Sunday, September 15, 2013

Not That Riviera


On Friday the 13th, my phone rang at 7:00 a.m. with a plea from my step-mother, Tina, to please come help her move my 300-pound father from his bed to his wheelchair. I jumped out of bed and into the shower, then packed an overnight bag and drove the 30 miles from Ontario to Montebello, during Friday morning traffic. Upon arriving at their house, Tina was frantic, but Dad was lying on his hospital bed in the living room, like a large lump of bread dough covered with a brown and orange afghan. His right foot was uncovered, revealing a soft cast there to protect his right ankle that was fractured when he fell down the porch stairs three days ago.

Most of the day was spent waiting. First we waited for the case worker to connect with a coordinator. Next we waited for Nurse Monique to come evaluate the situation and make the decision of what action to take to help Dad. In the meantime, the decision was already made that he should go to rehab for physical therapy to strengthen his legs and ankles enough to support himself enough to move around.




Before Monique came, we spent about an hour getting Dad from bed to potty chair. First we swung his bad right ankle over, then his left, until both legs were dangling over the edge of the bed. It took us several attempts to get Dad to stand because he needed to rest between tries. Tina supported one of his arms and I supported the other while Dad tried to help himself up. He winced with the effort because of the pressure on his bruised ribs and the weight on his ankle. Eventually he was standing, supported by the arms of the chair. Step-by-step we worked together to rotate his body around to sit on the potty chair, Tina pulling his shorts down before he sat. It must have been uncomfortable for Dad to have to sit on a hospital chair naked from the waist down with his adult daughter in the same room with him, because he lost the urge. 


We spent some more time turning Dad on the chair in a better position to see the television. The television was Dad's lifeline. He was most secure holding the tv remote, but somehow we lost the it twice. We watched several cooking shows and Perry Mason in black and white. Next up was Ironsides, but we didn't get to watch the back-to-back Raymond Burr shows, because a message came on the tv screen that the company did not receive their bill payment. This led to the photo above when I brought Dad his laptop so he could get online to see if other checks were unpaid. You might think he felt undignified, but he said the situation didn't bother him and the cable company said the they were good payers, so not to worry. 

Monique bounded into the room, took his vitals, and gave us the low down. She said that she had arranged for a bed in the nearest convalescent hospital and that an ambulance was going to transport him to the facility and it was also arranged to pick him up and return him for his orthopedic doctor appointment on Monday morning. She warned us that the facility was understaffed and it was a good idea to be friendly to the nurses and spend as much time as possible next to Dad.

An ambulance was scheduled for 4:45 but when it arrived, the two EMTs wanted to call for backup to hoist Dad onto the gurney. So we waited some more. The second crew arrived  around 6:00 pm.  The four of them rolled Dad onto a crisp white sheet, and with an EMT at each corner and Tina holding his cast, they lifted him onto the gurney 1,2,3. 

We followed the ambulance to the Riviera Convalescent Home, just ten minutes away. There was some confusion about the room. I thought, "We waited all day to get into a bed there and it still wasn't ready?" An old guy in a wheelchair, whom I secretly dubbed Super Vet because of the large American flag sticking up from behind his head, was hovering in the hallway. The ambulance crew wheeled Dad into the room and one of the female EMTs immediately raced out saying, "There's a naked lunatic back there." We could hear constant moaning and the steady beep of an alarm. We followed the bed into its space and were assaulted by the stench. Three nurses filed by carrying towels and plastic bags. They passed our small curtained off area between the naked guy and Super Vet to clean up the mess completely nude man had made on the floor. Nurses continued coming in and out, each with their own explanation of John.  "He's not right in the head," "He's like a baby," "He's a little touched," they explained as the moaning started and stopped and the alarm continued. Finally, one of the nurses turned off the alarm. 

Tina went straight to a supervisor to see about a room change. The supervisor apologized for the mistake. The hospital had put Dad into the nursing home side because he is 86 years old. At his age, they assumed he was senile or had other long term problems. They found him a bed on the convalescent side where he belonged. He was there to gain strength through physical therapy for 2 to 3 weeks, not move in. We asked to see the room first. If it was unacceptable, we were moving hospitals. Thankfully, the other side of the hospital was completely different. There were only two beds in that room; it was clean, had a closet, a television, and most importantly, no lunatic. 

While the hospital staff prepared the room and the paperwork, we waited between the lunatic and the super nosy vet. Super Vet lived in the curtained off section closest to the door. He was obviously long-term and acted like king of the old crazies hallway. His section of the room was decorated with a large American flag behind his bed, personal mementos on the other wall, and big blue butterflies on the outside of the door. As soon as the nurses were done with John, Super Vet rolled his flag-wielding wheelchair into our space to find out what was going on and warn us not to leave anything out because there were thieves in there. He was more annoying than the lunatic because we couldn't ignore him. 

The supervisor quickly took care of the room change and apologized for the misunderstanding. The whole situation was something I never would have imagined. The staff at the facility was very understanding of our panic. They were friendly and helpful. Two nurses arrived to move the bed to the other side of the hospital. They got Dad settled, inventory taken, and brought him toiletries and a welcome bag with a little bear in it. It was now 9:00 pm and I was ordered home with love and appreciation.

I was so glad to have had that experience because it opened my eyes to the issues surrounding old age. I saw how much room all the necessities of age take up. In my parents' small living room sat a hospital bed, a potty chair, a walker, and a wheelchair. Any movement took some rearranging.

I never knew the end of life could be so dramatic; that there were places where there are moaning naked men and people walking their wheelchairs down the hall past others who sat slack-jawed holding onto teddy bears. I saw the difference between where they put the people who lived the rest of their days on county dollars and those who were there to rehabilitate their bodies. 

On this ominous day for bad luck, we felt blessed. My folks were very appreciative of the service provided by CareMore, the emergency technicians, and the Riviera staff. Everyone was extremely helpful. polite and matter of fact. I think they all understood what we were going through and were respectful of our needs.



1 comment: