On St. Patrick's Day I Celebrate Mom's 90th Birthday

This St. Patrick’s day my sweet mom is 90 years old. She is totally bed-ridden, dependent on a wheel chair. Her feet and hands have atrophied during the two years of forced lockdowns when the staff stopped any activity with the nursing home long-term residents because they were too busy putting on masks, gloves, and gowns to protect themselves from the pandemic the government called Covid-19.

Before March 14, 2020, when the health department swept in and isolated those with the flu and moved everyone else in other un-sanitized rooms, she was able to move her legs, pushing her wheelchair around the hallways, visiting with other patients, enjoying the company of other humans. Two years later, of complete isolation and no physical activity, being forced to her bed with a closed door, she is almost like a vegetable, barely able to hold or move her head, arms, legs, and hands. Her health is a far cry from the robust 72 year-old who climbed on a ladder to clean a roof covered with dead leaves.

There was not even a veneer of pretense that our loved ones were cared for properly in the nursing home. Every time I was allowed to see her through facetime, she was always in bed. The staff seldom attempted to put her in a wheel chair, or exercise her muscles, give her mental activities of any sort. Not only were they not providing anything for physical movement, the rooms were atrociously filthy, her personal belongings scattered on the floor and in garbage bags where they were initially thrown by the health department and those hired to move all patients from their rooms on the ill-fated day of March 14, 2020. As a result, her muscles have completely atrophied in two years. Her feet look like duck paddles and her hands are beginning to curl up.

The abject fear of death from Covid has become a tool of control for the masses and the socialist Democrats and globalists will never let it go, they keep inventing new variants because the initial virus and non-stop preaching to mask, distance, and hide away from people worked so well that it brought the globe’s population and their lives to a lockdown standstill.

We no longer have a government of the people, by the people, we have a government by dictates, mandates, fear, control, corporate and technocrat censorship, and policing. They have squashed our liberties so much in the last two years that it is impossible to imagine how they have cowed 330 million people in such a short period of time with constant media ginned up and government grinding and abject fear of a virus.

Children suffered long-lasting emotional effects. An entire generation is left behind in their arrested speech development, hearing impairment, as they get their cues and learn from facial expressions of adults and teachers, facial expressions and muffled voices being covered by a mask, often two.

We are still not recovered from this tyrannical intrusion into our lives. We still suffer from the lack of useful medical care provided by nurses and doctors who are indirectly responsible of killing many people who were sent home without any treatment even though alternative and cheap meds were available.

Mom was never vaccinated, was positive once, but never had any signs of illness. Yet she was kept indoors, locked in her own room many times for periods of 14 days of isolation even though she was not sick.

Quarantine has always been for sick people and lasted 40 days, but now, the globalists in control of our medical care lock down everybody. We no longer have any rights, not even the right to breathe freely outdoors. People are so terrified that they walk in the woods alone, jog, and ride their bikes with masks on, even alone in their cars.

Many times I tried to bring  my mom out on the patio, in the sunshine, yet they refused my request or brought her out masked up even though she was not sick and nobody else was within sneezing or coughing range of her.

The human body and spirit withers when locked down so thoroughly, no matter what the age. And mom was old enough to suffer irreversible damage from such neglect. I could not even demand that they bring her out – I was ignored when I did.

The nursing home and the health department were more controlling than the Nazis have ever been in their concentration camps. Nobody could go inside to see what they were doing or not doing to their loved ones. Not that they were much better before the lockdown. In seven years they have lost seven sets of dentures for my mom. There is no excuse for that.

I do not buy the “hero” status conferred on doctors, nurses, and caretakers in general. These people were cowards.  Medicine and medical care will never be the same. Virtual visits are just pretend-medical practice. Some doctors and nurse practitioners are hiding behind a camera.

Many people with serious illnesses avoided hospitals for fear of Covid death while others were denied necessary tests and cancer treatments during the forced lockdowns. The medical profession and the government have serious blood on their hands all around the world.

A few honest doctors, who bucked the corrupt government and corporatist system, still treated their patients with all available drugs and knowledge to them, saving thousands of patients in the process; they are heroes in my book. They were treated like pariahs by the government, their medical associations, hospital administrators, medical boards, and some were fired and/or lost their licenses for doing the right thing. They ARE heroes for saving lives instead of intubating them with ventilators.

Mother smiles at me from time to time, sometimes recognizing me, and asks me if her hair is still beautiful. It is soft like silk in lovely shades of grey and snow white. She has not had a haircut in a long time and I am not sure how to make that possible as her mobility is so limited and the hair dresser quit two years ago for fear of dying of Covid.

The media has drummed up this fear non-stop and is still doing it to an extent. Dr. Fauci stoked this fear from his White House platform for two years. Only when the Democrat voter confidence numbers have tanked, Fauci disappeared, and life is beginning to return to some normalcy although it will never be the same. Too many people have died unnecessarily and too many minds and souls have been altered to the point of no return.

Mom escaped communism 42 years ago. She was vibrant and thin then. She left everything behind and the communist government confiscated everything she has ever worked for or owned: an apartment, savings, her retirement, her small plots of land, her personal belongings, and her jewelry. She never forgot that.

She was happy for so many years in my home, our home, until seven and a half years ago when she got very sick. We still took her out to the mall weekly, to her favorite Mexican restaurant, but the dementia progressed and then her relative freedom was forced into a government lockdown that destroyed her ability to move.

I celebrate today my mom’s nine decades of life, her courage, determination to be free of communism, and her strong will to live. Mom is a survivor; she recovered from things that would have killed many people: a stroke, partial paralysis, a shattered hip and surgery to fix it, transfusions, pneumonia twice, and small bone fractures which have healed quickly. But most of all, she survived 48 years of communism in the country of her birth. It is sad that in the twilight of her life, she has to spend her last days in a tyrannical society that is quickly abandoning any pretense of freedom.

 

Mom’s Nursing Home Today After 20 Months of Lockdowns

Mom's Hand

Medicare/Medicaid finally allowed us today inside my mom’s nursing home. I have not set foot inside since March 14, 2020 when she was abruptly moved from her room into isolation with another lady who was also Covid-19 free. Then she was moved back into another room, not her original one. Her personal belongings and everything that decorated her room and made it more like her own personal space were dropped off wherever the movers could find an empty surface.

I expected to find a spotless room since they have locked them down under Covid-19 pretext for almost two years now.  Instead, I found a filthy room, in bad need of sweeping, mopping, disinfecting, and bathroom cleaning. There was no surface in the room that had been cleaned in quite sometime, much less disinfected for fear of Covid-19 infection.

