From an Oxycontin haze, I hear the death chant from a 90-something neighbor, three doors down the hall. The screams pierce every bone in my body and continues for hours.
I’m able to tape 27 seconds until, mercifully, the synthetic morphine coursing through my body kicks in and I surrender to the dark-black hood, slowly pulled over my consciousness.
I’m at a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) that I transferred to yesterday from Good Shepherd Rehab Hospital. The new CCRC is a daunting collage of Independent, Intermediate, and Custodial Care facilities spread out across more than ten acres in Allentown, Penn.
I contiue to ask myself, Why am I here? But cognition stalls and I’m left with a single, lonely truth — I’m here because the Assisted Living facility where I’ve been a resident for the last six years, Sacred Heart of Center Valley, PA, threatened to evict me unless I agreed to submit to an indeterminate period of physical and occupational rehabilitation or “sub-acute” care. And just days before my sub-acute rehab stay was over, they notified me I had been evicted.
While I agree that the rehab therapy was helpful (and I’ve also lost 30 lbs!), it’s the way they engineered this fiasco that profoundly disturbs me –i.e., they waited until I made the initial transfer before they dropped the hammer.
Now, I’m on the verge of homelessness, or worse, left to flounder between nursing homes.
— To be continued.
Hi Martin, your posts have touched me profoundly. As a Social Worjer who has worked in both a hospital setting & a dialysis settin & my Mother lived in an Assisted Livin g facility until she died, I learned a lot about Assisted Living & I don’t know your circumstances that landed you in that facility. But my hunch why the assisted living facility was threatening eviction & then finally did was you were nearing the end of your funding. In the state of Ct there is a little known law about once you live in an assisted living facility for longer than 5 years, you can apply for a special program which allows you to stay & Medicaid pays ev n if the facility does not accept Medicaid as a funding source. I did not check further into this as my Mom died before her funds ran out. I urge you to contact your state ombudsman & if that doesn’t work your house of representative rep. They can be so helpful. Wishing you the best of luck to get back home. God Bless You