Word: beds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...around the block, he fell. I was out of town on assignment. By the time I got back to the city, 12 hours later, the local emergency-room doctors had doped him to keep him calm. He had gone crazy, they said, when they strapped him to the hospital bed. (I'd fight too!) He'd had three beers, they said, and was uncontrollable--a man who weighed only 130 lbs. In just three days my father went from being self-sufficient to an invalid. His injuries? A two-stitch cut on his head...
...were short staffed. His doctors wanted to put him on the harshest psychotropic drugs available. When several nurses warned me against the drugs, I fought for and got a milder drug regimen. But again, fearful that he'd get up and break a hip, they strapped him to his bed. He began to wither away, uninterested for the first time in food, because he was no longer allowed salt. He couldn't see to ring the bell for the toilet, so he would sometimes lie for hours in wet diapers or sheets until I or his 74-year-old sister...
...California calls a "residence for the elderly," far cozier than most of the corporate- or church-run rest homes and assisted-living facilities I had seen. The food is home cooked; there's a Friday-night Jewish service my Catholic dad loves; and no one straps him to the bed. But it's expensive: nearly $3,500 a month for room, board, doctors and medicine. How many people on a retiree's income can afford that...
...people that assisted living caters to are usually able to get out of bed and walk around. But their average age, estimated by ALFA, is 83, so they can also be frail. Almost half have Alzheimer's or some degree of cognitive impairment. (Alzheimer's patients tend to have their own, more closely supervised areas.) John Knox Village, in Pompano Beach, Fla., is a not-for-profit continuing-care operation on a landscaped campus with meandering walks and duck ponds. In an arrangement typical of such places, the elderly buy a residence--studio apartments are $48,500; two-bedroom "villas...
...with a sigh. "Here I get all the attention I need." Miami developer Raul Munne, who built the place, is a Cuban immigrant. "Where I grew up," he jokes, "the elderly sat on the porch and fought with the neighborhood kids. It gave them incentive to get out of bed in the morning." But in the U.S., he says, "old folks are told, 'Don't open your door and go out at night. You might get mugged.' So, many of them have no one to talk to all day. They can only sit and watch television...