The air in the room was stale, nobody had opened the window to allow fresh air in since the last time I was here. So many months of visiting through a glass wall, through FaceTime, on the patio six feet apart, or no visitation at all for months on end!

I found out that the housecleaning supervisor had not worked for two weeks. One young woman came into the room, as I was trying to trash two years’ worth of garbage, discarded empty containers littering all over the place, pretending to sweep and mop in the small area left in the middle where there was no trash or no belongings discarded in a hurry long time ago, a year and a half to be exact.

People with dementia keep every wrapper that touches their hands and all disposable containers, newspapers, magazines, calendars, bits of paper, etc.

Pills of dubious origin were scattered on the floor, a sign that the patient, my mom, had spit out some of her pills when the nurses were not watching and nobody came to sweep them away in a long, long time. Some of them were beginning to disintegrate from the air humidity and were turning yellow.

Her clothes and blankets were piled high on plastic boxes and on the dirty dresser and nightstand. The closet was occupied to the top with boxes of diapers. Apparently it had become storage for the nursing floor. None of her clothes were hanging there and looked like the hangers had disappeared long ago.

A trunk by her bed had been smashed into three sections with large cracks showing. The drawers were even worse. The furniture looked like it had been picked up on the side of the road, meant for the garbage dump. Dubious stains that did not come off with Clorox wipes covered most surfaces.

After two hours of hard work, I managed to bring some semblance of normalcy to her room. None of her pictures were on the wall anymore, her bulletin board was stuck in a corner, all her artificial plants were missing, and the live ones had been dead for quite a while. Even the window sill was disgusting and dirty.

There has been no Covid-19 sanitizing in this room ever that I could tell. The new owners, Pro Medica, must not care much about their resident patients and the conditions in which they live.

There were large font bulletins posted everywhere stating that, if the staff is not vaccinated, they must wear both a mask and a shield and must be tested twice a week for Covid-19. I venture to say that it is unnecessary, as the patients are more likely to be killed by the filth surrounding them, both bacterial and viral, because nobody seems to be cleaning or disinfecting much.

I left a message with the administrator; they never answer the phone, they are too busy being Covid-19 compliant every minute of the day. Thank God nobody is sick with Covid-19 but I am not sure about other dangerous infections from the lack of sanitation.

I felt like I traveled back in time and found a filthy socialized medicine hospital in a former Soviet satellite country, that is how bad this nursing home presented itself to visitors. I was the only one for those two hours and I was utterly shocked and disappointed that this exists in America.

Nursing Home Pandemonium

My dear mother whom we love and cherish is locked up in a prison not of her own making, in pain and suffering, on oxygen and not understanding why she cannot come out of her room.

Her prison is tightly monitored by staff who were unable to stop the spread of the Covid-virus. Formerly free of it, she was moved from her private nursing home room to a semi-private room, in the very same bed and room just vacated by patient Marlene (not her real name) who was Covid-positive and sick.

Marlene had been moved with the other 75 Covid-positive patients the very same day that my Covid-negative mom was moved into her bed before the room was thoroughly sanitized. To say that the move was irresponsible, it is an understatement. Nobody from the nursing home bothered to call us and let us know of her status or their plans to move her. 

After the fact, a corporate marketing guy from Colorado, not a caretaker or a doctor, called us first to let us know that she was Covid-negative, and a second time to tell us that she was moved from her room.  We made numerous phone calls to the nursing home, but they remained unanswered.

Communication and information from the nursing home has been almost non-existent. The phone rang unanswered and all voicemail calls and questions we left remained unreturned as well. Mom was locked tighter than prison. Wheeling her out of her room to a glassed lobby through which we could have visited for five minutes happened only once.

As some patients went home for brief visits and came back carrying the Covid-virus, the movement of patients even within the nursing facility stopped. The residents became prisoners in their own rooms and the virus spread. Eighteen patients alone in the Arcadia section were sick with the virus. Four staff were Covid-positive as well, a total of 21 as of two weeks ago, as admitted by administration. This prompted the Health Department of Virginia to come and test everyone last Friday, May 15.

Residents have died but the true cause and statistics were not known to the public or to the patients’ families.

The “corporate people” (as one nursing home employee put it) came last week and must have ordered, possibly per Health Department of Virginia instructions, the grouping of positive patients with other positive ones (75) and the negative patients with the rest of the negative ones (26).

Was it wise to move the 26 negative patients into rooms vacated by positive Covid-patients? I am not sure what the intent was with this move, but I know that mom came down with pneumonia three days after being moved from her room. Coincidence? I do not believe in coincidences; I believe in cause and effect.

The emergent evidence of the “plan-demic” has shown that the worst attributes of small-minded people drunk on their own power and control, were magnified, and have robbed the U.S. population of their Constitutional freedoms under the guise of protecting them.  

Euphemistic terms such “social distancing” should be called what they are, “isolation,” there is nothing social about hiding in your own home, behind a mask, or snitching on your neighbors and businesses that may not follow the lockdown dictates.  

The elites videotaping themselves in their mansions to prove that “we are in this together” is so hypocritical to most who have lost their jobs permanently, their businesses, and may or may not have enough savings to feed their families and pay their bills while millionaires are well set in their banks and trust funds.

“Be safe,” and other phraseology invented for the benefit of robbing us of freedom of movement, assembly, right to make a living, and freedom of religion, should have been really called what they are, forced imprisonment into our homes and servitude to dangerous vaccines produced in a hurry, chip implantation, and personal control through data.

Many people were not safe in their homes just as the 101 nursing home residents in northern Virginia were not safe in their lockdown, most of them were positive and many symptomatic.

For the “greater good” is offensive. No good can ever come out when the government chooses who is “essential” and who is “non-essential” to society and to the economy. Nazi Germany picked winners and losers and it did not end well for the Jewish people.

The “new normal” is offensive too. There is nothing normal about anything that has happened to us in the last ten weeks and is still happening.

Egomaniacs and megalomaniacs with a Messianic complex have crawled into the limelight, mostly Democrats at local and state levels, placing healthy people in quarantine as well as sick ones far beyond the normal 40 days, prompting many Americans to demonstrate against insane executive orders and to demand that their churches, schools, small businesses, and doctors’ offices be open after ten weeks of lockdown in various states.

