i'm i'm ready
why don't you go ahead and start off
okay well i don't have an elderly person that i could send to a a nursing home or anything my both of my parents are dead
but i did have a friend that was in a convalescent home uh like a nursing home
and i had went there very often to visit her and uh
made me feel really sad if i did have a mother living i don't think i could do that
i think they would be better off being at home with their family
you know
i agree although we're in that situation right now we have a an eighty seven year old mother-in-law living with me right now
uh-huh
um-hum
and because of her circumstances she can no longer live independently
and even moving from her house to our house has been tremendously unsettling for her and we have several young children and they about drive her crazy
um-hum
um-hum
oh i can believe that yes because most elderly people can't take having a lot of noise and kids running around and things like that in a situation like that maybe it would be better
well we've you know we've struggled a lot with it because again uh most of the nursing homes i've been in are very depressing to me
um-hum
and she's still alert enough that i think she would really know that we were putting her there and i think she'd really resent it
oh yeah
and i think that would make it very hard but on the other hand i see my wife with i guess our youngest one now is five
um-hum
oh
and her trying to struggle because her mother really cannot take care of herself she needs to be bathed and dressed and a lot of those kinds of things
uh-huh
oh see now that's that's that's really a sad situation
and so the drain on the family
yeah really you know i just
and when the kids have kids come over you know she's always saying well why do they have to be here why can't they send them home it's too noisy and she'll say that to the kid's friends
um-hum
yeah right right
so it's a hard situation either way i think
yeah in a case like that you know you more or less think it it would be better if she were in a nursing home because you have your family growing up where
and i think that's one of the things we're really wrestling with when does it become detrimental to our family to the point that you have to consider that as opposed to considering her current circumstances and
uh-huh uh-huh
uh-huh but the cost of these nursing homes are so
oh prohibitive
you know a lot of people can't afford that
yeah
you know so you really have no choice that way if you you know if you're not rich or something you know um
i know this lady that you know that was a friend of mine now her husband was still alive at the time when she was in there you know and it was costing him a small fortune to keep her in there
yeah
so
i think we need to develop some alternatives like adult day care
um-hum
that's more readily available you know i think if we could send her someplace for the day
yeah then bring her back home at night
and she could be around some elderly people and have some activities would be of more interest to her and then in the evening have her return and be with the family
um-hum um-hum
yeah you know just come home for dinner and then usually they want to go to bed pretty early anyhow you know so that would probably be nice if we could ever get something like that but
yeah
but there's not many of those available right now and they're very hard to get them into and
right
um-hum
we tried sending her to a senior citizen center but they're really not prepared to cope with her because she's somewhat senile and so a lot of the activities that they're engaged in she can't participate in
um-hum
um-hum
um-hum um-hum
hm
but i think it's an issue that you know with the graying of America we're really going to have to as a as a country figure out how we're going to deal with this
um-hum
because it is a difficult situation and you know you hate seeing them just sort of send off and not well cared for
yeah
and yet
if if they don't know anybody and they don't know what's going on around them and everything like that well i can see maybe a nursing home would be better you know
but if they they have their wits about them and everything why
it's kind of hard
and then i think it depends on their physical ability too you know if they could be up and doing some things it might be better than when they're just sort of needing almost constant supervision and care
um-hum um-hum
um-hum um-hum
well uh my mother always said she hopes she never had to be like that and
uh luckily i mean she lived by herself and then you know one day she had a heart attack and she was gone so she never did have to go into a nursing home or anything like that but there's
so many of us kids there was like seven of us that my we wouldn't have probably allowed that to happen anyhow
yeah
you know she could've taken turns living with each one of us you know for a short a short a period of time because we all don't live in the same city anyhow or nor the same state
do you live at all close to each other
so
uh uh a couple i have a couple more that live out here in California but then i have a brother
