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I’ve spent most of this past year – from April to October – trying to take care of my ill mother, who passed away on October 3 at the age of 90. She fell in April and broke her right hip and arm. Her orthopedic surgery went well, and she got transferred from the hospital to a nursing home for physical therapy, which also was going well—until they stopped the therapy. The nursing home claimed that some kind of Medicare rule prevented them from giving her any further therapy, even if I paid for it myself. Made no sense to me, but that’s what’s what they said.
So, I took mom home with me, and I did my best to take care of her myself. It was tough because she couldn’t get out of the bed by herself, she couldn’t use a walker, she couldn’t go to the bathroom, she really couldn’t do anything. A home health nurse and therapist, covered by Medicare, came to the house a couple days a week. But they were pretty damn useless.
After staying with me for a couple months, mom got a urinary tract infection. That’s a very scary thing. It causes weird hallucinations and it could be fatal. So, she had to go back to the hospital, where they treated her, and she recovered after a couple weeks. Then she had to go back to a nursing home for further recovery from her original fall injuries.
I put her in a different nursing home than the previous one—this one recommended by the hospital. She seemed to be getting excellent physical therapy there and was beginning to use a walker again. In late August, she was riding an exercise bike machine for 20 minutes at a time. We had hopes for her going back home eventually.
But then, mom got hit by a series of serious infections. First it was a C. diff intestinal infection. Then an upper respiratory infection. Just as she was recovering from those, I noticed that her roommate in the tiny room, a woman in her 70s, was coughing very badly. I expressed my concern to the doctor, to the head nurse, and to other staff in the nursing home that my mom might catch another infection, and I asked them to please move her to a different room. They refused to do that, and they all assured me that my mom was in no danger of catching anything from her roommate. Furthermore, they flat-out denied that her roommate had any infection.
Two days later, the nursing home called to tell me that both my mom and her roommate tested positive for COVID. The room was put in isolation and I couldn’t visit her for 10 days. I couldn’t even talk to her, because there was no phone in the room. During this time, my mom’s condition worsened – both physically and psychologically. The worst thing is that she stopped eating. A loss of appetite can be caused by COVID. But I believe that mom also lost all her will to live and was sick and tired of all the struggling and all the hassles and all the medical bullshit. So, she maybe she decided to hell with it, I ain’t eating anymore.
The staff claimed that the anti-COVID drugs worked and that she didn’t have the virus anymore. Then they said she had pneumonia. I visited her for several hours every day. It was heart-breaking to watch her get worse and worse every day and to see her wither away to nothing. They put her on IV but she was still starving to death. All the hopes that I had for her to get better and to go back home were destroyed. She was dying.
They eventually put her on hospice care–off of IV and on with morphine for pain and another drug for recurring bouts of anxiety. She ended up in a coma, but her heart kept beating and she kept breathing for several more days. She was somehow hanging on longer than the hospice nurses expected. Tough old Polish woman. But it was so goddamn terribly depressing to see. She finally died on the night of October 3. Her suffering was finally over.
My sister and I maintain that the nursing home killed her, mainly through the negligence of knowingly allowing her to be exposed to serious infections, especially COVID. I’ve spoken to a lawyer about a possible lawsuit against the nursing home. He said that nursing homes typically have clauses in their contracts that protect them against those kinds of lawsuits, but he said he would look into it more and get back to me.
In the meantime, I had to pay a $12,760 bill to the nursing home, because the insurance stopped covering her stay there and I had to pay out of pocket. I had to pay that goddamn mother-fucking nursing home for fucking up and killing my mother. What a wonderful healthcare system we have in America. Best in the world, they say. Fucking bullshit!
Fuck the medical system
I never use the medical system myself. I’m 63 and haven’t been to a doctor in about 30 years. In regard to my own health, I have a three-part philosophy: 1) My body can naturally heal most problems by itself. 2) If there is any problem that my body cannot heal, I learn to live with it. 3) If I ever get a problem that I can’t live with, I die. Either way and any way, I avoid becoming victimized by the corrupt, evil, dishonest, often incompetent medical establishment, and I live on my own terms.