Sound reasoning, proper science and medicine were the last employed in the decision-making process of government in many countries that followed the U.S. lead and example. Sweden who allowed herd immunity to take its normal flu toll has not been any worse off in the number of patients infected and the number of those who have died.

Instead of locking down healthy people, we should have protected the most vulnerable, the elderly in the nursing homes. Instead, we have exposed them unnecessarily and thoughtlessly because they have few lobbyists and champions who defend their rights.

Stop waiting for a new vaccine. Flu vaccines are only partially effective as the viruses mutate. Even Bill Gates admitted, “The efficacy of vaccines in older people is always a huge challenge, it turns out the flu vaccine isn’t that effective in elderly people. And that actual decision of, ok, let’s go and give this vaccine to the entire world, governments will have to be involved because there will be some risk and indemnification needed.”

Update on my mom: She is now free of oxygen and feeling better. The drug cocktail is working and she now breathes on her own,  97% oxygen saturation. I am really happy; yesterday she told me she was hungry. 

It is unforgivable that the nursing home moved her from a private room where she was Covid-negative, into an infected room previously occupied by a Covid-positive patient who was sick. And the room was never properly sanitized. 

God Sent Angels in Our Path Today

Today God gave me a profound lesson in faith, humanity, and prayer.

After I drove for one hour with two very sore knees and the artificial one still healing from surgery six weeks ago, I made it to mom’s nursing home room.

She was already dressed, happy, and ready to go. Her childish giddiness that she was getting a hair cut today was almost infectious.

The nurse put her in her wheelchair and the CNA pushed her outside so we could wait for the handicapped taxi I had called. It arrived promptly and, 3 miles and $10 later we were dropped off at the mall. The driver assured us he would come back to pick us up in two hours. I paid him for both trips.

At 3 p.m. sharp the taxi was nowhere in sight. I called the Red Cab Co. and was told that there were no handicapped taxis within 20 miles of us.

We waited 45 minutes, I was in more pain, and about to cry not knowing how to get mom back.

While in the dark garage, I said a silent prayer and, out of the corner of my eye I saw four young policemen on bikes cycling in our direction, all smiles. I have parked in this garage for ten years and I’ve never seen before cops on bikes.

I asked them if they could lift mom and put her in the front seat and her wheelchair in the trunk. Not only did they do that, they even buckled her seatbelt. They waited until we drove off to make sure we were all right.

I returned mom to the nursing home, the CNA took the wheelchair out and put mom in. Out the door came her nurse Linda who carried her to the ice cream social in progress. I kissed mom good bye and walked out the door.

I finally broke down and cried in the car - I did not want to upset mom. She was so happy with her new haircut! God sent a few angels in our path to help us today and I am grateful.

Dentures

 

President Washington's dentures
Mount Vernon Estate Museum

As I am preparing to take mom to the dentist to replace the fourth dentures she had lost, thrown away with a meal or dumped in the trash, I am grateful to the Etruscans, the precursors to the Romans who lived in the northern part of Latium, in today’s Tuscany. Etruscans were expert denture makers and their skill was not replicated until the 19^th century.

Etruscans were so skilled at extracting decayed teeth and replacing them with partial or full dentures, that they were renowned all over the ancient world. The bridgework was made from gold and the teeth were carved from ivory, carefully resembling the original tooth.  If a person died, their good teeth were removed and used in dentures for the upper classes.

In the medieval and Renaissance periods, the rich could actually pay poor people to have teeth removed and then implanted in “gums” of ivory. Women of the 1500s had their gums pierced with wires in order to secure dentures or partials in place. In the 1600s uppers were kept in place by springs that were so taut that pressure was necessary to keep the mouth shut.  Not paying constant attention to these springs could result in a mouth flying open uncontrollably.

The first realistic looking dentures were made by Parisian doctors in the 19th century – they were durable porcelain teeth baked in one piece. Dr. Claudius Ash adopted the procedure in America. 

One gory practice had individuals collect the teeth of dead soldiers from the battlefield; sometimes these soldiers were not really dead thus the term “teeth robbers” was born. Many Europeans had dentures made with “Waterloo” teeth and  quite a few Americans had “Civil War” teeth.

Porcelain teeth put an end to teeth robbery. The porcelain teeth were embedded in vulcanized rubber. About the same time period, the practice of using nitrous oxide or “laughing gas” for anesthesia made dentistry less painful.

It is always a good idea to take good care of your natural teeth, however, should that fail, you can thank Etruscans for inventing dentures and modern medicine for perfecting dentures and implants.

Mom Turned 86 Years Young

Mom turned 86 years young on St. Patrick’s Day. She is a skeletal figure of her former self but she has a strong will to live. Three weeks ago she fell and fractured her hip in at least three places. Dr. Reeves’ skillful surgical intervention put her bone fragments back together again and she convalesced for eleven days in the hospital, in and out of consciousness. She gained nine pounds on decent food and dedicated care. It was stellar nursing compared to ManorCare.

Maybe it was bad luck that she fell; however, if the African CNAs would have come to her help, she would not have fallen in the first place, trying to walk to get some water. Then they let her linger in pain from Wednesday afternoon until early Thursday evening when I arrived from a trip, before they sent her to a hospital to be x-rayed.

She had fallen during the three-year stay at ManorCare more than fifteen times and, thankfully, each time she walked away with a painful bruise or two. But this time her luck ran out. She was gaunt and malnourished because the nursing staff lost her dentures four times and often gave her pills on an empty stomach which caused her to vomit whatever food she did ingest. When she fell directly on her right hip, it crushed it as if she had been in a severe car accident. It was a comminuted fracture.

We could barely dress and lift her onto the wheelchair for fear that we might cause her unnecessary distress. I called a wheelchair van taxi to transport her to her favorite restaurant to celebrate her 86 years of life. I knew she would not eat much, between physical therapy and pain meds, but getting her out of the house and into the world was hope and life outside of four walls.

Mom is now a shell of her former self, frail, child-like, sweet some days, and a hellion on others. After her stroke last year, her incipient dementia had gotten worse and, on most days, she knows we are related, knows my name, but I am either her sister or her mom.

When she was 72, I found her on top of a ladder trying to clean the gutters stuffed with dry leaves. She was very active and moving about all the time. But she had slowed down after a fall on wet leaves in the driveway. She had to wear a corset for six months to repair the hairline fractures in the tailbone and ribs.

