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Senior separated from his sweetheart
By Don Plant
Friday, December 8, 2006, 12:01 AM
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Keeping a marriage together can be tough when you’re immobile and your spouse is in a residential-care home.
Otto Cefelin, 81, has been on the priority list for months to join his wife, Livia, at Brookhaven Care Centre in Westbank. But because he turned down a bed at Cottonwoods in Kelowna, he’s afraid he may never get to live with her again.
“I’ve been married with her for a long time . . . We belong together,” he said Thursday. “When you love somebody and you’re apart now with only a little time together, you miss the person.”
Despite having Alzheimer’s disease, Livia, 83, lights up when Otto visits her every other day and is disappointed when he leaves. Because he can’t walk and the couple has no other family, Otto depends on a friend to transport him to the care home from his house.
Dennis, who didn’t want his last name used, said nurses told him that because Cefelin is on the urgency list, he had to take the first available bed – even if it was across Okanagan Lake from his wife.
“They said, ‘You’re off the urgency list because you refused.’ I told them (Cefelin) asked only for Brookhaven. They said you can’t ask for a specific location.
“I don’t know how long he can struggle along.”
In fact, Interior Health takes many steps to ensure couples stay together, said Donna Lommer, executive director of residential and palliative services for the Okanagan.
People trying to get into a care home are prioritized based on urgency, regardless of whether they’re joining a spouse or how long they’ve been waiting.
“If he’s at the top of the urgency list and a bed is available, he’ll be offered it,” Lommer said. “The requested facility isn’t always available at the time the client needs the bed.”
Cefelin said a resident recently died at Brookhaven and a bed was vacant for six days. He inquired about it and learned someone else would occupy it.
The bed could have been a respite bed, said Lommer, or a bed set aside for veterans, which gets outside funding. If the bed didn’t suit Cefelin’s medical requirements, he wouldn’t be eligible.
“We match the client to the appropriate bed in the facility. If a person needs a secured unit, that’s what we look for. If the patient needs a ceiling lift, we look for the appropriate bed.”
Interior Health is sensitive to this issue since the death of Fanny Albo in the Kootenays in February. The 91-year-old Trail woman was transferred to a care home in Grand Forks and separated from her husband against her family’s wishes. She died two days later.
Lommer said patients remain a priority at their preferred care home, even if they refuse a bed at another facility. But if someone else’s needs are more urgent, that person gets higher priority.
Even so, she said, “we try to place couples together because we recognize it causes hardship to be apart.”
To help navigate the system, Lommer suggests people call IH’s central intake line at 868-7707.