But like many other old people, both my mom and dad—who died in 2019 ten days before he would have turned 89—got caught in the sticky webs of the medical system when they were in their 80s. In both cases, in my opinion, the system made as much money as it could off of them as it provided them with false hope and slowly tortured them to death.
A person is better off avoiding the medical system and letting nature take its course. And if things ever get too unbearable, assisted suicide or do-it-yourself suicide should be an option. We provide this option (euthanasia) for dogs and cats, but we purposefully extend the suffering and agony of people. Why? Because of the financial greed of the medical establishment, as well as the dumbass religious beliefs of some people.
I had a very close relationship with my dad and my mom, and I miss them badly. I used to talk to them about everything, from politics to personal shit. From my mom, I learned the importance of being an individual, thinking for yourself, going against the grain, being blunt and telling the truth, and pissing people off when necessary. She pissed off a lot of people during her life. She had no tolerance for bullshit and she would let you know it. That was my mom! She had the rarest of personalities. She thought for herself and told it like she saw it. That’s how I try to be.
Gaza and Ukraine carnage
My mom’s long illness and then her death have had me in a lousy, depressed, and angry mood all year. And considering the fact that I have a naturally negative outlook most of the time—even in “good†times—the added negativity has really got me down. Add the news about current world and national events to the mix, and I get totally hopeless. Observing the news, and living in this society of ignorant zombies and group-think clones, I feel pissed off at just about everybody and just about everything these days.
The news lately has been adding mightily to my sour disposition. So much insanity, stupidity, cruelty, and evil deeds are happening all over the place, people in power are enthusiastically promoting it all, and most everyone else just seems to be ignorant of it.
In Gaza, the Israeli military is committing genocide against Palestinians while the world watches. Reportedly, more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in four weeks of brutal Israeli attacks. Many, perhaps most, of the killed have been women and children. There have been massive protests against this slaughter around the world—which is encouraging, I guess—but the slaughter continues, much of it paid for with American money. And the establishment propaganda will surely keep the Israeli and American lies and atrocities going. Hell, even Wonder Woman (a former member of the Israel Defense Forces) is now taking a role in the propaganda promotion.
The slaughtering and propaganda also continue in Ukraine. American money and weapons keep fueling a stupid bloody conflict that should have ended months ago with a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. There is no way that Ukraine can win this war, yet its asshole leaders keep talking tough and sending more young men into the Russian meat grinder. Stupid. Senseless. Insane. But it keeps happening with no end in sight. The U.S.-Western propaganda-war machine is unstoppable.
Both of these conflicts have the potential to lead to World War III. People in power should know that, but they act like they don’t. Or maybe they do, and that is exactly what they want. Total insanity!
Idiots for president
In the United States, we have a multitude of idiot, lying candidates running for president in an election that will be held in about a year. None of them are offering voters much hope. Biden, obviously, is senile and doesn’t even know what year it is or what planet he is on. He belongs in a fucking nursing home. Nothing else to say about that brain-dead bastard.
Trump? I used to like him. I still kind of do. But he basically keeps repeating his same bluster and bombast routine, spouting a bunch of loud proclamations about how this or that never would have happened if he was president. And if he somehow manages to stay out of prison and if the Democrats somehow screw up their election-rigging strategy and allow him to win, he would probably just let the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, and the other corporate special interests walk all over him like he did last time. I know he would disappoint, because he shows no signs of learning from mistakes.
The other Republicans are all so horrible that I can’t even begin to contemplate any of them. DeSantis, Haley, and the others would likely soon have us in simultaneous wars with Russia, China, and the Arab world. The inexperienced, self-contradictory Ramaswamy would likely be so lost and confused that he wouldn’t know what to do.
RFK Jr, for whom I once had high hopes, has already turned out to be a disappointment. He talks good logic and peace on Ukraine, but with Gaza he has fallen all the way down into the usual traps and pitfalls of doom set by the neocons and Zionists—just like everyone else. He has also shown himself to be a stooge of the race hustlers with reparations, though he has flipped flopped on that issue. And how can I support or trust someone who was so over-the-top enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton? Regardless of whatever he might say during his campaign, I don’t think that Kennedy is ever going to get above 20 percent support.