Mom took so much pleasure in raising a garden and flowers.  She took trips to Walmart with her Mimi Eileen every spring to buy plants, seeds, pots, and fertilizer. There was a sparkle in her eyes, and a sprint in her walk, as if she was going to a very important event that she did not want to miss. Spring was on its way, mom said, she could smell it in the air and hear it in the melodious birds chirping in the barren trees.

Mom had a green thumb and felt so happy and free among plants and flowers. She brought back to life potted plants our neighbors put out in the street for trash pickup and then she gave them back to the owners green and often in bloom. How did she do that? It was magic.

She was trying to make up for 48 years of living in a communist drab cinder block tiny apartment where the only concessions to a garden were a couple of red geranium plants she grew on the window sill in winter and on the balcony during the summer.

When she first arrived in the U.S., mom had such a large and beautiful garden in our faculty housing yard at MSU that people would drive by in awe watching her toil in dirt with glee, waving at them from her white wide-brim hat. When the eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, green onions, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, okra, and green beans would start coming in, all neighbors had fresh vegetables from her garden.

As mom aged, the large garden dwindled to a few tomato plants and peppers and a few roses and geraniums. I would find her picking Japanese beetle off the rose bushes and putting them in a jar filled with water. Somehow she felt that killing them this way was a more humane way to dispose of God’s creatures that dared to crawl out of dirt to shred her rose bushes.

Every spring, Anthony, our trusted lawn care man, would trim the azalea bushes and the Japanese magnolia we had planted twenty years earlier when we moved into our lovely southern home.  Mom would harass him, trim that, trim this, to my exasperation and his ever patient and smiling demeanor. Anthony had a bossy mom just like her at home and he always did their bidding with an unmistakable southern charm, “yes, ma’am.”

We still talk with love and longing about our fig tree in the back yard that would give so many figs, enough to make jars after jars of preserves each year. The tree was there when we bought the house. If the new owners have not cut it down, the tree is fifty-eight years old now. You never know who will enjoy the fruit of your labor when you plant a fruit tree or a shade tree.

We miss the gorgeous Ginkgo biloba tree in the back yard. Its leaves turned bright yellow in early fall; they blanketed the ground with a thick and beautiful yellow carpet of waxy leaves. Tiger and Bogart loved to chase moles and lizards in this impromptu playground. When Tiger passed, the yellow leaves would cover his grave.

It was mom’s first home since the communists had confiscated my parents’ apartment, their savings, and their pensions. And dad’s relatives took all their personal possessions when dad passed away in 1989. To this day, when she has no clarity, her scrambled brain remembers the confiscation and theft but I am the culprit.

Perhaps she is right, if I had not left the communist country legally, perhaps she would not have followed me here as a defector from communism and would have kept her property. Those commies did not take lightly the acts of defiance of their prison society citizens escaping from their tyranny and oppression.

Mom is 86 years young today. She came a very long way that flew by too quickly, almost nine decades of life full of good and bad experiences. She said, she did not care if she was 100 today as long as she was still alive and breathing, enjoying the sunshine and her plants. She has an assorted collection of small potted plants in her room at ManorCare. When she cannot water or tend to them, she makes sure that Alamatu does it and brings them in and out of the sun.

I have to remember Marcus Aurelius' advice to enjoy the moment because the present is a split second in eternity, minuscule, transitory, and insignificant.

Seeing mom in the outdoors again, my eyes teared up. I thank God, Mom is still with us! I was not sure she was going to make it alive from this difficult surgery. But here we are, we live another day to enjoy each other’s company in the Virginia sunshine, with bright blue skies and a blustery wind.

Obamacare Socialized Medicine Rationing and the Elderly

Healthcare is not a right, it is a service provided by doctors and nurses who went to school to learn how to care for a sick human being. And they expect to be compensated for their services. Surely you would not expect your mechanic who learned how to fix your car, repair it for free, because it is your right to have a running vehicle.

Health insurance is not a right either, it is also a service. Can you control what an insurance company does and what pricing systems they use? Can you control what government does now that they are in charge of your socialized health insurance and healthcare, including the 15-member death panel?

We know the Senate does not care about Americans’ health insurance premiums and the quality of their healthcare. If they did, they would not have passed without reading and then failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), socialized medicine under government control. Passed by Democrats in the dead of night, and deemed by the Supreme Court a tax, ACA became a burden for Americans who were mostly satisfied with their previous premiums and their healthcare delivery. Sure, there were improvements necessary but not an entire overhaul worth trillions.

What good is having a shiny insurance card that says you are entitled to Obamacare but that care is denied to you when doctors are not taking your insurance, the quality of care is very poor, procedures are denied due to rationing and age, and your deductibles shot through the roof?

Like most Americans, who saw their health insurance premiums skyrocket and their care worsen since 2010, I am confused why politicians are forcing this monstrosity called Obamacare on us. Congressmen have exempted themselves from Obamacare and are protected by their own private plans but the rest of us will eventually have to suffer under the socialized medicine of the type that sentenced baby Gard to death in the U.K.

Seniors are already treated like "units" in hospitals. My mom was recently the victim of Obamacare in one of the alleged best hospitals in Northern Virginia. She was kept solely on IV fluids for three days, even though she is skin and bones, so that she would not throw up and force doctors to give her the upper GI and endoscopy tests she needed. Instead, they treated her for a bladder infection which was not the reason why she had been brought to the ER - she was vomiting blood and had stroke level BP.  She was crying for solid food!

Her doctor explained to me that they could not do the upper GI and endoscopy because the radiology group located in the hospital gave priority to outpatients, unless an inpatient was currently bleeding and/or vomiting. She vomited but they ignored her. Was it because she is 85 years old and an Obamacare "unit" and not worth spending the money on, or was it because she is a legal immigrant?

She was starved for three days and her important medicines for conditions like blood pressure and dementia were not administered, causing a serious relapse in her physical and mental condition. This is medical abuse when you tell a patient that comes into the ER with serious symptoms that they cannot have procedures except on an outpatient basis at a later date and withhold important meds that they are currently on.

No amount of protests, complaints, or inquiries on my part made a difference. This is what happens under socialized medicine when bureaucrats who know best make life and death decisions over us and our loved ones.

Mom lived under the boot of communism and escaped to this country in her late forties. The communists stripped her of everything she had ever earned, owned, and saved, including her pension after 30 years of work. She was not even given my dad’s pension. She lived here for over three decades under relative freedom. It is sad that now, in her twilight years, she is made to suffer again and will die under the neglect of socialized medicine that allocates funds to more productive individuals. Mom was productive too in her younger years.

