I’ve been spending far too much time in hospitals, nursing homes, and rehab places this year. Not as a patient, but visiting loved ones. These facilities are all, every one of them, a national disgrace. If anything should be condemned, they should be. They are indistinguishable from one another in their cold, sterile neglect of human beings.
The lack of uniqueness in these places mirrors our crony capitalist system in general. They don’t compete with each other, trying to provide better service and care. They understand, as does everyone running any decent sized business in America 2.0, that John D. Rockefeller set the template for them all with his “competition is a sin” credo. At the rehab center I’ve been visiting several times a week, 99 percent of the staff is nonwhite. This includes the few doctors that ever appear. Most of them come from Africa. They are almost all surly, with accents one struggles to understand. One of them attempted to argue with me when I said I was pleasantly surprised that my loved one seemed better that day. They balk at bringing water to a patient. They don’t answer the buzzer every patient has. It’s literally criminal the way these once vibrant people are treated. The attractive White nurses at the hospital where I once worked were Florence Nightingales in comparison, and they were subpar themselves.
I am now sixty nine years old. I’m aware that some of those stuck in these godforsaken places are younger than me. I shiver at the prospect of ever being a patient, and not merely a visitor. I look into their wrinkled faces, as I pass them in the hallways. Some of them gesture, and try to say something, which I usually can’t understand. There are always loud cries of “help me” emanating from the rooms. To be fair, I heard those same cries nearly fifty years ago as a young hospital worker. I learned to ignore them, as the nurses invariably did. I wonder about those faces, and the white hairs that sit atop them. The eyes which still glisten, and seem to want to convey something that their mouths can’t. I wonder how many of them were extroverts like me. What did they do for a living? Some of them, undoubtedly, held positions of importance. All of them must have once walked through facilities like this themselves, and perhaps felt the same sympathy I do for those trapped there.
In many ways, these places are like prisons, and the patients are for all intents and purposes incarcerated. There may be no bars on their cells, but most of them couldn’t walk out to escape anyhow. How many of us picture our final years being like this? All alone, surrounded by often incompetent and usually uncaring strangers. “Caregivers” who don’t care. That seems like a brutal way to wind up our painfully short lifespan. My loved ones can count on me, and a few others, to come and see them. But there are so many cases, especially in the horrific nursing homes, where elderly people are relegated to staring out of the window at a world they no longer are a part of, with the full realization that their children or grandchildren aren’t coming. Some patients receive no visitors. Ever. Their families have forgotten them, naively secure in their fleeting youth. Or they don’t have any family. No children to not visit them enough.
It’s not like those of us who are “seasoned citizens,” as Rush Limbaugh used to say, have it that much better. Yes, we’re free. If we’re fortunate, we can still live in the house we bought decades ago, and considered our dream home. I’m holding out, still mowing my not unsubstantial lawn, but the probably illegal immigrant lawn crews are watching keenly, ready to take over. When I do anything now, I hesitate. I consider how old I am. I was hanging some lights today, and had to climb up on a bench. No problem, but I did think about it. You’re sixty nine- what if you fall? Be careful! If I’m lucky enough to ever have grandkids, will I shoot baskets with them? Play catch with them? Or will I hesitate? Pete Maravich dropped dead on a basketball court, and he was in his forties. That kind of fear takes the fun out of things. I’ve had a few minor falls in the past couple of years, and it sure takes a lot longer to fully recover.
My neighborhood is full of oldsters. Most of them even older than me. I see them taking walks, or standing outside on their lawns, aimlessly examining their landscaping. The ones who are still vigorous sometimes resemble pent-up animals. One old guy actually paces across the sidewalk in front of his house. I can sense his frustration. Too old for the workforce. Probably too old for sex. I don’t think he has any grandchildren, either. I should make an effort to engage him in conversation. He looks like he could be receptive to conspiracy talk. His wife was attractive enough to turn heads when we first moved into the neighborhood in 1998. She’s now just a thin, elderly woman. I know that’s life, but it’s still sad. She pitters around the yard, and probably thinks about her lost looks. I sometimes imagine the kind of conversations they have behind closed doors. I don’t picture them as being upbeat.
I don’t feel like I belong in this oldster’s brigade. I’m collecting Social Security, and will have to turn to Medicare once my wife retires, probably next year. Social Security certainly helps, but I know that our corrupt leaders want to eliminate it. It really irks them that they have to pay back the money they withheld from every worker’s paycheck. They probably celebrate every time some poor sucker dies before they have a chance to start collecting. I seem to be the only American that thinks Medicare is a really bad deal. Pay into it your entire working life, then pay a monthly fee that goes up every year, and still only get eighty percent of your medical bills covered. So you have to get “supplemental” coverage, in order to pay for all the inevitable maladies that come with old age. I don’t know why no one else is complaining. We should have no monthly fee, and 100% coverage. But then again, I am an extreme populist.
They say that Methuselah lived to be nearly a thousand years old. Apparently, other oldsters regularly lived for hundreds of years back then, circa 2000 B.C. They don’t explain how that could be possible. Certainly, there was no cutting edge technology, no modern medical advances we hear so much about, back in those prehistoric times. An early version of fact checkers has assured us that somehow months were mistranslated as years back then, so that Methuselah actually lived to be an America 2.0- appropriate seventy eight. I don’t know, but they lie about everything. Some “Biblical literalists” attribute his extreme longevity to a much better diet. Too bad we can’t all know the joys of this much better diet, and live for nearly a millennium. Think of all you could accomplish. You could be a great failure, and a great success, many times over. See the world multiple times and enjoy countless different careers.
I wonder if Methuselah lost any physical or mental capacity during all those centuries. Could he still run at 800? Have sex at 900? Did he start having aches and pains at middle age, which for him would have been maybe 475 years old? If he became like any other oldster, he must have really had to watch his step. Any fall can be the end for someone in their 80s, so how could a 500 year old survive one? The closest we have to a Methuselah today are those Russians in the hills somewhere, whom it is rumored can live to be 150 or so. They supposedly eat a lot of yogurt. As for ‘Murricans, our life expectancy continues to decrease, despite all the medical marvels so many television commercials remind us of. St. Jude’s doesn’t charge any money, which is great, but childhood cancer rates are skyrocketing. So exactly how is our “healthcare” system succeeding, when over 70% of the population is chronically ill? We may not ever be Methuselahs, but we should live longer. The average person mistakenly thinks we do.
