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.

 

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