Little Charlie Gard lost his battle with socialized medicine rationing in the U.K. Those who are unable to protect themselves, children and the elderly, are the first victims of socialized and rationed medical care because they cannot defend themselves. The way we treat seniors, the weak, and the most vulnerable speaks volumes of our lack of civilization and compassion. We should protect wildlife and our habitat but it seems that we care more for minnows and polar bears than we do human beings.

Mom lost five pounds she could not afford to lose while in hospital care for three days. They were more worried that she might fall than her actual survival. She was not fed anything for three days except water and IV antibiotics. She was lucky to have gotten out with her life.

It is bad enough that some elderly are physically abused in nursing homes and/or neglected by underpaid and understaffed medical personnel; they must now suffer the indignity of denied hospital medical care in the rationing environment of Medicare and Medicaid that were shortchanged in order to help fund Obamacare, and by the scarcity of doctors and nurses created by Obamacare.

So much for the unaffordable Affordable Care Act that provides substandard medical care and offers expensive insurance premiums to Americans who are now faced with huge deductibles each year, possible loss of insurance, and fines by the IRS for non-compliance.

You Too Will Be Old Someday

My beautiful Mom, 2016

Every time I go to the nursing home to see mom, I am reminded how self-absorbed and neglectful families have become in this country. For the last three years, on my weekly trips to see my mom, the patients, whose relatives never come by or only show up at Christmas to make sure they are still in the will, are sadly spinning their hours away in pain, loneliness, and suffering until the final moment when God calls them to Heaven.

Time is a precious commodity and people of all walks of life have become really selfish with their time. Senescence is an inconvenience in our western culture, not a source of wisdom and experience that we should seek and learn from. Many less developed cultures praise old age and respect the experience and knowledge gained from the long life of their elders. They don’t even have words in their language for nursing homes or assisted living, these are alien concepts. The tribe takes care of their sick and old.

The old men and women, who are now patients, were someone’s mom, dad, the soldier, the warrior, the teacher, the nurse, the home maker, the farmer, the mathematician, and the skilled builder who erected your home.  That someone seldom shows their face in the hallways to witness the pain, suffering, abuse, neglect, unsavory smells mixed with yells of help, to check on their loved ones, who were once strong, healthy, and full of life just like you.

We let poorly paid strangers from faraway lands feed mom and dad three meals a day of institutional food, bathe them, change their wet beds hopefully on time, their diapers, their outfits, wash and bleach their clothes to unrecognizable colors,  and give them medicine and proper care.

The nursing homes are always understaffed but it gets worse on weekends. As I limp in pain to see mom, I wished I could take her out of this place and have someone care for her in my home. But not every state pays for skilled nursing care at home. I can’t lift and do all the things for my mom that she needs, even though she has shrunk in size. No matter how many times I go visit her, or how hard I try to make her stay more home-like, it is never the same and I feel that I have failed her as a daughter and as a human being.

There are some patients who have outlived any immediate family or have never had any relatives to begin with. Nobody ever comes to see them. They are all alone in the world, sullen, and silent amid the cold and cruel world around them. Nobody notices them anymore and they seldom make eye contact.

I make a point to talk to some of them, touch them, bring a treat, and say hello. A twinkle of the former liveliness softens their furrowed faces, bringing out a short-lived smile. And a bit of sugar free chocolate sweetens the day, albeit it momentarily.

Catalina Grigore wrote recently about a 70-year old who died in a nursing home.  Having been Europeanized, Romania now has nursing homes, sad places where people go to die. The nurses did not like her, she seemed mean and uncommunicative. She left behind a pointed lesson in kindness that brought many to tears. https://voce.biz/info/2017/mar/23/aceasta-batrana-nu-era-suportata-de-nimeni-din-azilul-in-care-si-a-trait-batrinetea-ce-au-gasit-ingrijitoarele-dupa-ce-aceasta-a-murit/

You see an old lady, senile, with strange habits, a sad face, lost eyes who mentally contemplates times gone by, forced to do things she does not want to do, and stubborn. You think, she interferes with your daily routine, and that’s irritating, but you have no idea who she was or how she got there.

Inside she is the naughty child she used to be, skipping, jumping rope, and climbing trees in her grandma’s back yard; she is the beautiful twenty year-old who just graduated from college, in love, engaged, and soon to be married; she is the forty year-old with kids who are now adolescents; she is the fifty year-old crying into the pillow at night because her house is empty, the children’s laughter is gone, the nest is empty, and the life that revolved entirely around them is now gone; she is the sixty year-old who took care of and spoiled her grandbabies; and she does not know how she got to be seventy and then eighty, and so sick and lonely.

Everybody abandoned her – they either died or moved away and forgot her while living their busy lives.  Her husband passed away and she is frightened. She is now old, no longer the vibrant young woman who could move mountains. She is no longer a mom, a wife, a grandma, a sister, or an aunt. She is just a door number in the nursing home. Her name appears on a small plaque but the nursing staff calls her by her door number. It is much easier than trying to pronounce her foreign name.

Mother Nature is cruel – it robs us in the end of all that makes life worth living. Strength, health, youth, stamina, and joy of living abandon us.

In her moments of clarity, I asked my mom how she felt about her treatment in the nursing home. What she said brought me to tears.

“We are still young inside and healthy, dressed in our finest, ready to go shopping, to work, to a fine restaurant, dancing the night away at a party, loving and living.  But the nursing staff treats us with contempt because we are helpless. They argue with us to do their bidding. They want their shift to go smoothly and fast. Can you not see my soul and my crushed desires behind my shaking hands and my wrinkled face? I lost my children, my family, and everything I’ve ever loved; can you not be patient and kind with me? I don’t have much left in this world, just this old, aching, body who does not want to respond to movement. We are not ready to die and we certainly don’t want to die alone next to strangers.”

Just remember, if you live long enough, you too will be old someday, at the mercy of strangers, helpless, racked with pain, and arthritic.

 

My Box of Random Memories

I opened the box carefully. I have not seen its contents since May of 1989 after my Daddy’s passing.  The round Pobeda watch with a blue dial and a brown leather band was the first object I picked up. It was Dad’s watch. He was wearing it the day they threw him off the refinery crane into a pit of metal shavings. I think uncle Ion had replaced the leather band because it looked too new. I was surprised that there was no scratch or evidence of the severe fall that cracked Dad’s skull but this delicate glass did not even have a visible scrape. The winding mechanism still runs; I am not sure if it keeps good time. 

