Grumpa Joe's Place

Providing seniors with living accommodations is big business. All around the Chicago area there are numerous senior living communities that cover all the desires of older people and their wish to live independently. Not all seniors want independence, many want security, safety, and health care. Many of these businesses offer all levels of care. If all you want is an apartment without any extras, you can have it, If you want someone to look in on you every day, you can have it, if you need help getting dressed, or with bathing and toileting, you can get it. If your memory is shot and you can’t remember your name but you are physically in good shape there is an app for that too.

I don’t call my brother very often, but when the Covid-19 thing was still being referred to as the Corona virus from China I called him. When we do talk we will spend an hour covering all the kids and everything family related, then we go on to the important things in life, like world peace, war, terrorism, and corona.

Two years ago, my brother Bill sold his house, and checked himself into a senior retirement community near where he lived. He likes it. His wife died four years ago and he got tired of keeping a house going. It was his time. I am wresting with the same decision myself. Getting back to my point. When the President announced his guidelines for how to deal with the virus I began my diary, and my brother’s community went into a lock-down. The management recognized that if the bug got into their halls there would be hell to pay. Immediately, they took the conservative approach. All they needed to hear is that the virus prefers older people. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make, after all the home is a money making machine. Death ends the money coming in and without money the place goes broke. That is the practical side, the human side is that pre-mature death ends the life of some really amazing people. This is a Christian home, and Christians believe in the right to life. They will expend monumental effort to sustain it.

Here are some of the things he told me today. His meals are delivered to his room every day. Normally, meal time is when seniors socialize in the dining room, but not anymore, the dining room is closed. They do not allow any visitors. Service people are allowed only after they have been checked for the virus and on a need for service basis. Relatives are not allowed. Social activities are held virtually, i.e. over the in-house tv channel. They conduct activities where you are allowed to stand in your open doorway while the activity director at the end of the hall uses a megaphone to give instructions on the game being played, or the exercise being done. Bill takes walks on the grounds and on the golf course next to the home. Any congregation of people outside is not permitted and broken up by the staff. Staff is checked every day before they are allowed to enter. They are screened for symptoms, those with symptoms are immediately sent home.

I asked Bill if they had anyone with the virus yet. “No,” he said and the residents will probably kill anyone who gets it. None of them wants to be known as the ‘one.’

When I listened to the news today, I heard a reporter interview the head of the VA. The question was a typical liberal question trying to find someone to place the blame on for the horrible stories we have heard regarding deaths at nursing homes. In this case she asked about what went wrong at the Massachusetts State run nursing home where seventy veterans died. VA Director Robert Wilkie answered the questions with a narrative of what the VA has been doing to control the virus inside the VA hospitals. He has it all right. They are not doing a single thing that can be criticized. Regardless, the reporter was relentlessly pushing to get someone to blame. My answer which was not heard because my voice doesn’t carry to New York was this: any jerk who wants an answer should look into the home where the problem is and start asking questions at the very top of the management. Read their mission statement, did they follow it? Do they even have a mission statement? Examine the records for their audit inspections, have they been cited for violations of their procedures? Do they have procedures?

I don’t know, but these reporters make some pretty big money yet they don’t seem to be able to engage their brains with any logic. I looked up reporter’s salaries and found that the one I was listening to makes eight million dollars a year. That is a lot of dollars for reading questions from a teleprompter, and watching a timer to know when to end the segment.

If COVID-19 Has any value it will be in the way we run our country and the way we live our lives from this point on. There is a good chance that the word ‘virtual’ will predominate our future. Until such a time as we can kill the COVID-19 permanently we will be social distancing, and avoiding crowds.

Today, I took package to the post office and was surprised by the crowd that lined up all the way out of the building. Everyone was staying six feet away from the one in front of him. The PO erected a barrier from the ceiling to the countertop with plastic film to separate us from them. We are paying serious attention to the recommendations. We all have the attitude that the guy next to me might be the one who gives it to me, and he is thinking the same about you.

Anyway, as the country begins to open up it is more and more apparent that seniors will have to live by a different set of rules. There is one problem with that, people like me don’t think we are old, we think we are twenty-five even though our bodies may be eighty-five. In my mind a senior is someone who is pushing a hundred years.

There is an old Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.” This is an interesting time.

Filed under: Aging, family, health care, Seniors | Tagged: Covid-19, Problem Solving, Reporters, Retirement Community | 3 Comments »