Electoral Member
Posts: 502 
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
December 12th, 2006, 03:25 PM
I heard some distressing news about a couple in Kelowna being separated after 60 years of marriage due to I'm not sure what...
ALL the elderly deserve our respect for the contribution of a lifetime and the infirmed deserve to find peace in dignity....
This situation is unacceptable and I pray someone fixes it......now... before Christmas...
There is no excuse for this behaviour in my opinion.
Graham.
I heard some distressing news about a couple in Kelowna being separated after 60 years of marriage due to I'm not sure what...
ALL the elderly deserve our respect for the contribution of a lifetime and the infirmed deserve to find peace in dignity....
This situation is unacceptable and I pray someone fixes it......now... before Christmas...
There is no excuse for this behaviour in my opinion.
Graham.
Electoral Member
Posts: 502
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
December 13th, 2006, 11:46 AM
The problem is everywhere..First a person has to stop and think for a moment rather than reacting or trying to come up with the next witty quip.. This machine is wonderful to inform, but it can be so much more, if we can discuss.. telling AND listening... and then we can act.. after careful considerations to the options discussed...
This is a serious issue and one that defines who we are, as people and a nation...What kind of nation would we be if we didn't respect these people for their contributions, many who risked their lives so that we might have the opportunty to do this...
Info, simple,for anyone seeking it, go outside and walk around your community....Or ask the Sally Ann, a local Clergyman, or any other local relief organization what they need...And they'll probably not say money but volunteers....Can't you see a problem in that?
Quoting Dalreg
If I post an individual story, then everyone focuses on that and says, " Oh Dear" and then go on without thinking and say " Can't do anything about that"..
A little info would be nice. Pretty hard to say anything with what you have provided. For all I know one of them could be in jail! Maybe we should send the other one in so they are together.
The problem is everywhere..First a person has to stop and think for a moment rather than reacting or trying to come up with the next witty quip.. This machine is wonderful to inform, but it can be so much more, if we can discuss.. telling AND listening... and then we can act.. after careful considerations to the options discussed...
This is a serious issue and one that defines who we are, as people and a nation...What kind of nation would we be if we didn't respect these people for their contributions, many who risked their lives so that we might have the opportunty to do this...
Info, simple,for anyone seeking it, go outside and walk around your community....Or ask the Sally Ann, a local Clergyman, or any other local relief organization what they need...And they'll probably not say money but volunteers....Can't you see a problem in that?
Executive Member
Posts: 9,534 
December 13th, 2006, 12:12 PM
For your information...
Senior separated from his sweetheart
By Don Plant
Friday, December 8, 2006, 12:01 AM
u
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.
For your information...
Senior separated from his sweetheart
By Don Plant
Friday, December 8, 2006, 12:01 AM
u
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.
Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 4,612
December 13th, 2006, 12:49 PM
The elderly and the infirm as “statistics” combined don’t have voting leverage, and so long as the situation can be ignored it will continue…
Sometimes we hear generalizations that annoy us because like a pearl they exist around an irritation and have a grain of truth…. “There’s only two kinds of people in the world…the rich and the poor”…for instance.
Maybe that’s actually three…the rich the poor and everyone in between…
Stratification within social organizing principals has emerged throughout human history in every form iteration and expression of the human “social” construct. Stratification on the basis of where you were born, what color your complexion might be, what “belief-construct you embrace, what gender you are….anything that can permit one segment of society to practice prejudice and bias against some other segment.
The often over-looked reality that accompanies this stratification is that it is product of the will of the majority that permits these artificial boundaries to thrive and exist. If we refine that notion down still further, what we ultimately end up seeing is that in the minds of those capable of and having the means to address and in many cases rectify the injustice of these kinds of issues, that at a fundamental level people simply don’t care.
They don’t care because they’re too busy living their lives and getting as much as they can get while the getting-is-good. Like every adolescent many people believe that they’re impervious to disease and injury. They’ll never get soooo old that they can’t take care of themselves’….
I spent nearly my entire professional career involved with psychologically and emotionally fragile and vulnerable people. Retarded adults, emotionally-disturbed children and adolescents, adult and teen offenders, the poor the sick and injured and the most desperate among us. When I experienced three major strokes, my life changed and my ability to “earn my keep” vanished in a New York minute…
In many respects I became very like those folk I’d spent a lifetime working with, defending, representing and supporting. And for all that time I believed that what I was doing was something that my fellow human beings believed and felt in their hearts was an effort to help people, out of sense of compassion and responsibility, an altruistic endeavor to ameliorate the unfortunate circumstances of many among us.
To borrow from I think it was Carole King… “I’ve seen the clouds from both sides now..”
Like many people I suppose, it’s taken me a very long time to come to appreciate the obvious….
All this “humanitarianism” and all this “identifying with the victim” and all the other horsepucky that assuages those minor pangs of discomfort felt from time to time as you step over the sleeping bum in the subway or hurriedly glance away from a disheveled doper/drunk on your way to the play….
Is a farce.
It’s an exercise in permitting you to tolerate poverty and injustice while you enjoy an entirely different quality of life than those whom you choose to belittle ignore and disdain.
That’s really what people are and that’s why we erect constructs to provide us victims that we can blame for their circumstance in lieu of doing something to help…that might “cost”….
The elderly and the infirm as “statistics” combined don’t have voting leverage, and so long as the situation can be ignored it will continue…
Sometimes we hear generalizations that annoy us because like a pearl they exist around an irritation and have a grain of truth…. “There’s only two kinds of people in the world…the rich and the poor”…for instance.
