She had been living in a total care facility after having been beaten at another (Catholic) facility. She was unable to do anything for herself. The new facility lacked the staff to give her the attention she needed and recommended Hospice. My friend agreed and contracted Hospice who would come into the facility and exercise total and exclusive care of her in the new "home". The nurses were no longer permitted to do anything for her. My friend met with everybody involved and the papers were signed, and the Hospice care had supposedly begun. My friend could' make it to the facility for a day or two, and when he did, she had been totally unattended, lying semi-conscious in her own filth and moaning in pain from the massive infection in her eye-socket. He ran to the nurse's station and asked why she was not being attended to and they responded that they had been told not to intervene. My friend quickly contacted Hospice who said they didn't understand why her attendant(s) were not there, whereupon he canceled the service and the local staff returned to her care. They cleaned her and checked on her every hour, taking care of her needs until she died several days later. My friend had talked to a lawyer about suing the residence where she was first assaulted, and also Hospice, for allowing her to die an undignified and miserable death. In both cases nobody would take his case, saying his mother was "too old". Previous to the Catholic facility she had been injured or told she did not meet requirements in 3 or four different "homes" I have seen this neglect from other old people also and have long known that extended care facilities are in the business of taking an elderly person's life-savings and abandoning them, mostly due to lack of staff, whom they pay a pittance! His mother had spent most of her life in public service and was a convert to Catholicism and always carried her rosary. The head nun at the Catholic home was arrogant and denied she had been abused, saying she had fallen. The day before the incident happened, he came in to visit and found her lying naked on her bed, crying, confused and unrestrained. The day of the incident which I have called a beating, they said it was due to her falling out of her wheel chair. (she was supposed to be restrained at all times in the chair and had to be pushed.). He could never prove she was abused, but leaving her unattended and unrestrained in her wheelchair would be reason enough for an accusation of abuse. Any more questions?

I'm glad they were there for him.

Not if you are disabled, you won't.

@fishline79 Well, of course I would do it before I became totally disabled.

I'll admit, I have never heard of a similar experience to what we had and have never understood why, except that the poor woman (93 years old) had the worst luck with "senior-living facilities" I can ever imagine, and this was the final insult. But the story is true.

@fishline79
Situations differ obviously.. My father wouldn't have done well in a facility.
I suppose everyone runs into something eventually.
Good luck to you in the meantime.

That's great, and what everybody has a right to expect. My friend and his family has been visited by "bad luck" all of their lives, especially him. Some say that people make their own luck but after living with him for years and seeing the ridiculous, inexplicable things that happen to him for no explainable reason, I have come to consider that there just might be such a thing as "bad luck", and I am completely "un-superstitious".

My mother died when I was a teenager, and my father married the witch from hell. I joined the Army to get the hell out of that house, and never looked back. There was no way in hell I was going to give them any support. I usually lived several hundred miles away, if not further. My sister who was closer had a special needs child, and none of us had any desire to be anywhere close to them. My dad made his bed, and he was stuck with that harpy for the rest of his life.

@HippieChick58 He wasn’t “stuck”; he chose to remain. Your decision to detach seems well-justified to me. My mother married the abusive freeloader from hell when I was eleven, but I still cared for her in her final months. He asked once, “are you staying here from now on?” I said, “yes, I’ll care for my mother until she dies, just as I will care for you,” because my mother would want me to. (he had lung cancer). He said, “my sister will care for me.” I was glad, because that released me from any responsibility. The last time I saw him was the day of my mother’s funeral. I have no regrets.

@HippieChick58 My mother died when I was 8 and my father, desperate to find someone to take care of my brother and me, married a woman about whom he knew nothing. It turned out she was not a bad person but after her first husband had died she lived alone for years and became an alcoholic. My father drank only an occasional beer and was a "good Christian". When I was alone with her she would back me into a corner and rattle on about her former life, or some problem she had, as if I were her psychologist. I was completely baffled by this and thought she was reprimanding me. I have never married and to this day I am an anxiety neurotic with A.D.H.D, and don't like being confined or listening to other people's troubles, although I force myself to be patient with them and always try to empathize. By the way, my father dragged me to church every Sunday while she probably sat at home because "she didn't feel well". You may well imagine my reaction to sitting in the congregation and being preached at for an hour! Of course I grew up to be an agnostic. The only thing I retained from all this, aside from memorizing a couple of biblical passages, like Corinthians 1/13 (which, being an artist, I consider beautiful poetry) was the "Golden Rule" which I still apply to everything I do. That is the only precept worth saving from Christianity. All the rest is just "window dressing".