Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Recovering from Rehabilitation

My friend has written again, and I post his message without editing:

 
My friend has writenme again:

I am thinking about a conversation I had with my father the other night.
He feels that no one cares about him. He wants help. He asked me for help.

Now, there is a rational and cold approach to his perspective: He is at home.
He is safe. My mother and sister are there, caring for him. And, in addition,
there is a paid care-giver who works very hard.

However, that “rational” perspective is incomplete. He recently experienced three very hard weeks, when he was largely alone in an institutional setting.
My mother and the care-giver often visited him—when they could. However, he was alone at
nights. And, at night time, he was most unhappy, and tried to leave the institution.

So far as I can tell, the institution was, to all intents and purposes, under-staffed.
Moreover, when my mother attempted to complain to the head of nursing, she was
not allowed to do so. Her request was met with an unimaginative excuse that the Big
Nurse was not there, or busy, or whatever. Really, I don't remember what was said,
and it doesn't matter. My mother's request was ignored and she was put off---as if her concerns did not matter. But in a meeting with a Social Worker and an unidentified employee of the Institution, her financial situation was attended to.

So the institution was disrespectful to my mother as well as my father. And, it quite happily took their money—their money, even if through the mechanism of insurance.

It is impossible to know whether my father's dislocation in thought would have been worse
even if he never was imprisoned. However, I believe his isolation for three weeks has damaged him.  The question is whether he will recover.  At the deepest, most primal level:  for three weeks, every night he felt more alone than he's ever felt in his life.  Quite an accomplishment for the medical system which John Boehner says is the "best" in the world.  After eighty-nine years of life, after trying every day to be honest and help his family, and anyone else he met, he was rewarded with lonely nights in a sterile facility......

In all previous hospital stays, my mother had accompanied my father. He was most stressed at night, when he was alone. We know that isolation is harmful. That's why psychologists say that solitary confinement for prisoners is torture. The fact that my father is dependent upon the help of others makes his isolation worse. If he called out at night, no one answered. Oh, sorry, the institution bragged that they visited him every twenty minutes.

Yes, I can imagine what that means. A white-costumed individual pokes his or head in the door to make sure that the patient is still alive, and then rushes down the hall to poke their head into another room. That sort of thing would make me feel like the people involved really cared.

 

Sunday, May 25, 2014

In praise of ordinary Czechs

The wise men, the intellectuals, those who serve power, are appearing on Czech TV analyzing the election results.  I did not throw up, and that's an accomplishment.

Most Czechs, it seems, do not believe they are equal to other countries in the EU.
Hmmm, how odd.  Germans and Italians own their banks.  Skoda belongs to Volkswagen.
The grocery stores are German or Austrian.  So, all those profits leave the country....

Then again, the EU itself is not democratic---by design.  But, then there's the fact that the democratically elected leaders in Greece and Italy were removed by Brussels and the Banksters.

Errr, then there a few referendums where the misguided people voted incorrectly, and like
bad students who flunked the exam, Brussels made them do it all over again.

In general, it seems to me that the average Czech is more in touch with reality than they wise men of Czech TV.

Recommended reading:  Perry Anderson, "The Italian Disaster"
http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-italian-disaster/
http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-italian-disaster/

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Working in the Czech Republic versus Working in the USA

According to a new report by the International Trade Union Confederation, it's worse to be a worker in the USA than in the Czech Republic.  Interestingly enough, Slovakia got a higher grade than the CR.

The USA got a country grade of 4, which is explained as follows:

Systematic violation of rights
Workers in countries with the rating of 4 have reported system
atic violations. The government and/or companies are engaged
in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers putting
fundamental rights under continuous threat.

The Czech Republic got a "2"

Countries with a rating 2 have slightly weaker collective labour
rights than those with the rating 1. Certain rights have come
under the repeated attack by governments and/or companies
and have undermined the struggle for better working conditions
 http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/survey_ra_2014_eng_v2.pdf

(Thanks to "Occasional Links and Commentary" for making me aware of this report.)



Sunday, May 18, 2014

summing up

My friend has written me again, attempting to sum up his recent experiences:


What I think I've learned in trying to communicate with my father, is the importance of emotion.
Now, this is a dangerous subject because I may fall into the trap of repeating, as a sort of advocate, the claim that we undervalue emotion in our culture.

That would be a true thing to say, but it is too imprecise for my purposes.

So, I shall try to approach the subject a bit differently. What makes a person a person? What makes our human persons be what we are? And, how can a person who is largely helpless still be a person?

