The thing about rugged individualism, and states rights is that everyone has to reinvent the wheel individually and alone, again and again.
Take for example:If you have an old person to take care of or a sick person, you have to find out about hospice, Medicare, private insurance, VA benefits, investments, the home mortgage, any secondary insurance, how to get the person to bathe your old person, the foot doctor to cut the toe nails, someone to order books for the blind, meals on wheels, the nursing home thing, the rides to the doctor and dentist the whole shit storm. Each service has its own rules. To get help, most people need to spend down their life savings. Many people don't have the resources. Even highly educated, mildly successful, very dedicated relatives can't figure out what to do. Then there is the problem that with an very old or very sick person, the needs change daily. As soon as you have figured something out, the condition changes or the needs change.
What do other countries do? I really don't know.This issue is certainly going to get worse in the US as the Baby Boomers really get old. We had a good run at changing childbirth from horrible drugged up hospital births to natural, graceful, loving experiences. But now the medical profession has pretty much grabbed that one back. But this old, sick people thing is a struggle, it would seem, that we suffer alone in each house, again and again, regardless of financial situations or apparent family resources.
Part of the problem is geography. We move. Being a plane ride away from a dear person works until that person needs us daily. We work. It is hard to get time off for the often full time care of another. Insurance, well, it is so mixed up that most genius people can't figure it out. My father, after some surgery, had home help with nursing visits and physical therapy. He mentioned one day that he was excited to go to his aerobics class. Here is the picture as we saw it. He had been going to this class for 20 something years, three times a week. The class grew old together. They were his ocial life. He had to hire a driver, aide, to take him to class. He, at that point was going to sit in the back for one class, schmooze with his friends. maybe hold some one pound weights, get a lot of news from everybody and have his guy drive him home.
Mentioning this excursion cost him all his home help. The rules were such that if you could go out, you didn't qualify for services from Medicare. So, he really paid for this hour. He paid for a long time until the next medical crisis came and the nurses came back for a bit. Now this isn't bad, it is nothing compared to what many people contend with. My parents wanted to stay at home. Home wasn't set up to have others live there until the days came when we hired 'awake overnight' angels to be with him.
When both my parents were sick, we had family, friends, volunteers, and lots of paid help just to keep them comfortable at home. It was a nightmare at times and a beautiful loving effort at times. When the money runs out or was never there, the options drop away.
My friend's mother moved herself from assisted living to a nursing home one weekend when the family wasn't around. She was tired of the struggle to be independent at all. She lived for many years, until 99, but she had family and friends who dropped by daily. It was enough for her. I have other friends who moved parents to nursing homes after years of agonizing over it and years of patch work home care, and the parents died within days. They felt guilty. One of my biggest sadnesses is that somehow no one quite feels good about much of this process. And caregivers get isolated. Do your friends want to hear about Dad's bowel movements? Can they understand how much of the day's well being depends on taking a crap? No.
We all know about different family's struggles. Dementia adds a whole other dimension of problems. What do we do? How do we pay for it? What is our obligation to the rest of our life? Many people find themselves in the 'sandwich' with both kids and old parents needing their love and attention. This happens a lot, I guess, because people are having children when they are older. One of my mother's grandchildren was born when my mother was 80 something. Crazy.
How can we be ourselves and lead the lives we want and get some kind of affordable, care for those who need it? I think my generation needs to do some quick thinking here and be very watchful of the problems we encountered with our elders. What do you do in other countries?? I am really asking this.
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