Knees crushing into linoleum-topped concrete, useless muscles over-stretching, tendons straining, arms bent backwards, supporting 200-lbs of pain-filled body. Pants-wrapped ankles, bare ass vulnerable, soundless scream, mute agony, two caregivers in frozen consternation, ineffectual and unqualified, a novice nurse holding patient's arms, torture-like. Picture our prisoners-of-war, in the hands of the enemy, kneeling with bamboo rods jammed-in the crooks of their elbows as they're leaned forward, in absolute submission. Circa 1960's.
Pain, surpassing childbirth, in that there was no pause for contraction build-up. Surrounded, hands lift and drop, repositioning hands lift and deposit their red-faced, tear-stained lump, half-on half-off the bed. Further insult of pain as muscles fail to support the lower body.
The preceding attempts to describe one incident of many, the real life experience of a woman with ALS, in a highly-rated skilled nursing facility, in the United States of America, in 2014.
My name is Tina Flink and the skilled nursing facility I speak of, Life Care Center of Federal Way.
The hard reality is that nursing homes have far too much power, caregivers far too little training, and the state's relationship to nursing facilities resembles that of Arthur Anderson and ENRON, prior to the blow-up and scandal, prompting accounting reform. They're much too chummy to be effective. Additionally, I witnessed the ruses used to show their "effectiveness" during a state inspection, a scheduled affair, allowing sleights of hand, redistribution of human assets to match their claims that we, the public, rely upon.
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