I know some will find this awful but - we are starting to get older and the idea of living in a nursing home my final years is not a pleasant thought. Locked in a room or a bed, get to play checkers, eat what is given, go nowhere and do nothing seems to be just a waste. Plus it is expensive and the family has better things to do besides visit.

So - what if a serious crime is committed like walk into a bank and rob it. Then the judge can order room and board, health care, friends to play checkers with, food to eat. Family would come and visit Grandpa the Famous Bank Robber. Could Prison be better than a Nursing Home? Heck the Bishop might even come to visit.

Get a bad lawyer because you do not want to be found temporary insane and let go.

Idea has some pluses in my book. But hey, I don't want this. I just want to go quietly in my sleep and depart when I am ready to depart. Is that too much to ask?

Good luck with your 2016 prison rape goals OPie ~

Downsides:

The food is awful.
The guards are cruel.
The medical care is bad.
The other prisoners will beat you up.
No internet.
Limited TV.
You can only call collect.
No privacy for anything.
It would be as boring as sacrament meeting. All. The. Time.

Umm..well..perhaps the other prisoners may not beat up grandpa, and may be very friendly - in fact a little too friendly if you catch my drift.

Nursing homes are for sick people. You don't go to a nursing home unless it is deemed medically necessary by a physician. Being old, weak, etc. does not mean that you automatically qualify.

You might be thinking of assisted living. That is bloody expensive. My friend put her mom in assisted living. She paid for it along with her well-to-do children.The mom was unenthusiastic at first but ultimately adapted.

The other options, if you are too weak to care for yourself, are home health care or living with your kids.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2016 08:54PM by summer.

It was all about the money-making of the home, not the health and well-being of the residents.

She often chose to skip meals because residents were expected to get to the dining room under their own power. She had to use a walker, and every step caused great pain. If the residents wanted meals delivered to them, they had to pay $5 per meal. She couldn't afford it. I asked her son if the home would deliver her meals if the doctor ordered it, because my friend was dropping off weight insanely from not eating. The doctor told him that he had tried this with other residents but the home would not comply. Her son told me angrily after his mother had died that she looked "like a banana peel" beneath the covers. And she had been a bit hefty when she was well.

We could no longer e-mail each other, as we had before. There was a computer room for the use of the residents, but she couldn't use it, because the chairs there were not comfortable for the severe degenerative changes in her back.

Her cell phone was forever on the brink of losing power. Her son (who lived more than an hour away and couldn't visit as often as he would have liked) told me that if his mother wanted to charge her phone, she would have to get up, put the phone and charger in her bathrobe pocket, and shuffle on her walker over to the electric outlet where phones could be charged. And no, aides would not do it for her.

She didn't dare have a tablet, IPod, or other device, because often, when the resident was asleep, these things would disappear. Her eyesight was too poor to read. (Although the facility boasted a large library. What use was it if the residents could not access it?)

She often expressed the desire to die. I was extremely angry when our home state of California passed the Death with Dignity law about 18 months after she needed it.

Nursing home is not a fun thought. But it may never happen.

I have read stories of people with medical conditions they couldn't afford and no health insurance. They intentionally got sent to jail just for the free medical treatment. It isn't unheard of.

Hey, many Americans go South for assisted living. Nice setting, nice climate, nice accommodation, other Americans, and about 1/5 the cost. Mexico is calling you.

If I ever become unable to take care of myself, I'll end my life.

Watching my Dad and my in laws live into their 90s has not been fun. Dad and FIL ended up in nursing homes after falling and breaking stuff and MIL lives with my BIL and has dementia. I think she'll end up in a nursing home too.

I plan on taking up cliff diving into shark infested waters when I turn 85.

As horrible as good nursing homes are, I think prison would be much worse.

I volunteer in the Utah State Prison. The constant clang of doors, just upon entering, is enough to drive anyone over the edge. Just sayin....

girlawakened Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I volunteer in the Utah State Prison. The constant
> clang of doors, just upon entering, is enough to
> drive anyone over the edge. Just sayin....

I do the same at the AZ state prison.Give me a nursing home anytime. Being sick or having dementia in prison is absolutely the worst.My plan is a long backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon alone.

"Locked in a room or a bed, get to play checkers, eat what is given, go nowhere and do nothing seems to be just a waste. Plus it is expensive and the family has better things to do besides visit."

That's prison. It's not romantic.

What's horrifying and very scary is that he's describing a nursing home here, not prison. And it sounds just like prison. *shudder*

I hope I never have to wait to die in one of those places.

I appreciate the info about Mexican assisted living facilities.

My neighbor turned 87 last summer. Right before Christmas he fell and ended up in the hospital for a month. He was home for a few days, and fell again. He's 6'6 and his wife who is the same age is 4'11. No way was she going to get him up off the floor. Lucky for him two of his neighbors are RN's and were home at the time.

