but it's still a pig.

In a similar vein, I was reading an online article a few months ago about 50 to 100 dollar hamburgers. They are made from Kobe beef and dressed up with things like goat cheese, fois gras, and white truffle butter, and served on hand made ciabatta rolls. But you know what? It's still nothing but a fucking cheeseburger.

What has me ruminating along these lines was this weekend's transfer of my father from Stamford Hospital to an "assisted living/rehab" facility. My dad still can't go from his bed to the bathroom without assistance, or else he might fall. He needs a walker to do that. he is still having trouble swallowing liquids and so everything still has to have thickener added. But a hospital is not a long-term care facility, so he could not stay there any longer than the three and a half weeks he had stayed already. So yesterday he was transfered to Edgehill, a very impressive looking gated facility on the Stamford-Greenwich border. From the outside, and in the entry, it looks like a very expensive condominium complex. It has a concierge, a piano lounge, a game room with fireplace, a library, and linen and fresh cut flowers everywhere you look. But you know what? It's still nothing but a fucking convalescent home.

It started right from the get-go. We were told at the hospital, after he first had his stroke, that when the time came to transfer him it would be done by medical transport. Ha! My brother had to drive him and when he got there, go find a wheel chair and bring him up to the second floor where he would be staying. We were told he would have his own room. Ha! While most of the other rooms in his wing look like and are furnished like hotel rooms, my dad's room is a semi with two beds and two small chairs.

That was yesterday afternoon. My dad was exhausted and went to sleep fairly early. So I go back today around 1:30. He's flat on his back asleep in bed, fully clothed, on top of the blankets. Not sitting up in his chair. Not sitting up in bed. Not even on his pillows. He wakes up and sees me and my daughter. I help him sit up and raise the bed for him, and put the pillows under his head. He has to go to the bathroom, so he hits the call button. they ask what he needs over the intercom, and he tells them. someone finally moseys in to help over ten minutes later. This is repeated each time he has to go while we are there. At 5:30, they bring his dinner. At the hospital, his only restrictions were heart-healthy meals and thickened liquids. So mostly he had salmon or chicken breast. he takes the cover off his plate and what do we see? Mashed potato and some sort of creamy, smooth, pureed meat-like substance. I immediately say to the nurse's aide, "what the hell is this shit?" Oh and did I mention that the other patients in my father's wing include not just a few who, like him, need physical therapy, but many who are deep within dementia, and have no idea what is going on?

So at this point my brother and I are about to go postal. I go to the desk and ask to please have a ten minute meeting with the head nurse on the shift. She tells us we are mistaken, that his chart specifies pureed foods only. (we know this already. the stupid day nurse left not only his chart, but the chart for every patient on that floor in the room. that's the personal medical info for over 40 people. nice, huh?) We tell her she and her chart are the ones that are mistaken. That he has been eating normal food as long as it is low-fat, low-sodium and his doctor would be calling first thing in the morning to back that up. We then asked her if she was aware that he had both bed and chair alarms in the hospital and could not get up by himself.

Do you know what this insufferable bitch then told me?

She replied that the alarms in the hospital were only so the nurses would know when he was up and around!!!

I looked right into her eyes and very quietly said, "No. They were not. We were there every day. You were not. He was specifically told he was not to get up at all without help and the alarms were to make sure he didn't. You see, he fell twice."

This place is supposed to be the Rolls Royce of nursing homes. That is a very qualified statement. Lipstick, as it were, on a fucking pig.