Assisted Suicide Context: Nursing Home Death Due to Neglect
Context. Context. Context. As editorial writers wax eloquent about how assisted suicide would just be about "choice" and managing one's own end of life, story after story is being reported about how those on the margins are abused, neglected, and marginalized. Mary Schneider lived in one of the city's most exclusive retirement hotels, complete with gourmet meals and contracted around-the-clock care, but she died last year in agony and neglect, suffering horrific bedsores. The bedridden 91-year-old died in May after a San Francisco city agency failed to properly investigate a complaint that she suffered from bedsores, according to criminal court proceedings and the agency's own written procedures.
This is one such awful story, reported today in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Labels: Context of Assisted Suicide.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:55 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
When my own grandmother was in assisted-living care, she had a few heart-attacks.
One particular time, she had one and pulled on the emergency cord to alert the front desk people to come to her room. But, for whatever reason, no one was monitoring the station. She waited in her room for over an hour while undergoing a heart attack before someone came to help her.
If she had died then, we might've sued for negligence. But since she lived through that one, suing would have only blacklisted her.
From her experience, I think the assisted-living industry is about cutting costs (i.e., patient care) and maximizing profit.
Anyway, this story you point out sounds like a tort. If I were them, I'd sue too.
It sounds like the two illegals who were hired to take care of her just had no clue how to treat or avoid bedsores. So the one complained quite some time ago to a woman who was quitting about the bedsores, but nothing was done. I mean, why didn't they tell the relative who had hired them, "We don't know what to do. She has these sores. They need to be treated, but we don't know how"? My bet is it was in part because they were illegally here and illegally employed. They figured they'd better just do the best they could and keep their mouths shut. To my mind the son (or nephew, or whatever he was) needed to have someone who knew better what she was doing take care of her.
Christopher Buckley has just written a satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" about the government encouraging Boomers to commit suicide to save money. It's called Boomsday.
In my more intemperate moments, I contemplate starting a geriatric milita for protection.
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