A person—that means enough like you and me that s/he deserves what we deserve, respect and help .
What I've seen with my father is that his basic emotional ties are all in place. I think that diagnoses get it all wrong when they fault him for messing with chronological time, not knowing where he is, and so on. That's all merely the book-keeping of the workplace. And the workplace is, mostly, anti-democratic, mind-numbing, and soul-crushing. (The irony is that my father loved his job, but was forced to retire in his mid-forties after a bad car accident.)

If you are at all familiar with Milan Kundera, there is a story where a man imagines the world of his elderly mother—a world where a pear is enormous and a Russian tank is small. I think K wanted to recognize that this elderly mother's world is truthful, and I want to say something similar about my father's world.

My father's emotional connections are rich and lively. That part of him is not dead. However, it takes a sensitive audience to nourish that very real connection with reality. And, a sterile hospital-atmosphere is precisely what kills that. And, insofar as one is focused-- responsibly-- on helping him with his very real needs, one runs the risk of neglecting that other, very real part of him. I have seen him twice on Skype now, since his return from the three-week isolation chamber called Rehabilitation. He has lost skills he used to have. At night, he has difficulty sleeping and experiences, once again, the fear he felt when he was isolated. He had his share of solitary confinement thanks to the ignorance of a system that was never designed to see him as a person.

I recently came across a study in a nursing journal that recommends that care-givers sing along with their patients. I did something like that with my father during the time I was home. (2009-2012) By chance, I found old songs and movies on Youtube that belonged to my parents' generation, and for me to see the real pleasure it brought to them was a rare gift. It showed me what is possible for them, members of the category “frail elderly”. Their lives need not be filled with fear and anxiety.
They can be glad to be alive. That is really not too much to ask. And it has made me unforgiving of anyone who wittingly or not takes away from them such a basic components of human happiness, something which is not expensive and is not by nature scarce---though our system of social organization seems designed to make it so.

That kind of emotional connection takes time, and is not suited to the time-management approach of institutions.

What I think now, as I write you, is the problem we face is that we don't understand the human mind, and we view it through lenses tinted by our oppressive institutional structures. We don't see the world through the lenses offered by art, poetry, dance--those emotional worlds which nourish a part of us that is flexible and open, sad and hopeful at the same time. Instead we insist on framing ourselves through the closeted darkness of profit and social hierarchy.

Friday, May 16, 2014

a partial victory

My friend has written me:


After a battle of sorts, my father is now home.
I am not going to try to present all sides of the story.
I will say, however, that hospitals and institutional facilities
are cold and unfriendly.  They cannot compare to  one's home.
And that's how I feel, and I haven't got dementia and do
not have health problems.


Nor have I got a wife and companion of many decades.
My father was kept apart from his wife while he was in a so-called
rehabilitation center.  And, it was when he was alone that he tried
to find the exit.  Is that surprising?


Do you need a degree in medicine to understand that?


He was in an under-staffed facility which made it possible for him
to fall, to wander....


And, to top things off, his belt was stolen.  What sort of belt?
A white cloth belt that I purchased for a significant sum when I was
home a  couple of years ago.  It's a special belt used to help the frail
elderly.


Can I be sure it was stolen?  Maybe my father lost it?  Maybe.


But let's recall one thing.  My father was especially lonely in this
so-called rehabilitation center during the weekends.  And during weekends
 he did not receive therapy, unlike usual weekdays.


Now, you may say that I'm basing this on conversations with my mother.......
Indeed I am, and I trust her judgment.


But let's look at something that's not my mother's opinion.  Courtesy of Naked
Capitalism, I came across this fact:  that you're more likely to die in a hospital
over the weekend.  No matter when you are admitted, if you die in a hospital,
it's likely to be over a weekend.




"Risk of dying in hospital increases on weekend regardless of admission day, study finds"
Susan Perry, 5/15/2014, Minnesota Post
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/05/risk-dying-hospital-increases-weekend-regardless-admission-day-study-finds


Thank god he got home before the weekend!

Thursday, May 15, 2014

A curious and unbelievable tale

(rough draft)

A friend recently told me the following strange story; I don't even know if I believe it!

I would like to call it "Social Worker and The Hedge Fund", or "the Social Worker and the Wealthy Investor"---but that would be going too far..... although I do believe that Wall Street has invested into health providers, and WS does demand a profit......So, let's just start with some questions:

Are Social Workers Working to Bankrupt the Elderly?  
Have Social Workers Today Become Servants of Wall Street? 

Those questions occurred to me after hearing this story....

My friend's 89 year old father was hospitalized about a month-and-a-half ago because he was sleeping too much. The man did not complain about pain, however he was getting weaker every day because he didn't want to walk or even get out of his chair.

Finally, his care-giver said sleeping so much was just not normal. She consulted with a doctor and the man was transported to the hospital.

