The sad part of the ill provisions of long-term care for the elderly who really, desperately, need it, off of the Newspapers, translated…
The seventy-one-year-old elderly woman, Jing who lives in the Lunshan Village of Choxi County of Hualien not only needed to take care of her eighty-seven-year-old severely demented mother, she also looks after her fifty-three-year-old cohabiting partner with epilepsy, she is a case of elderly taking care of the elderly. She stated, although she’d thought about sending her mother into a specialty nursing home for the demented, the nursing home sponsored by the local hospital, to relieve the stresses, but, it’s too far away from where she lives, and there’s no bed space, she’s burned on both ends, and worried about “how many years do I have, to wait for an available bed”.
Jing told, that although the Yuli Branch of the Taipei V.M.H. is closer, but there are more of the regular beds, and the hospital saved a specific number of beds for the veterans to have priority, but, her mother and her cohabiting partner are both, non-veterans. Later she’d learned, that the Yuli Hospital’s Xikou Nursing Home specializes in caring for the elderly with dementia, but as she’d called to inquire, the five hundred beds which were available, already, filled, even if she was willing to pay for a spot, she couldn’t get one, and it was fifty-eight kilometers from where she lives, and there would have to be an one-hour-and-a-half drive, so she’d, cast the thought aside.
“I’m really worry, that I will fall one day!”, Jing told, that her mother had been diagnosed with dementia for close to a decade, and her cohabiting partner had had a stroke sixteen years ago, in the close to a decade time she’d looked after the two. She’d wanted to care for her own mother, but she’s too strained, other than cleaning up the urine and feces for her mother who’s bedridden, her mother with dementia would sometimes throw tantrums at her. In caring for the two, she’d started having physical ailments too, her hands, lower back ached, she’s diabetic, plus she is low income, there’s not enough resources to look after both her mother and her cohabiting partner.
Jing said, currently there were the volunteers from the Huashan Foundation who would bring the resources, and the social workers from Mennuo Foundation delivering the meals to her, and there were the touring medical services from the community, and the head of the village would check in on her, to help relieve the stresses of caretaking.
The Yuli Hospital stated, that the Xikou mental health home primarily cared for those who are psychologically stable, and those who slowly, progressed in dementia, in the advancement of technology and medicine, the demented elderly population live very long, and they take up the beds, and it’s harder, to get a bed space. But, the hospital planned to do more to help the long-term care, and in the future, the hospital hoped to set up the long-term care stay beds, hoping, to help alleviate the situations of the nursing homes getting filled up too quickly.
And so, this is the TROUBLE with the long-term care provisions here, there’s, this dire need, but, not enough resources, like for the woman mentioned here, she could only, barely afford to place her cohabiting partner, and now, she needs to place her mother too, and there’s, just, NOT enough, bed space at the home available and even if a bed becomes available, if she couldn’t pay for the space, it’s, still, useless. And this problem will only keep on, getting worse and worse, as we’re living longer by the generations, and, there’s, this growing need, but not enough resources provided.
Life, the Obstacle Course 