There is a small wooden spoon I painted in the tenth grade with the head of a typical peasant girl dressed in Romanian ethnic scarf. I saved it in memory of my grandmother whom I used to watch prepare food for our family with such a simple wooden spoon decorated with chiseled burns onto the handle.

I pulled out an intricately hand-made leather wallet. I opened the folds and the smell of leather wafted like a fine perfume.  Dad gave it to my husband as a wedding present 40 years ago; it looks as it did the day my Dad purchased it. Bill never wore it because it was too big, it did not fit American dollars but I saved it. There are no slots for credit cards; back then, credit cards were unheard of. We conducted business with cash, personal checks, and traveler’s checks. Farmers used the old system of barter. People strapped for cash paid for the doctor’s visit with chicken or a dozen fresh eggs.

Dad used to order hand-made fine wool suits for his son-in-law but a gentleman farmer did not need such fancy clothes. We always gave them away to a Chinese friend who wore the same size. Dad never knew and he continued to order one new suit each year. I am sure, it cost him a pretty penny. I did not have the heart to tell him to stop; it made him happy to keep my ex well-suited. Dad’s cousin was a cobbler who made fine leather shoes to order. They were beautiful but very uncomfortable. Bill never wore those either. We gave those away too but we did tell Dad the truth about the shoes.

A delicate ladies watch, well-worn, was my gold watch I bought when I first started to work in the U.S. I am not sure why I bought a real gold Swiss watch for the grand sum of $150, my weekly pay. I wanted something that would last a long time, which it did, but also something valuable that no communist would ever confiscate just because they were in power. I was told Wyler Swiss watches  are no longer made.

At the bottom of the box is an album which Mom assembled when Dad passed away. I opened a few pages and I realized that they are all photos from his funeral. So painful to look at his casket, the mourners, the flowers, his frozen face in death, barely recognizable after the long suffering in a hospital that gave him no food or fluid infusions for three weeks prior to his death.  Aunt Marcella fed him droppers of liquid and kept him alive until he lost so much weight that his organs began to fail.

Aunt Marcella, now 92 years old, is still alive and, following a successful broken hip repair surgery, has been moved to a nursing home that caters to the elderly with special medical needs who have no immediate relatives. Such places did not exist under communism, families took care of the elderly. But families have split up all over the world now.

A sterling broach, now tarnished black, is my 1977 wedding present from Dad. He bought it in the Omnia department store in our home town for 900 lei, literally more than his entire month’s salary. He had seen me admire it in the window every time we strolled past the department store on weekends. It was such an extravagant gift! I cleaned it and the delicately woven silver looked brand new again. Tiny amethysts cabochons decorated the round surface. It must have been made in China because it was the only trading partner for fine jewelry during the communist era.

A silver fish pendant, covered in delicate cloisonné scales, was a gift which Mom brought back when she traveled to the home country in the mid-nineties. There is an old silver violin and a frog pin I collected from the early 1980s. They have oxidized as well, not having been touched in decades.

A beaded flower necklace I painstakingly strung bead by bead added color to the Memory Box. I was so homesick and lonely in 1978, I picked up the hobby from a craft book. An experimental artist at heart, I could not afford to paint or draw, materials were hard to find in the backwoods where we lived and probably expensive, way out of reach for our $200 per month income. But beads, a needle, scissors, and fishing nylon thread were cheap. And my eyes were sharp as an eagle’s back then. One solitaire gold earring, still shining, was stuck in the red velvet lining in the corner. I wondered who lost the other one.

A black-beaded and quite heavy evening bag, with its brass snaps and chain turned green from the passage of time, was not missing any of the intricate design opaque beads. Daddy gave it to me before my high school prom to match the red woven polyester dress. I have worn this black bag many times since to parties and held it close to my heart and wrist. It was something tangible from the Old World that I missed so much. And Daddy worked really hard to buy me this special gift.

The brass key to the Memory Box is still held by a red and white silk tassel. The beautiful mother of pearl inlay swirled delicate cranes. The box came all the way from Korea in our friend’s luggage who was assigned there on military duty.  He had expensive taste and knew how to pick lasting gifts. The dark wood and lacquer stood the test of time quite well despite the humidity in the South.  

What will happen to this box one day, who will throw its contents away and replace them with her cherished memories?

Contemplating Mortality

Handsome Bogart, 18-years old
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2017

I used to think that it was rather morbid that my in-laws had purchased their burial plots when my husband was a small child. Every time we went for a visit, we stayed in a hotel across from the hilly Memorial Gardens, with a large white praying statue on top. The lush green grass and the occasional Canada geese grazing on the slopes were peaceful and comforting evidence of perennial life.

Every time Ray would drive by he would joke in his inimitable dark humor that he bought his wife an anniversary gift and she never used it. It gave me shivers, imagining my husband’s parents deceased.

As the way of all flesh goes, it seems to be closer and closer that Joan may have to use that anniversary gift from long, long time ago. Time flew by and, as it did, we thought of living, of family, of togetherness, of life’s accomplishments, not of mortality. We thought of ourselves as living forever until someone close or known to us got really sick and died. We brushed away the annoying thought of death, as if it would never happen to us eventually. Yet we all leave this earth as dust, a short lived spark in the memory of those who know us, perhaps love us, who are still alive and left behind.

I had an eerie feeling the first time I visited my Dad’s grave. It was perhaps because I was really sick when he died and I could not attend the funeral so many thousands of miles away. In a sense, I never really had closure. I stared for hours at the pictures of his funeral my uncle had sent me, but it was not the same. It was as if he was still alive in some far away corner of the world.

But I was staring then at this corner of the world and reality slapped me in the face. My Daddy was but dust and my memories of our lives together for the first twenty years of my life. With the grace of God, Dad and Mom made me, cared for me, and loved me enough to let me go to a better place so far away. How do you ever thank your parents for choosing life?

I knew Dad’s mortal remains where interred there, but his spirit was somewhere else, in Heaven, but in some ways it lived inside of me. It was so quiet around me, you could almost hear every sound nature made, buzzing of bees, the wind moving the tall grasses, and the leaves twirling on tree branches in the gentle breeze. The earth was alive but my Daddy was part of its dust. His bones were resting in a bag deep in the earth, the wooden coffin perhaps long decayed. I planted a flower on his grave wondering if sufficient rain would keep it alive after my departure. How long would it be before it withered and died, turning to dust?

My mom is losing her battle with dementia and she hardly remembers her life in the correct sequential order. We are happy when she remembers our names.