So, who is left? Cornel West? Kanye West?? I think I’d rather have Adam West. Seriously, I do like some of what I have heard Cornel say, though I dislike a lot of other stuff. Needless to say, too much racism BS. In any case, what exactly would be the point of supporting him? It would be about as useful and productive as voting for Pat Paulsen, though not as funny.
Nothing to laugh about
No, I’m sad to say that there is not much to laugh or smile about these days. The American economy and financial system is like a shaky house of cards about to collapse. American culture and society is like an insane asylum with the inmates in charge. Most of the public is living in an online virtual reality with no idea as to what is going on in the actual flesh-and-blood world, in their own country, or even in their own neighborhood. My own personal life is pretty shitty these days (but I can’t blame anyone but myself for that).
So, yeah, I’m depressed and angry about pretty much everything. Of course, nobody cares how I feel. Why the hell should they? Well, mom always cared. And if mom was here, I could at least talk to her and bitch to her about all this shit. She always listened. And we often agreed on things.
I miss you, mom.
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I hear you A.J. So sorry about you losing your mom and dad. And the way it happened. It will get easier as time passes. I sometimes dream vividly about my father, and when I awake it feels like I have been with him. That’s a gift. Maybe it will happen for you too.
I pretty much agree with your three rules for dealing with medical issues in the light of what has happened to doctors and the profession. And no, we have no one to vote for, but really, that is not new, is it?
I think you would benefit from a friend, or friends. Humans do better with social interaction, so long as it is supportive and/or at least constructive. Another thing that might help is a project or projects that have meaning for you. If you have no pets, get a dog or cat. They make surprisingly good companions. And they come sit or lay beside you when you’re feeling dispair. It helps.
I have envied your mom. my only child has moved to another country, and our relationship has deteriorated. She never calls. I do not see my grandchild anymore. All my family are very distant, either emotionally or physically. As pissed off as you are, remember many out there live through real tragedies. And we all live in this evrything-gone-wrong world. My sister is a medical professor and I understand how you feel about the medical establishment. My father was a doctor too in Germany in the 1960’s and I remember him complaining about the side effects of cortisone back then. Half a century later I was astonished to learn that cortisone remains a key medication and no advance has ben made in remedying its side effects.
The fact that you are pissed off and depressed for good reasons shows that you are still sane, which is more than can be said for most of the USA.
Here in Morocco there are no old folks’ homes. Not taking care of your elders, even if they’re second cousins thrice removed, would be supremely shameful. Very rarely an old person doesn’t have any family, in which case the community puts their heads together and figures something out. That actually happened here in Saidia a while back, and my wife was part of the group that found a solution.
Anyway, Allah will bless you for doing your best for your mom, and damn the US for its culture of selfish hedonistic materialism and its inhuman health and elder care.
Thanks, Kevin. I’ve never understood children who don’t at least try to take care of their elderly parents. Our parents put up with so some shit from us when we’re kids and teens, the least we could do is try our best for them when they get old. My mom and dad always did their best for me. Maybe some day I’ll see them again. Who knows?
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Sorry about your loss.
ਅਕਾਲ
Losing the last surviving parent is a major milestone in anyone’s life. Everything changes. After the emergency passes, it’s like coming up from a storm cellar after a tornado. The landmarks are all gone and what on earth can “getting back to normal†possibly look like? I suppose an optimist might say it gets better, but I found it just gets on, in whatever way we can find to come to terms with it. If there’s any good news, it is that it is impossible to have the “wrong†feeling in any part of the process. And to remember that our folks always wanted the best for us, even when we couldn’t quite see eye to eye on what that looked like.
Sadly, the whole damn system is a con game. All this bull manure about the “free†market means freedom for the owner class to use the rest of us as cattle on their private estate. Profit from us any and every way they can: pay us far less wages than the value our labor creates, charge us way more than it costs to provide the goods and services we buy, and at the very end, prey on our human frailties to steal us blind with “health care†administered by the most incompetent and heartless sector of all.
