It's been almost three months since I wrote about my friend David Rector, and since then little has changed. The judge threw Roz a bone by allowing her to care for David for a few months, with all kinds of hand-tying restrictions applied. Roz did succeed, after jumping through more hoops than you would have the patience to read about, in taking David to a movie. The nursing home tried to prevent that, too, at the last minute, even after receiving the reams of required documentation. David chose the movie himself (though the hired guns don't, of course, acknowledge that he can choose anything for himself). He's an Anne Hathaway fan, so he chose her latest film.
I'll copy and paste one of Roz's recent updates after the jump. I only remind folks that this fate is potentially that of any of us, no matter how carefully we plan or how much we'd rather not think about it.
Then, perhaps because of a local press inquiry, perhaps because she wanted to dot all the legal "i's" and "t's" of this judicial travesty, the judge threw me a bone beginning November 1st. She allowed me a heavily conditioned three-month "trial" conservatorship of David's person (see order attached). The Guardian and Conservator for Hire retain conservatorship of David's estate—all of which they'd already paid themselves for neglecting and abusing him.
So, by the time the judge felt charitable, David's Medicare days were all but gone, and no decent facility will take him. His doctors won't yet let him come home with me—even if my conservatorship was more than an appeasing, deflecting trial intended to further frustrate and intimidate all efforts to recover David's personhood. As horrible as it sounds, David literally has to get sick enough to be hospitalized for three days in order for the 100 Medicare days to kick in. Without those days, the facilities that tend not to neglect or abuse their residents, listen patiently and politely to my earnest request to move David out of CWD before saying, "Sorry, no beds available." Unfortunately, health care for them—like the Guardians and Conservators for Hire who abuse their charges by paying themselves first and worrying about care last (if at all)—comes down to bottom-line profit. And, at this juncture in his physical, emotional, social, and financial abuse, David's profitability stature for a nursing facility is just about nil.
Our case, as Robin Fields and Jack Leonard so clearly articulated the legal scam five years ago in the LA Times series on Guardians for Hire, is so very typical:
1) Tragedy causes incapacitation.
2) Evil family members, unscrupulous lawyers, nursing homes, and the agencies who make health care a trillion-dollar industry try first to find and then follow the money—even when the incapacitated person is of very modest means.
3) Courts filled with cronies appoint third-party fiduciaries the incapacitated person does not know and whose primary concern is reaping fees from the ward until all assets are gone—after which the state pays the fiduciaries and their lawyers.
4) Advocates of the incapacitated person go broke in the courts trying to reclaim the lives of their loved ones and right very legal wrongs done them.
5) Pleas for press coverage—lest the same hell befall other unsuspecting souls—are met with cacophonies of silence and/or excuses:
a) The story is too complicated.
b) The story was covered some years ago and a follow-up isn't thinkable in these resource-poor new media times.
c) Who cares about nursing home abuse anyway?
d) The victim is one of our own, and we only promote positive aspects of news professionals' lives—like their latest memoir.
e) The story must be locally investigated to produce any results.
f) The story must be aired nationally for produce change.
g) Reliable statistics don't exist on Guardian/Conservator for Hire Abuse, so there's nothing for us to cover.
So what happens to the heartbreak of those . . . who care enough to holler fire in the burning, baby-boomer crib? The same thing that's happening to David and me: The health-care-goes-to-court nightmare continues unabated.