How the health care system fails our parents

My mother has Alzheimers and is in a very fancy retirement home — it looks nicer than the Ritz. A significant amount is spent to have her in a beautiful surrounding where I assumed the care would be top notch. As we all know, putting a loved on in a care facility is the single more heart wretching, humiliating and ego bursting experience any loving child can have. It is with this and the fact that at the best of times I am concerned about my loved ones that I jumped at the chance when my mother got a spot in what is widely considered the most coveted place in Ontario.

We are also brown, from India and Muslim. It should come as no surprise that the top facility in Ontario is mainly populated by WASPy people with considerable assets. I mean, how many people can spend this kind of money on care. I thought putting my mother in the Ritz-like environment would be the correct thing to do. Sadly it has not been. It started off 18 months ago (a day after she moved in) with the head nurse telling me “I’m surprised they let people like you in.” I brushed it aside and moved on. “People only need time to get used to her” I said to myself.

The past 18 months have not been a totally smooth ride. My mother transitioned slowly to this place. I put in place an amazing auxillary team that supported her, and while not perfect, it chugged along. The Auxillary Team has slowly turned into an amazing first response team.

I would often get frustrated that she would not appreciate the beautiful building or the fine dining. It was only when the youngest (and I often say the wisest) member of the team pointed out that I am trying to fit a square peg in a round hole that I began thinking about it. No matter how fancy the place, it is an elite white person’s world. My mother is brown, full of life and loves samosas and Bollywood. She simply cannot fit in this world where the treat of the day is eating smoked salmon and watching people read out Shakespere.

I think she is a total trooper and a complete star to adjust at this age with Alzheimers to a world she was never really part of. As much as I have tried to make her last years as comfortable as possible, I am now realizing, with the help of an amazing team that the vision of the life I had for her simply is not a place where she fits in.

However the world she lives in will not understand her achievents or her cultural idiosyncracies. They will not understand that she managed to network and have “sitabis” (indian style luncheons) with the entire community that she was part of, or that she loved to watch Gujarati plays. No, this is a different world. No matter how hard she tries, I have now realized that the world I have made her to live in simply won’t work.

The entire situation came to a clash when the discriminated care my mother gets became obvious when they kept my mother in a sofa in front of the elevator, she had a t-shirt on top, her feet were in a t-shirt at the bottom, no panties and was pulling the top and bottom t-shirts together to cover her private parts. She was left naked in public. Yes. Naked in public. On questioning the nurse I was told , “We offered care but she refused”.

Now, I have tried to look at this in many different view points, but no matter how I do, I cannot help but think that there is no situation in life when I would leave a woman naked in public. In fact, I wouldn’t leave anyone naked in public.

Another situation happened 2 days after that when my oldest brother showed up for his once-a-year annual dinner. They sent her for dinner with her diaper OVER her pants (versus under it). The response again was “We offerred care but she refused”. Again, no matter how I look at it no one should have to go to dinner with a diaper over their pants.

Is this abuse? Likely.

Is there anything I can do about it? No — because our system has sadly failed people like my mother.

And I now wonder if even I have.

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