It's one of the worst fears we have for our parents or for ourselves: that we, or they, will end up in a nursing home, drugged into a stupor. And that fear is not entirely unreasonable. Almost 300,000 nursing home residents are currently receiving antipsychotic drugs, usually to suppress the anxiety or aggression that can go with Alzheimer's disease and other dementia.
Antipsychotics, however, are approved mainly to treat serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. When it comes to dementia patients, the drugs have a black box warning, saying that they can increase the risk for heart failure, infections and death.
None of this was on Marie Sherman's mind when her family decided that her mother, 73-year-old Beatrice DeLeon, would be better off in a nursing facility near her home in Sonora, Calif. It wasn't because of her Alzheimer's disease, explains Sherman — it was because her mother had had some falls.
"We didn't want my dad to try to lift her, and we wanted to make sure she was safe," says Sherman.
It wasn't long before the nursing home staff told Manuel DeLeon, Beatrice's husband, that his wife was agitated and they wanted to give her some medication for that. So he said OK.
"They kept saying she was making too much noise, and that they give her this medicine to quiet her down," he says.
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4 comments:
Posting this is a great idea.A lot of us ponder what we will eventually do.In addition to nursing homes there are a lot of assisted living facilities that seem to go by different names,possibly depending on which state one is in.Funding issues often place individuals in assisted living who should not be there,because they need more attention than AL can provide.Delaware has a preliminary form of AL that begins at age 55.That seems really early unless serious medical issues are involved.All of it is something we would prefer to block out of our minds,but is an unavoidable decision.
My friend's family dumped her into a local nursing home. She is in her 50's. She was in for rehab and never left.
Its a game they play, first they take the patients rights away to make decisions for themselves, then they will only release them if they get her 24 hour care, even though it is not necessary. So it was cheaper in their eyes to just leave her there. The demand is structured to keep the money in the facility. Then they threatened, if you leave medicare won't pay for you to come back you can only be admitted once to a nursing facility, and that is a lie.
She has several family members that could accommodate her but they are selfish and couldn't be bothered.
They have her drugged up to the point of drooling. She will be dead from it in a few short years.
Heartbreaking.
This terrifies me. My parents are passed but my in-laws are living and I would give up everything to care for them around the clock if necessary. I don't understand why the respect for the elderly is absent these days. I'm in my fifties and certainly wasn't raised that way. We take care of our own, no matter what it takes.
As touched on in the article, most people do not know what questions to ask, and assume providers are working in their loved ones best interest.
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