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Comfort Care

Comfort Care

When COVID became a state of emergency in the nation and world as a whole they implemented restrictions on visitation to nursing homes to where there was an entire year where my grandmother had to be alone with no visits, only interacting with staff. This had a terrible effect on her condition. When they finally lifted restrictions to allow visitations with PPE I went to Comfort Care the day I found out I could visit again and what had become of my grandmother in that year broke my fucking heart.

I arrived at Comfort Care for my first visit in a year before dinner time so that I could hang out with her while she ate. I walked past the entrance and went towards her room which was empty, they had already wheeled her down to dinner, so I proceeded in that direction. When I got to the cafeteria I had to have someone point my grandmother out to me, I am really bad at remembering faces, and she had changed appearance so much in her final years, so I was guided me to my grandmother by the staff member.

Upon greeting her I found she was in a state of extreme panic, anxiety, and pain as she sat at the dinner table awaiting serving. She had aphasia and slowly lost her ability to speak complete sentences so she was limited to only two phrases she repeated every minute. "Help, please help me." Her pleas are something the staff had become familiar with and instead of trying to determine the source of the problem they let her wallow in panic begging for help because that was all she could do.

Aside from not addressing her pleas for help, there was more than one occasion where I would go to visit my grandmother before dinner and she would be in her room alone with the window blinds closed, in her wheelchair only able to look straight ahead at nothing.

I spent the next few weeks with my sister trying to get my grandmother back into shape and normal, but the damage had already been done. After about six months of doing everything I could to improve her condition and make her not feel that panic and that she needed help, she finally stopped only saying "please help."

My sister and I had to arrange communication with the staff to address what could be the problem, either physical, mental, or a combination. We began by getting her anxiety addressed which took several weeks almost a month for the doctor to agree with it. There were so many minute problems that they would just overlook because the staff hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. I don't blame the staff, there weren't enough of them for all the residents and it is a very difficult job. I blame my brother for keeping her locked in there for two and a half years. I don't deny that yes they did they best they could with what they had, but if my brother had toured places in and Arkansas she could have been in a lower patient higher staff nursing home where any and all issues could be addressed immediately. This wouldn't happen for three years and only was Jane in the right place when she had two weeks left to live.

When I write about these events of turmoil and how terrible my grandmother's final years of life were I know the only person to blame is Bryce. If he had never known that my grandmother had accumulated over a million dollars he would never have started a lawsuit. He as the oldest should be the most responsible and should have visited nursing homes in the state of Arkansas or Ohio to determine where she would get the best quality of life. Instead he put her in a 2.5-star nursing home, the best one that Bennington had.

During the process of the lawsuit my brother further screwed my grandmother and us all over where he refused to allow Jane to be moved outside of Bennington because that is where she lived and she was close to him as family. Given her entire family had passed aside from us three grandkids my sister was the trustee and POA and the lawsuit took that power away from her Later on when I had moved to Rochester I made the drive every single week to visit my grandmother in Bennington. Over the course of 8 months I had visited her 32 times, my sister that lives 500 miles away had visited 5 times, Luis 3, and my brother who lived 5 minutes down the road from Jane had visited only four times. Then there was one other visit from her a single church group member. I know all the number of visits because I had to acquire the visitation log prior to arbitration to provide evidence that no she should not be in Bennington if Bryce isn't visiting her, discrediting that point of argument.

When I lived in Bennington I visited her every single day at dinner to give her company when she was cable of eating and I fed her when she lost that ability over time. When I moved to Rochester and she was still at Comfort Care in Bennington I made the drive to visit. I would spend at least an hour with her, feeding her, getting her taken back to her room, and I would always have to call the staff to change her while I was there. Then three years later, yes three years, my sister and I were able to play the system to get her moved to Rochester where I got to see her all day every day for her final two weeks of life. By the time she got to Illuminated Hearts she was already gone. She didn't smile or wave or exhibit a reaction when I visited her. The saddest part was that at Comfort Care and before, she could acknowledge hugs and would hug back. When she got to Illuminated Hearts in 2023 she no longer could process hugs, her environment, and was in pain from the trauma she endured the last four years because of Bryce not letting her leave Bennington.