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Friday, September 5th, 2008
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San Jose Mercury News (CA)
June 1, 2000
Section: Local
Edition: Morning Final
Page: 1B
NURSING-HOME NIGHTMARE REVEALS MAJOR NEGLECT, AGEISM
SUE HUTCHISON column
WHEN Kathy Case thinks back on the way the nightmare started more than two years ago, she's still amazed to remember that she never saw it coming. And once it started, she had no idea how to stop it.
Case's 78-year-old mother, Josephine, had just had back surgery, and her doctor referred her to the Guardian convalescent home in Los Gatos. Josephine had always been a real live wire, even into her 70s, so Kathy was confident she would be fine.
"My mother had come through the surgery with flying colors, and this place was so nice," Case said. "I mean, it had hardwood floors and lots of sun and you could bring pets and visit whenever you wanted to. I thought we were so lucky when my mom got in off the waiting list in December."
Then everything started to fall apart. The dates are fixed in Case's mind because she watched her mother deteriorate and die over the 1997 Christmas season.
It was Christmas Eve when Case began to suspect her mother was starving to death. On Dec. 26, she found out her mother had a huge bedsore. On Dec. 28, Case came to visit in the morning and was horrified to see a large swelling on her mother's face. When she insisted that a nurse call a doctor on the weekend shift, the doctor refused to speak to her.
"The doctor told the nurse if I was so concerned I should call 911," Case said. "Even though I was there all the time, I never actually saw a doctor. Never. I was constantly asking what was going on, why she was so sick. They just treated me like a paranoid daughter."
Case did call 911. And when her mother was readmitted to Good Samaritan Hospital, only a few weeks after she'd left, she was suffering from malnutrition, a staph infection, dehydration and pneumonia.
"She went into the ICU, and she never came out," Case said. "The whole time I was thinking, how could this have happened? I felt so helpless. No one would listen to me. I had no idea where else to go. There was nowhere else to go."
Case can take some comfort that what happened to her mother helped shut down the Guardian nursing home in Los Gatos and another one in San Jose. When the Guardian chain agreed to sell or close the two homes and pleaded no contest to charges of elder abuse and neglect in Santa Clara County Superior Court last week, it made national history. Never before had prosecutors resorted to filing criminal charges to force a convalescent home chain to take decent care of its patients.
It's about time. Last week's no-contest plea might have been the first step toward obliterating the stereotype of the nursing home that warehouses and ignores patients, waiting for them to die. It might have been the most promising sign yet that families who have someone they love in a nursing home will not be forced to stand by and watch as the people who took care of them all their lives are neglected to death.
The demise of Josephine Case plays into the worst fears of every son or daughter who is faced with trusting an invalid parent to the care of a nursinghome. As Kathy's sister, Casey Savaso, put it, "What does this kind of treatment say about what you're worth in this country once you reach a certain age?"
Kathy Case still cannot reconcile the image of her mother lying unconscious in the intensive care unit with the woman who had been full of energy right up until the time of her surgery.
"She was the kind of mom who all my other friends would turn to when we were growing up," Case said. "She took care of everyone, and she was so much fun. It was amazing how many of my childhood friends came to her funeral."
Two of Josephine's nurses from Good Samaritan also came to her funeral. They had only known her for a week, but they had become devoted to her.
It's too bad they didn't work at Guardian.
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