It’s called business as usual under capitalism, and anyone who still believes it is “the end of history†and the very best that humanity can come up with is a god damned fool. But that, as they say, is another story.
I’m truly sorry for your loss. After my Polish father died, I lived with my German mother for the last five years of her life until it got to the point when she needed help with things I couldn’t help her with and I had to put her in home with 24 hour care. She died at 90 also. That’s a long life and considering what her and my Dad lived through in WWII in Germany, a small miracle. Living longer is not necessarily worth it, especially if you are constantly angry, which is the state many of us find ourselves in these days. I think it’s the frustration of our ineffective institutions and powerless selves versus the promise of youth and what our expectations were. Acceptance of our limitations may be the only way to sleep somewhat peacefully.
It’s hard to look at what they’re doing with Palestine and not see(and experience) parallels with what they’ve long been doing in USA and elsewhere, with the intentional destruction of infrastructure, hospital bombings, schools and shelters, ambulance convoys, and targeting journalist’s/spokespeople’s entire families for destruction, along with water systems, etc everything that sustains life, when simply gutting it all wasn’t enough. Ukraine too, always been a vassal state full of vassal peoples, else where Palestinians are full to the brim with resilience. The powers of the self led are always targeted. It’s all on display out in the open now, reflected all around us, that it can no longer be so well hidden is sort of a bright side of things. But I think seeing this and finding it upsetting, and frustrating, means we’re still fully human and have a conscience, along with being relatively sane.
Buddhists have their cosmology, and realms, quoting from Oxford Reference “gods (deva), the demi-gods (asura), humans (manuá¹£a), animals (tiryak), hungry ghosts (preta) and hell denizens (naraka)” and part of that all are states of being, with overlaps etc. There’s population 8,000,000,000 of us materially here, and one could add zombies and robotic automatons in the flesh, and such mixed in with all the animals and hungry ghosts we’re surrounded by even just in human form in this increasingly hell scape falling earth. Something Jung said in his Red Book reminds that “Jerusalem chasers” surely count as hungry ghosts too, dark and heavy and they don’t find what they’re seeking. Seeing the ugliness and reality of it all is more positive than negative, truthfulness in general however unflattering, but that’s all been inverted too, to a point where toxic positivity has become more the norm. I think trying to stay human in an increasingly subhuman environ is just the struggle of these times we’re in, alongside an ability to stay on the path of moving on up, through stormier weathers. There’s only so much one can do about it, other than within. Most people in these circles writing and commenting here seem to be doing ok on that whole front, or at least it seems from here. Not wholly oblivious, at minimum.
Maybe you should run for president! – ok, not really (and I apologise for the bad joke). But channelling you anger into something positive (maybe for your local community?) could help. Of course, I don’t know you, or where you live, but there must be something you can put all those pent-up emotions into. Just a thought. – I wonder what your mum/mom might say to such a suggestion?
I have to admit, as I read your article I wondered why I was reading someone eulogising thier mother on UR, but actually it makes a change to read the raw, real life expressions of impotent rage we all experience from time to time in our lives.
I hope you find a way to turn this around for yourself… and maybe even create something worthwhile from it all. God knows the world needs a transformation right now. I guess we achieve that via a few million small acts of focused effort to improve things where ever we are.
I am very sorry for your loss.
Best wishes,
Kali.
Sorry you lost your mom. She must have been a awesome lady – it shows through in her picture. You were truly blessed. As for the medical system, it’s what the overlords on Wall Street want it to be. Like our congress, it’s the finest their fake-money can buy.
As for the sordid coterie of mountebanks, cheap whores and criminal psychopaths ‘running’ for office, I often think of a yard sign I saw during the previous episode of “mostest important erection evah” …
VOTE FOR OBI-WAN. HE’S OUR ONLY HOPE.
It brings a smile, which helps to put things in a better perspective – at least for a while.
All best,
So sorry, man! I’m about your age and lost my mother about a year ago. I often think, “I need to call her,” before I remember that I can’t. It never gets easier.