My mother-in-law is paralyzed following a botched spinal operation and will be sent soon to a hospice, closer to the ultimate chapter of her life. Her beautiful blue eyes are still the eyes of the little girl she once was, not understanding what happened, why time flew by so fast.

Bogart is our beautiful Snow Shoe Siamese whom we adore. He is turning 18-years old sometime this year, we don’t know when because my daughters adopted him from the pound. The vet told us, he was one year old then. Although his previous owner abused him in the first year of his life, we gave him a good and loving life and home.

Bogart is showing signs of old age, turning lean and meowing more than usual, probably from arthritis pain, but can still do a hippodrome routine once in a while, running up and down the stairs, thinking he is a race horse. We clip his twisted claws which sometimes get snagged or tangled on various pieces of furniture, tapestry, or leather chairs. He is an old kitty, a centenarian in human years.

As hubby and I are struggling with profound health issues, we are now fully realizing that we are no longer the immortal young who thought we could live forever. It seems like yesterday when we met, the years flew by, but we never had enough time together, we wasted part of our youth with other spouses who were not our soul mates.

My husband is an American hero who dedicated his entire adult life to his country and I hope that someday he will take his proper place at Arlington National Cemetery.

We cannot understood why we were here on earth and why God created us, for what purpose, but we now understand that we are no longer immortal and we hope that we are going eventually to a good place, part of the circle of life, leaving traces of us in our children’s DNA.

Does it matter for most people where the final resting place will be? The sun will rise again, rain and snow will soak the ground, the moon will cast ghostly shadows in my beloved woods, the fierce hawkish wind will blow, and the earth will renew itself as it had done for millennia. We become again invisible atoms in the universe.

 

Blessings

Photo:  Ileana Johnson 2015

Tonight, the much awaited Snowmageddon 2017 came in the form of a wicked icy slush. Nobody must have heard of March snows – March roars in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Some grocery stores were emptied of milk and bread – the global warmists were afraid they would starve. I rushed to come home from the nursing home for fear that I might get stuck for six hours in an inch of snow as it happened two years ago on the Occoquan River Bridge.

The changing pressure is wreaking havoc inside my painful knees but I must stay mobile to see mom and to help my hubby recover from chemo. Today was a good day, she was happy, in less pain, and recognized me.

As always, I bring candy bars and chocolate to mom’s neighbors who are not diabetic. When I first got off the elevator I encountered the retired sailor with a proud tattoo on his wrist. He is always smiling and watching those who come and go on the keyed elevator. We always chat a bit and sometimes I bring him a couple of pieces of wrapped chocolate.

Mimi and I adopted Lakshmi across the hall from mom’s room. We have no idea what she says, she chatters in her Indian dialect that only her family and personal physician understand. Her room has no decorations at all; as soon as her family puts pictures on the walls, she takes them down. She refuses to wear any other outfit except one favorite dress. When the staff bathes her, they dress her in clean clothes but she changes quickly back into her favorite dress. I take her chocolate every time. We only truly communicate when she greets me with “Namaste.”

Last week Mimi ordered pizza for mom. Lakshmi and Maria came into the room and everybody ate pizza and watched TV – Lakshmi does not have a TV in her room. She is highly mobile and often checks in on mom  to make sure she has not fallen. Mom can barely stand now.

One day mom was eating breakfast in her chair and Lakshmi came in and made her bed. It seemed to give her joy to do that so we let her. It is almost comical to watch them huddled in the hallway, talking to each other in their respective languages, not one understanding what the other said, yet they nod and smile as if they have just shared a funny story.

It is so lonely for these residents, most of them don’t have any family visiting them at all or visit them infrequently. I cannot imagine not going to see my mom two or three times a week. Americans are a funny bunch, they talk about how much they miss their families, especially after they died, yet while the loved ones are still alive, they never take the time to go see them, to tell them in person how much they missed them. As a European who grew up with a very large extended family, I find that odd.

During Bingo days, Mimi and I take hand lotion bottles for prizes and bags of Lindt chocolate as a treat. The social worker makes sure those who are diabetic only get sugar free treats.

Mimi bought a large birthday cake for everyone on Mardi Gras. It was not a King cake, nobody at our local grocery store even heard of Mardi Gras much less bake such a special treat. But the residents were so happy!

I hope and pray that God continues to keep me mobile so I can bring a little joy to a few of the residents in mom’s nursing home, especially those who are immobile and trapped in their rooms. Mobility is a blessing that most of us don’t appreciate until we lose it in the twilight of our years.

Thoughts

It’s a lovely spring day with cool temperatures. It’s always cold right before Easter. The dense woods finally lost their dead leaves that had clung, despite very strong winds, to the branches all winter long, like a crispy coat of crinkled browns and beiges. Overnight, they are gone, replaced by green buds and the occasional white and pink wild flowers. The sun is penetrating to the floor, a rare occurrence; the barren branches are casting few shadows. The brave bugs are emerging from their winter slumber.

The birds have been chirping joyously since the last snow had melted. The pond by our house has been visited daily by the same flock of Canada geese, paired up for spring. One couple ventures on our lawn with its winter and lush green grass. I have not seen the deer family coming to graze, I am sure they are finding plenty to eat in the woods; they finally left my chewed up bushes alone. Maybe they will sprout again. One tulip bulb came up and a purple hyacinth is in full bloom.

I am sad that mom is not home to see her beautiful flowers, “her babies” she talked to every day. She is in a sterile hospital, recovering from a stroke. I will push her outside today so she can see the beautiful purple Japanese magnolias in full bloom outside her window.

I’ve thought about life and death a lot lately. It’s not just the dormant nature coming to life again, replacing everything dead with new buds. I thought about our own demise, about human mortality.

It’s been a roller-coaster week, a new baby, a new beautiful life that is here because of us, almost losing my mom the next day, facing my own mortality from unexpected disease, it was too much for anyone to absorb and internalize.

Obviously everybody is going through good and rough times all over the world. Life is precious and a precarious gift that we don’t appreciate and cherish enough. But I see things with more intensity and clarity than ever before.

In two days it will be my dad’s birthday, March 28, he would have been 88 years old, had he lived to such a ripe old age. But his life was cut short at 61 by Ceausescu’s evil communist regime and the lack of medical care under the Castro-style socialized medicine that everyone in the U.S. is now clamoring for.  He died a horrible and painful death, shrinking to a shell of his former self while he was not fed nor given IV fluids in the hospital. Aunt Marcela, his sister, kept him alive with a teaspoonful of broth and water now and then for almost a month.