He had to go into the local nursing home because his wife wasn't capable of caring for him the way he needed to be.

I'm pretty sure he willed himself to die less than a week later. He wasn't the type to lay in a bed while others took care of him. It would have been awful to see him live in a nursing home. I think he would have lost his mind, which was fully intact when he died.

My mother died at 95 in a nursing home. She hated every moment there. She was always a strong independent woman until she broke her hip and had to go there for rehab following surgery. From the moment she entered that place her life went downhill. She constantly had bladder infections, mrsa infections, dementia set in, etc. The food was awful and I saw many residents that were being yelled at and threatened by some of the staff most of the time. It was emotional abuse and who knows what physical abuse went on. There were a couple of nurses that seemed like they really cared but others just didn't give a rats ass. My mother died after she fell AGAIN while in their care and fractured her other hip. At least that is the story. She was sent to the hospital with a little cut on her forehead for a stitch. The stupid nurse that sent her said she would be fine and didn't even realize Mom had broken the other hip. The way it was broken couldn't be operated on so she was bedridden for four weeks. She was in excrusiating pain and dead shortly afterwards. I miss her so much.

I have a lot more experience with this than I would like. My 91 year old father is in long term care in a wonderful small family owned place. My husband lived the last 6 years of his life in nursing homes before dying at age 58. I've also done a lot of visiting. The only difference on a medicaid nursing home and a "luxury" nursing home is the lobby. Once you get past the double doors it's the same old cinderblock. My husband's last nursing home was taken over by a corporation and it became horrible overnight.
Your biggest concern in a nursing home is once they get a hold of your social security number they won't let you die.

I work in a Jail, I will never want to be there

I currently work as a NHA, nursing home administrator in a 120 bed facility. I have heard the exact phrase many times by the sons, daughters, friends, visiting residents "if I ever need one of these places just put a gun to my head". When I hear this I hope there are as many residents, doctors, social workers, etc possible to hears these excellent words of advice and hopefully get some kind of solution to these nursing homes other than continue to fill nursing homes with the frail, usually elderly, increasingly demented, and sometimes the younger brain injured with equally ineffective transferring, toileting, and self feeding skills. I keep thinking to myself lets get beyond the thought of being dead when you no longer can transfer safely from w/c to toilet, as an example, let's operationalize it with some sort of a numeric system where the greater the inability the higher the score. Let's just say 100 equals lethal injection. Operationalize the system into living wills to take out the guess work and move onto a better more efficient society . Because really, less face it, when you are frail, and elderly, and let's be honest, you were either too lazy, and too stupid, to save enough money to afford a private 24/7 stay at home nurse, you should be dead. Or maybe too much of an ineffective patent to have elicited the type of sacrific required to have your children take you in, again you and society is better off having you dead. Sarcasm.

Good idea maybe. But if I'm going to use prison as my nursing home, it's not going to be for robbing a bank and not even getting to spend the money. It's going to be Murder One!

I think I'd move to a state that allows for assisted suicide.

I'm single and have dealt with serious health issues the last six years. I moved back to Utah to be near relatives I can rely on at certain times. I have told all of them, if they walk in the door and I am out cold, or drooling and can't get up, just close the door and come back several days later. Under no circumstances call 911. Just let me go on my own terms.

She had only been there 2 days. When she'd have a hospital admission, they'd put her in the nursing home for a few days. Her 3rd time there, she died. She was still lucid, was driving up to the day before she ended up in the hospital with an infection.

My dad died at home 2 months later.

My boyfriend's dad died 2 months ago at almost age 92 at home. Never spent a day in a nursing home. His 85-year-old wife helped him to be able to stay home, though I saw him in September, and he was doing well, walking around, still driving short distances. His mother is completely with it. She is out hiking today. She lives alone now in their home. She is going to stay with her sons now and then. I hope she never has to go to a nursing home.

It is possible to not end up in a nursing home. I hope I don't. None of my grandparents died in a nursing home either. They spent short times in nursing homes after surgeries.

I do believe my mother and father both also willed themselves to die. My mother was afraid my dad was going to die first. He should have died 10 years before she did, but he hung on. After watching how my parents died, I do believe we have more power over dying than we might think. I am still amazed at how they chose to leave and it has been 7 years since they passed away.

I've heard of people that just go on back-to-back cruises instead. There's a physician on board, all your meals are free, and you get interesting day trips. It's a thought.

I stumbled on this article earlier today. It appears that elderly Japanese are shoplifting and committing other crimes both to supplement their pensions and because prison is perceived as preferable to the alternatives. The number of older prisoners is expected to surge massively, requiring new prisons.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/27/japans-elderly-turn-to-life-of-crime-to-ease-cost-of-living.html

Tragic.