Leaving My Mother at a Short-Stay Facility

 

When I lived with my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, I always looked forward to leaving her at a short-stay facility. I was able to take care of her at my house for more than ten years because the facilities helped me.

I used to assume that expensive facilities provided good services while cheap ones gave low-quality services. But I had an experience that made me realize that things were not that simple.

In those days, we used to rely on an expensive short-stay facility. We were satisfied with the services. But then the facility started to change. Initially, I had had to reserve a place at the facility for my mother two or three months ahead of time. But about one or two years in, I could get her a place at the facility without making a reservation. I was glad about that. But it would turn out that it was a result of the change.

My mother looked depressed after the short stay. The caregivers who drove her to and from the facility looked depressed too. When I visited the facility, I saw that the number of caregivers had decreased. I felt that some of them worked sloppily. My mother couldn’t tell me about the facility because of her illness, but I was sure that some bad things were happening there. After talking with my wife, I decided to use a different facility.

The changes I observed at the expensive facility were not completely unusual. For example, a sports team that won the championships last year could be at the very bottom this year, and a highly paid team might not always win. The facility where excellent caregivers had worked had clearly experienced some kind of problem. Then it had become an expensive but terrible facility. That could have happened in any organization under certain circumstances.

We don’t leave an aged parent at a facility building. We leave an aged parent with the people who work for the facility. So the people matter. Subsequently, I started to leave my mother at a nursing home that was our best available option. But I paid attention to the nursing home. I visited it every week and tried to communicate with the caregivers who worked there. A friend of mine, who worked for another nursing home as a caregiver, had told me that visitors to the nursing home kept the caregivers motivated.

Dear friends, let’s visit nursing homes. I am sure they are not attractive places. But if we familiarize ourselves with them, it could help us a lot when we will ultimately move into them.

Picture by keko-ka