| rev:text
| - Please avoid this hospice company, and instead choose Hospice of the Valley. Here's why: my dad is currently under hospice care, and at first Banner Hospice transferred him to Serenity House near 16th Street & Indian School to assess his condition and try to get his pain under control. The nurses seemed like lovely people and seemed very concerned for my dad. At one point, because my father can no longer walk even to the restroom, they put a catheter in. He was aware of this and did not object to it. The next day, my mom and sister arrived at Serenity House to see him, and noticed that the telephone receiver in his room was covered in blood. My sister sat on the bed to talk to dad, and it was soaked with urine. The catheter had come out, caused his bleeding, and then leaked urine all over the bed.
I understand that Hospice provides end of life care and makes patients comfortable. Dad had been given pain medication and anxiety medication, which was not a problem. However, that medication made him unaware of his surroundings and of what he could truly do on his own, so when he tried to get up to go to the bathroom himself, he fell. If you're going to catheterize someone and then give them drugs that may alter his state of mind, you should check on him once in awhile and not let him lie around in urine. Yes, I realize he's dying, and that there are other patients at Serenity House, but please. This is unacceptable.
We are generally kind people, so I was willing to overlook even the catheter fiasco. But then we met the "social worker," Elizabeth G. Elizabeth met with my mom and sister at Serenity House and told mom that if she couldn't take care of dad, she needed to move him to either a nursing home ($3000/mo) or assisted living ($3000/mo.) as soon as he was stable enough to leave Serenity House. Elizabeth "offered" to help mom complete paperwork to apply for help from the state because my mom can't afford $3000/mo, but her "offer" made mom feel pressured, confused, and upset. I called Elizabeth myself to clarify what she'd told mom. I had to leave a message. Elizabeth called back, but I was on a work phone call and couldn't pick up her call. I called the hospice office, as instructed by Elizabeth in her voicemail, and the lady at the office said to just call Elizabeth back on the number she'd called me on. I did this, and Elizabeth spent the first three minutes of the call explaining that she was going to call the office and tell them not to instruct people to call her cell phone, because she was going on vacation the next day, and it was inappropriate for me to call her cell phone. ELIZABETH-THERE'S A THING CALLED NUMBER BLOCKING. IF YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE CALLING YOU BACK ON YOUR CELL PHONE, THEN BLOCK THE NUMBER. Your vacation is not my problem. You might deal with people dying every day; I don't.
The next day when my mom and sister were at the hospice location, another social worker tried to explain what dear Elizabeth had meant to say, but my mom was far too upset at this point. She wanted my dad moved to another hospice organization, and the social worker, doctor, and staff worked to convince my mom to leave dad in their hospice. This is a really shitty time for people to try to sell you stuff you don't want. Now they'd downgraded themselves to Really Tacky People in my opinion. I called to once again try to clarify what was going on (I was at work), and asked if we had any rights at all. The lady who answered the phone said that of course we have rights, and said she'd have the nurse call me to explain. That was over a week ago, and I'm still waiting to hear back.
Banner did eventually agree to transfer dad back to his and my mom's house, where he remains. My dad's primary care physician contacted Hospice of the Valley, and so far, though it's only been two days, both mom and I (my sister went back home to Michigan last week) feel supported, as comfortable as possible with caring for dad, and informed. Having a loved one die is a naturally stressful time. Trust me, you don't need pushy, easily annoyed people who may be too overworked to do a good job helping you at this time. Go with Hospice of the Valley.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)