The man's wife worried that the hospital authorities might not let the man return to their home.  In the past, she has been told he needs 24-hour care; but neither she nor her children have the funds to pay for that.  And no one has yet suggested where the funds would come from. However, he was taken to the hospital, and she stayed with him in the hospital and helped him.

At first they could find nothing wrong with the man. Then, they thought that maybe some of his medicines had affected his kidney (he has anemia caused by a doctor's error during a “routine” operation). So, they took him off those medicines.
(Later, it seems, he was put back on the medicines; but nothing in this story is clear.)

For a time, the man seemed more alert. However, it seemed unwise to all
concerned for the man to go home since he was still physically weak. He is a rather large man and prior to his hospitalization the care-giver had found it difficult to transport him to the doctor.

He was, therefore, sent to a sort of rehabilitation facility.  It was said that he needed about two weeks of rehabilitation. His wife was not allowed to stay with him. Consequently, he began (and this is three weeks ago now) to wake up at night asking for his wife. Moreover, he attempts to leave the facility, to go home.

He was supposedly given an "anti-anxiety" medicine to prevent him waking at night.  Later it was said that the dosage was too small.  After two weeks, someone noticed that on account of his size, a larger dosage would be needed.  My friend thought that was amazing.  Only a glance at the man would tell you that he is larger than average.  Probably, my friend thought, the health care workers are over-loaded and cannot keep up with everything they are supposed to do.  (See a recent article in the NYT about hand-washing...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/hospitals-struggle-to-get-workers-to-wash-their-hands.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

The elderly man, my friend's father, even says that he is in “prison”. Apparently, he feels he is being held against his will.

The man is senile; however, it seems clear that the immediate problem is that he has been separated from his wife. (They have been married 63 years.) When she was with him in the hospital, there were no such problems.  In the hospital, he did not attempt to leave, and he did not wake up asking for his wife.

When my friend's father first entered the rehabilitation facility, they were told that his wife would not be allowed to stay overnight, although she would be allowed to visit.  (This created transport problems.  The wife is too elderly to drive, and so must rely upon a friend or care-giver.  It is not always easy for her to visit her husband.)  There seems not to have been any explanation of the facility's policy;  why shouldn't the wife be allowed to stay with her husband?  My friend finds this problematic.  Someone was heard to say, as if it were a sort of explanation, “They have their rules.”  My friend was pretty sarcastic about that, saying, “Hitler had his rules too."  And, "What is this?--A dictatorship?”. And, “What ever happen to the idea that the Customer is King?”
Now, my friend says that the Social Worker recently told the wife that it would be better for the man to return to his home. However, the Social Worker is not going to pay for around-the-clock care for the man.

I think my friend had something funny to say about the Social Worker, too. Social Workers are supposed to represent the interests of the poor and the weak, but apparently (my friend told me) this Social Worker represents the financial interest of the For-Profit “Health Provider”---or, at least, did so when there was a meeting discussing how the man's wife would pay for his care. The SW actually said words amounting to this: you'll have to exhaust your insurances, and then pay out of your own pocket.  Which is tantamount to warning the lady that she can look forward to being bankrupt.

Maybe my friend is mis-informed.  It seems odd that a Social Worker should be representing Wall Street.

It was at that point that my friend made a very cutting remark about bankruptcy and expropriation by dispossesion. Apparently my friend meant that this was a sort of legal theft, and that the Social Worker was nothing more than the velvet glove on top of the Iron Fist.  The Social Worker has to obey the wishes of the For-Profit Medical Provider, even if the SW has sympathies elsewhere.  

The Health Authorities told the wife that her husband needs “twenty-four hour” care. My friend quipped, “What a joke. He is not getting that currently, at this facility he is paying for.   They only look into his room every twenty minutes to see if he's still alive. That means he is getting---let's see, three times an hour, times 24, that's 72 minutes of care per day currently......That's not 24-hour, not non-stop care.  He gets punctuated care---a little care, with lots of gaps!"

I pointed out that the man was also visited by nurses and therapists throughout the day --though rarely or never on weekends--- but I guess I see his point. After all, during the times they don't look in on the man, he has fallen down several times.  And he has been found wandering around the facility, looking for an exit.

This is all very surprising to me. It doesn't sound right. It sounds to me like this elderly couple is being shaken down for the sake of sending profits to people who are so rich that they literally cannot spend all of the money they earn. That's the way things are going today.  It's all legal.  Another friend told me that it reminds him of something called "Primitive Accumulation".....but he didn't explain.














Sunday, May 4, 2014

the crappy USA Internet could get worse

The Internet in the USA is slower than the internet in Romania or the Czech Republic.
But, it could get worse...........

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/bill-moyers-obamas-latest-assault-democracy-undermining-net-neutrality.html