BTW, I haven’t been able to avoid doctors, since I have hereditary hypertension. But I haven’t been vaccinated in 30 years and aim to keep it that way.
Step 1: Turn off all video news to stop making yourself miserable. Just read the headlines, and a few print articles a day (online, of course) to get a general feel for what is going on in the world.
Step 2: Give up on political solutions. That is nothing but a recipe for more disappointment.
i feel your pain. please accept my condolences on your loss
Mate, as someone who cared for and lost his mother under similar circumstances earlier this year, and who recently spent weeks looking after his father after the old boy came down with similar infections, and who also is sick and tired of the needless bloodshed and rank stupidity in the world, you have my deepest sympathy and condolences.
Keep fighting.
It was somewhat of a surprise to read that Smuskiewicz has a moderate position on the Israel-Hamas conflict. After having read in a previous piece that his favorite Jew is Michael Savage, I honestly didn’t expect that. For those who don’t know Savage, he is a rabid pro-Israel activist.
Anyway, none of that makes a difference. Israel will go on with its war crimes, the U.S. will continue to back them, Iran will not budge, Russia and China will mutter ineffectively, then everything will go back to normal. And when the U.S. is no more, Israel will discard it as an ally, turning to greener pastures.
Of course, Israel will never find another friend like the U.S., but for Israel the short term objectives of establishing territorial dominance seem more important, and who knows, maybe they are right.
First, I’m not going to tell you how sorry I am that you ‘lost’ your mom. Death is a natural part of life, and it would be the same thing as saying “I’m sorry your mom was born.” People need to understand this fact of ‘life’, in order to understand their own place in the world.
Your comments about our health system, and politics in general, are understood. In a better world, and in other cultures, family takes care of the elderly, and they die at home. Naturally as it were. Modern medical ‘care’ has less to do with care or even life, as it has to do with regulations and, for the elderly, warehousing. Just mechanical repetition, with elderly treated as throw away and replaceable widgets.
Unfortunately, in modern life, extended family was the first thing to go. Divorce, kids moving away, or maybe even no kids at all. So many of us are ‘on our own’ and elderly have no options for care.
If one can afford 8 to 10 thousand dollars a month, a top tier nursing home will look after an elderly relative, providing first class care. But who can afford that? Otherwise the place will be staffed with negroes who don’t care about care, and in fact may likely abuse residents.
Your realization about the usefulness of politics for change is realistic. Too bad, but that’s the way it is around here.
The best thing you can do to honor your mom is to build a little shrine in your house, with a photo and memento; then remember her on special occasions, such as her birthday. Keep her visage and memory in your mind–never out of sight, out of mind. We owe our lives to those who came before, and it is important to remember them, just as it is to take care of them in this life as they took care of us when we were in need.
And don’t become depressed over our current state of political affairs. Difficult to do, I know. But despondency will do you and those around you no good. Better to mocking laugh at those politicians and policies that you have named.
Well, I am always willing to learn from new experiences and changing events, and to alter my views accordingly if necessary. The Gaza situation has opened my eyes to some things I did not realize before. I cannot stand to listen to Savage, Plante, and most of those other right-wing asssholes anymore. I’m been learning a lot from people like Chris Hedges, Caitlin Johnstone, and Lee Camp.
Many of us have had the same radical transformation. 20 years ago I waited each day for the start of Plante, Limbaugh, and Savage. Now I get my geopolitical commentary from The Duran (or as E. Michael Jones calls them “Two obscure Greek guysâ€) and view Caitlin Johnstone as a heroine in the mold of Joan of Arc. Truth-tellers are in diaspora and you need to find them rather than lazily accept the Judas goats pushed on you by TPTB.
As for your parents, while their honor remains upon earth their souls lie in the hand of God.
Blessings to you and yours.
I am very sorry for your loss. It is the Administrators and the lawyers who have ruined health care. Not the doctors. Doctors work harder than most people they are slaves to the system.
The amount of Jewish hate is staggering. Yes, the occupy and have committed many crimes but hasn’t the other side. If you go back to 1948, the UN tried to broker a deal and it was much more generous than what the ended up with. Both sides are the problem and Jesus is the answer.
