Care in State Nursing Homes

One of my pet peeves concerns people who criticize professionals, demanding that better solutions be found, but don’t offer any suggestions for better solutions. My current beef is with people who criticize nursing homes for sedating and restraining residents. My mother has been in a very good nursing home for more than five years, so I know a little bit about the problems. Mother is over 90. She has had a series of strokes that left her unable to stand or move half her body and she has osteoporosis. She tends to slip down out of her wheelchair unless she is tied in. She has crawled over the end of the bed and fallen to the floor, so they have to restrain her.

The nursing home she is in is one of the very best, but I don’t see any alternative except around-the-clock care, a solution that works for extremely wealthy families but is completely out of the question for middle-class people like us.

KENNETH L. PERRY

Newport Beach