hoarder, stuff from floor to ceiling. And that's allowed too. One time my mom was there this particular woman and the next one were being fumigated thanks to her bargains she brought in. They moved her to live in the library for the time of the fumigation and the next lady to the tv room to live.
So my mom couldn't hear all damn weekend to use the phone again. As far as Bernadette is concerned my mom should just shut the door and shut herself in there because that's how she's always had her music.!
These problems NEVER go away though. There is always an issue over the fall mat. There is always an issue over the brushing of her teeth. I started yet another letter and that one was going to go to the Minister of Health and Long Term Care as well as Rod again however my mom started to have a really bad time with health issues again and it never got sent. I can't even find it at this point but I'm about to write yet another one.
Everyone has excuses. Excuses for what there should be no excuses for! Even when I had my mom at the Elders Clinic to see a Dr. and I'm telling her about the problems there she made excuses for them. Oddly enough this Dr says that she thinks the problem is my mom is just short stay and not a regular patient there! Really...??? so short stay people don't need safety measures? Their teeth cleaned? Taken to activities to keep them stimulated? All the rest of it???
Even someone from CCAC gave me this excuse.. bullshit. Long term vs Short stay.. safety issues are safety issues and health issues are health issues and regardless of the length of time you are there you still require both for seniors but no one seems to get it.
This weekend (Fri Sept 26th to Mon the 29th) I saw it all again. I talked to the new person that books people in and I wasn't impressed. Prior to my mom going over I discussed the fall mat with her and insisted one be in her room. She insisted on meeting us in the lobby. I should have known how that would go. After waiting a bit I decided to hell with it, my mom needed to lay down and I'm told I need to wait for her, she needs to see me. So we wait some more over by her office. Still nothing. About 15 minutes later she finally comes out and goes and see's someone else! btw, I sent my mom to her room. Finally I am tired of waiting and go after her. Now she's lost all my mom's paperwork ... really?? huge green folder and has lost it. I give her the cheque (yes, it costs.. $109.02 for 3 days) and she's confused. Has to ask someone else if the amount is right. Still can't find the damn paperwork. I sign a different paper instead so I can go.
I get to mom's room to find they have someone else's name on her door. Oddly enough, same first name. Two days into in they finally change the name but her last name is spelled incorrectly. A lot of good that is if they need to look something up with her last name. The wrist band they give her is so huge that she could probably almost wear it around her neck. How stupid. Seriously, it's huge. Unless you are 300 lbs there is no way your wrist is that large to keep it on. More incorrect i.d.
No one brushed her damn teeth again. I decided to the first day, for some reason the 2nd day I found all her dental stuff in the washroom but it hadn't been used. Still the same amount of mouth swabs, still the same amount of polident tablets.. same amount of everything. I asked her just in case and she told me no one did it.
The fall mat finally arrived some time between when I left around 3:30 and when I returned around 7 pm. But it took many requests and when I asked again at the nurses station the nurse knew nothing of them and neither did the p.s.w.
At one point I had to charge my mom's cell phone. I asked two p.s.w.'s if they could please unplug it in a while because it was on her bed and it's a safety issue. If it gets too hot it could start a fire. Guess what wasn't done? Next morning when I got there, it was still on her bed on the charger.
Her nurses were from an agency. They got rid of most of their regular nurses to cut costs and now hire agency nurses which for the most part can't find work elsewhere. The guy is nice enough but a bit on the stunned side. His accent makes him difficult to understand at times so I'm wondering how the seniors understand him.
The nurse situation went like this.. I go in Friday night and it's a nice young lady. She tells me she's had problems with getting mom to take her meds. I said I would go try myself. This I don't mind. I get in there, sit down beside her and she says hi.. and bubbles come out of her mouth!! teeny tiny bubbles like soap bubbles.. they float in the air. Wtf is that? Next thing you know she starts to spit out the gel cap of a medication she was given!! Great.. she didn't look to make sure she took the meds and that's a choking hazard. I let her know and then got the rest of the meds into her.
But.. now her pain meds are like 2 hrs late and this nurse is ready to give her her next lot of pain meds soon! I tell her she can't. She should have kept trying and not leave them on her bedside table for a couple of hours. You can't take that much codeine now and then take it again in an hour! She'll overdose. She says she'll wait a while to give her her pain meds again. sheesh.. ya think? I also mentioned that my mom has a nitro patch that needs to be put on at night and then taken off 12 hrs later. She said she would put one on later that evening which was fine with me.
I then get a call Saturday morning because my mom wouldn't take her meds. This time it's a man, Chinese I think, accent is thick. But I get it.. she's not taking her meds. So I tell him I'll be right over and head out. I get there at noon and find her meds sitting on the bedside table in the applesauce all melted and mush in there. So now if she can't ingest that much applesauce she isn't going to get all her meds. So I start, and I give her all her meds and again try to reinforce the fact she needs to take them for the nurse. When confused, my mom can be stubborn and not swallow or refuse her meds. I can't help that but sometimes you just have to persevere.
I tell the guy about the nitro patch as well but while I'm talking to him I see his computer screen with my mom's meds on it and the bloody thing is all WRONG. It has the meds she was taking last April on it!! No bloody wonder he was confused about her meds too. It has meds she no longer takes on it, and strengths that have been changed since then..
When I take my mom there I take a binder every time. In that binder is pertinent information about her and the very first page is a list of all her medications and when she takes them. What they look like and the dosage. It couldn't be more clearer. Obviously nothing was done with the list because it certainly wasn't updated on their end.
That night, Saturday evening, I am talking to the nurse about my mom's nitro patch. She was going to put one on. We looked because there was no documentation about it and there should have been. We didn't find a patch so we put one on.
Sunday morning I talk to the male nurse again and this is what he tells me:
"I took off both patches this morning and then put a new one on!!!"
Excuse me? TWO patches?? Yes.. I put one on the day before and there was another one on there so I removed them both and put a fresh one on!
holy shit... so she had 2 patches at once.. she wore them both at least 12 hours and then he takes them off and IMMEDIATELY puts another one on? I pulled that one off and tossed it. Told him.. 12 hours on and 12 hours off. It says so right on the box you took it from!
I swear they will kill her one day in there with her meds. A few times no one bothered to change her fentynal patch either. She no longer uses that thankfully. Another time, no one gave her her antibiotics either. It's a challenge to say the least when they have all her damn meds there in a dosette and all they have to do is open it up and dump them out. It's not rocket science.
She also told me she fell out of bed but according to the p.s.w. she didn't.
And again, they didn't bother to brush her teeth. I take a full kit with her. It has a container, 3 polident tablets, 4 mouth swabs and her denture paste. I did her teeth the first night and then came home with 3 mouth swabs and 2 polident tablets. Here are some pics:
The crap on the dentures is what was there when we removed them. It's from not cleaning them. The crap on the sponge is what was cleaned from inside her mouth. How disgusting is that?
The we have how dirty some things are in that place... for instance:
And you wonder why people get so sick and die so fast in nursing homes? This should answer a question or two in regards to medications and dirt.
Oh.. and when I went to pick her up Monday morning at 10:30 I discovered that she didn't even have her morning pills yet and they were suppose to be in her around 8 am. There was NO NURSE. Seems the agency couldn't even send one so they were using two nurses from other floors to run to her floor and fill in. No wonder she was having pain.
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