Why men still cling to territory of dirt and not turn to the territory of the soul. That is where true peace and love will be found.
Jesus died for everyone and little pieces of “homeland” are just an illusion of the devil. Your and mine and everyone’s homeland is in humility and in Christ. St. Theresa of Avila said Humility is Truth.
Man wants to be the ruler, wants to be proud, wants to decide. BUT GOD IS Master and in HIS Sacred Heart we only Rest.
Poor Israel Poor Palestine – stop and find true love in Christ.
condolences on your loss, and commiseration on your views of the medical, military, industrial complex. i was a care giver for my mother for her last 7 years of her life. she was and always will be an amazing woman, my father passed on 23 years ago and she lived on her own after his passing, as she was fiercely independent. she never had a driver’s license, as her father was an old school patriarchal german, who felt women shouldn’t drive, she went everywhere on her bike insisting on bring her groceries home in big baskets on her bike. she and my father had been married for 53 years when he passed on from prostrate cancer but it was the chemo that killed him and he would have lived longer if he had done nothing at all.
my mother naturally became depressed but never said anything to me about her feelings. that was when one of her umpteen doctors prescribed xanax to her at the age of 79, which was against all standard medical recommendations for a patient that age. she thought it was a wonder drug, this was the happy pill, that made life wonderful again. it was then she started to have balance issues and while riding her bike to the store she fell and broke her wrist, that began her whole downward spiral. her umpteen doctors all wrote her umpteen prescriptions, while all the time being fully aware of the laundry list of medications. they put her into a pharmaceutical haze and then an idiot gerontologist diagnosed her with alzheimer’s based on the most simplistic memory test i could imagine, even though two separate neurologists stated they saw no evidence in their cat scans. this douchebag prescribes aricept which then began giving her terrifying hallucinations. the answer was more drugs of course and they then prescribed risperdal, a horrible anti psychotic, that zombified her and repressed her swallowing reflex, causing her to develop pneumonia. at this point her attending physician in the hospital, recommend a feeding tube and a nursing home. at that point i had enough of doctors and told him i was taking her home instead, he then said if she was my mom that’s what i’d do. i told him, yeah but my mom gets a feeding tube and a nursing home, why’s that? he said he had to think of the legal consequence’s of my mother choking to death under his care. well there you have it, doctor’s practicing law rather than medicine.
i took her home and flushed all ten of her prescriptions down the toilet, in a couple of days her mind cleared and she was my mother again, she never regained her balance and needed care but could walk with a walker. in the end, it cost me my marriage as my wife actually told me “at least my parents died before they became a burden!” but it was worth it as, my mother could live out her life happily without worrying about the future, and i now having many fond memories of that time with her and my then good son.
i agree with all three of your points on the medical military industrial complex, after covid the mask has fallen, the few doctors that spoke out against the warcrimes being passed off as emergency medical measures, were quickly disbarred or blackball, fired to put the fear into the rest, who then participated willing in this gross violation of the nuremberg code and their hippocratic oath. all we need to know is that darpa funded ralph baric, and this mrna genetic engineering experiment, and baric owns a 2015 on attaching a spike protein complex to an existing coronavirus.
that’s enough for me, i will die a natural death of what ever it is that kills me, if it ever gets too painful or impossible, it takes about 5 minutes to end your life peacefully and with dignity. these bastards will never touch me again and they will not strip me financially of everything i ever earned, to buy a few more of the worst years of my life, no i am totally free now and will never allow these demons to disinherit my family through their medical flimflamery, not gonna happen.
i never say that people die, for in fact they pass on, to the next realm of existence and in fact can reach back to us in this realm, and become the wind in our sails. paraphrasing the tao te ching, the spirit of the ancestors carries us forward in this generation.
My condolences.
One more thing, I will NEVER go into a nursing home. And my children know to just leave me die in my house on my terms as I do not fear death. If I can no longer take care of myself I’m outa here.
Why do people cling to this insane asylum?
Agree. Great post. Thank you.