There is another milestone on March 29, twenty years since I married by wonderful husband, the love of my life. I cannot imagine life without him. And on April 4 is my birthday – I am still on this earth, happy to be alive, and thankful for my blessings from God.

I wished I could have been a writer all my life instead of toiling for the academia that did not care about my dedication to students, the years I spent perfecting my skills and enriching my knowledge that I hope I had passed on to my students.

Tomorrow is Easter – I won’t be able to take mom to church as planned, but I am glad she is still alive and smiling through her sudden disability. She is my Mom who used to move mountains, who climbed on the roof at 72 to sweep dead leaves. Her hand and fingers are now curled, unable to hold my hand, but I can touch her face and she feels my love and kisses.

On this sunny day before the Blessed Easter, thank you, Mom, for being my Mom and for a life of love and precious care to our small family. We love you!

A Bittersweet Mother's Day

Mom in Catoctin Mountain

It’s Mother’s Day 2015. We drove by Catoctin Mountain, Maryland. It’s a verdant late spring with a balmy bathed-in-the sunshine day. It is a bittersweet Mother’s Day for me. Mom and I used to come to Fredrick in the fall to pick apples and other fruits from the many orchards in the area. Local small farms would sell their preserves, honey, and home-made pies. The trees were so laden with fragrant apples that the branches would almost touch the ground in some parts. The bees were kissing the sweet nectar of rotting apples on the ground and the apple cider dripping from the barrel’s spout outside. If you were there, samples of cider were free for the taking.

We were so happy roaming through the orchard, a precious moment in time, taking the scent of soil into our lungs, overwhelmed by the breathtaking beauty of the mountains in the distance set against a blue sky. We were so blessed to be alive to enjoy such abundance. It reminded us of the days when Mom’s life was dependent on the farm, the growing seasons, and the back-breaking garden work. To me, it was memories from another life of my grandparents’ existence, especially Grandma Elena’s, toiling in the fields from sunrise to sunset, the smell of freshly plowed dirt, of cow manure, and all the chicken running around freely all day, the eggs we picked in the chicken coup, the cats, the fleas, the ducks, and Grandpa’s rabbits in their wired enclosures.

On this Mother’s Day Mom’s memories run together, past and present, near and far. She still knows who we are but the fond and clear memories together remain only in my mind. She weaves new stories every day to occupy herself but I ache for my Mom and our real stories together. For now, I can only give her the comfort of a hug, my precious time, and her favorite food or bread. Her eyes light up with joy when she tastes cornbread. “I’ve never had such delicious bread before,” she says. I sigh and nod my head. I have my Mom today to cherish and give her a hug. It is more than a lot of people have at the moment, who longingly wish they could see, kiss, and touch their mom’s hands and face one more time. Life is joyous and cruel at the same time but definitely worth living to its fullest. There are so many blessings we sometimes fail to notice or remember until they are no longer here.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

My Mom Has Become the Obama Care "Unit"

My Beloved Mom

The first golden day of autumn has become the cold, barren winter of my Mom’s life.

A week ago I was planning to take Mom on a flight to Romania to see her siblings one last time. As I attempted to renew her passport, I remember wondering if the bureaucratic wheels will turn fast enough in sixty days. Would she still be able to travel then? How prophetic those words have become! Now she is locked inside a body that can no longer move. One moment she was vibrant and mobile, and the next moment her life was turned upside down.

The doctors ordered tests and more tests but were unable to find what caused her ataxia. The hospital staff operated a tight business around the elderly “units” of Obama Care. Everyone wore a cardio monitor and the beds were fitted with alarms in case the patients decided to wonder unauthorized. The goal was to have as few accidents and falls as possible and an ideal infection control.

The nursing staff was fantastic, well trained, and highly dedicated. The doctors, hailing from many third world nations, were too busy with private practices to meet with patients’ families. Their orders for tests, drugs, and charts were relayed through third parties. Most did not even make eye contact with other humans, keeping their faces down in the elevator.

It seemed to a keen observer that the lost art of humane face to face medicine has been replaced by mounds of paperwork, electronic dictation, and non-medically trained baby sitters.

How would they function if the entire Obama Care-mandated electronic system crashes? Would they still be able to write down the patient’s name, medical history, the type of drugs administered, and do simple math to calculate medicine dosage? Who will control and share the patients’ sensitive data and how will it be used to help them or against them?

I had to fill out tons of Medicare paperwork with some highly intrusive and unnecessary questions. Mom had to sign one sheet herself. With shaky hands, she was able to muster the first four letters of her name; the rest became a blob of black ink, a far cry from the beautiful cursive writing of the past.

Without a stroke, a heart attack, or any obvious cause for her distress, Mom was a patient in urgent need of discharge. Her “case worker,” a very cold and businesslike individual, made arrangements to discharge this “unit” before the infection cleared up. The last antibiotic IV dose was finished 15 minutes before she was whisked away in an ambulance. Her bed was needed for the next case.

I wished I could carry mom to the deck, and sit her on her favorite glider. Her colorful straw hat that shielded her eyes from the sun is still resting on the floor. Mom’s usual eagle eyes are dim and clouded with fear and confusion now. She sat in this chair for hours every day, watching the birds, the squirrels, the occasional blue heron, the resident pair of red foxes, the regular deer family grazing in our back yard, and the beaver running from the pond into the woods.

On this beautiful first day of fall, Mom became resident in a rehab nursing home, hoping to relearn how to walk. My eyes filled with tears as Mom scanned my face for answers and I had none, just words of encouragement. She misses Bogart, our Snowshoe Siamese. A highly co-dependent cat, Bogart senses her absence. Meowing at her closed bedroom door, he decides to sleep on the floor as if waiting for her immediate return.

Few well established and desirable rehab nursing homes take Medicare patients. Most are now private enterprises or advertised as faith-based, keeping unwanted individuals away.

Mom survived communism, the drab life there, and socialized medicine. She is making a full circle back to the drab life of survival in a nursing home in the most civilized nation on earth that chose to replace its stellar medical care with the failed socialist model a la Castro Care, in which rationing and “death panels” force Americans past the age of 70 into “unit” status.

I am not sure if Mom will every walk again. God only knows and we pray that she does. It is scary enough being old and sick, but even more frightening for someone who does not speak much English, having to function in an unfamiliar environment, among total strangers who are paid to help her survive, far away from home, far from everything and everyone she holds familiar and dear.