Maybe that’s actually three…the rich the poor and everyone in between…
Stratification within social organizing principals has emerged throughout human history in every form iteration and expression of the human “social” construct. Stratification on the basis of where you were born, what color your complexion might be, what “belief-construct you embrace, what gender you are….anything that can permit one segment of society to practice prejudice and bias against some other segment.
The often over-looked reality that accompanies this stratification is that it is product of the will of the majority that permits these artificial boundaries to thrive and exist. If we refine that notion down still further, what we ultimately end up seeing is that in the minds of those capable of and having the means to address and in many cases rectify the injustice of these kinds of issues, that at a fundamental level people simply don’t care.
They don’t care because they’re too busy living their lives and getting as much as they can get while the getting-is-good. Like every adolescent many people believe that they’re impervious to disease and injury. They’ll never get soooo old that they can’t take care of themselves’….
I spent nearly my entire professional career involved with psychologically and emotionally fragile and vulnerable people. Retarded adults, emotionally-disturbed children and adolescents, adult and teen offenders, the poor the sick and injured and the most desperate among us. When I experienced three major strokes, my life changed and my ability to “earn my keep” vanished in a New York minute…
In many respects I became very like those folk I’d spent a lifetime working with, defending, representing and supporting. And for all that time I believed that what I was doing was something that my fellow human beings believed and felt in their hearts was an effort to help people, out of sense of compassion and responsibility, an altruistic endeavor to ameliorate the unfortunate circumstances of many among us.
To borrow from I think it was Carole King… “I’ve seen the clouds from both sides now..”
Like many people I suppose, it’s taken me a very long time to come to appreciate the obvious….
All this “humanitarianism” and all this “identifying with the victim” and all the other horsepucky that assuages those minor pangs of discomfort felt from time to time as you step over the sleeping bum in the subway or hurriedly glance away from a disheveled doper/drunk on your way to the play….
Is a farce.
It’s an exercise in permitting you to tolerate poverty and injustice while you enjoy an entirely different quality of life than those whom you choose to belittle ignore and disdain.
That’s really what people are and that’s why we erect constructs to provide us victims that we can blame for their circumstance in lieu of doing something to help…that might “cost”….
House Member
Posts: 2,853
Location: California
Location: California
December 13th, 2006, 12:58 PM
The problem is what do we do? Should another person who needs the bed in that home more be denied it so Mr Cefelin can live there instead? Is that person less important because he or she doesn't have a spouse there? Do you think his or her family would see it that way? Would you if it were your mother or father? I doubt it.
There is a hierarchy of needs. You have to meet basic needs first before concerning yourself with higher desires. Everyone thinks their needs are the most important, but the reality is these health care facilities have a much harder balancing act than most people recognize.
The problem is what do we do? Should another person who needs the bed in that home more be denied it so Mr Cefelin can live there instead? Is that person less important because he or she doesn't have a spouse there? Do you think his or her family would see it that way? Would you if it were your mother or father? I doubt it.
There is a hierarchy of needs. You have to meet basic needs first before concerning yourself with higher desires. Everyone thinks their needs are the most important, but the reality is these health care facilities have a much harder balancing act than most people recognize.
Electoral Member
Posts: 502
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
Location: Vanderhoof, BC
December 13th, 2006, 01:29 PM
First we have to be aware of the needs around us.
Quoting tracy
Small steps......by everyone would help..
The problem is what do we do? Should another person who needs the bed in that home more be denied it so Mr Cefelin can live there instead? Is that person less important because he or she doesn't have a spouse there? Do you think his or her family would see it that way? Would you if it were your mother or father? I doubt it.
There is a hierarchy of needs. You have to meet basic needs first before concerning yourself with higher desires. Everyone thinks their needs are the most important, but the reality is these health care facilities have a much harder balancing act than most people recognize.
There is a hierarchy of needs. You have to meet basic needs first before concerning yourself with higher desires. Everyone thinks their needs are the most important, but the reality is these health care facilities have a much harder balancing act than most people recognize.
First we have to be aware of the needs around us.
Senate Member
Posts: 6,500
December 13th, 2006, 01:34 PM
Society has become a youth obsessed society - all for the children while ignoring the elderly
Warehousing the elderly seems to be the common denominator for many of our communities however some need never be warehoused if they had been monitored more carefully in senior housing residences, both couples well and impaired....where changes could be observed more quickly prior to making some
people helpless to care for themselves, and their life partner helpless as well - thus separation.
We have all manner of schools and preschools and child care centers but do we have many senior housing developments - do charitable groups even honor this end stage of community work. The answer is NO.
Visited a "nursing home" lately anyone? Seen bedsores deep down into the bone fulminating with infection and pain? While the patient is too medicated to tell anyone about the pain.... even those who are charged with changing the diapers if they remember - perhaps once or twice a day. Some who do not get their dinners and those who do but cannot feed themselves and the plate is removed with nothing eaten?
I wonder why we don't dispense wonderful methods of ending life, giving our seniors the opportunity and
choice for their moment before they become helplessly entangled in our "do-good" "do nothing" society, while they are still able. Do you think what we offer is more humane? NO.
Society has become a youth obsessed society - all for the children while ignoring the elderly
Warehousing the elderly seems to be the common denominator for many of our communities however some need never be warehoused if they had been monitored more carefully in senior housing residences, both couples well and impaired....where changes could be observed more quickly prior to making some
people helpless to care for themselves, and their life partner helpless as well - thus separation.
We have all manner of schools and preschools and child care centers but do we have many senior housing developments - do charitable groups even honor this end stage of community work. The answer is NO.
Visited a "nursing home" lately anyone? Seen bedsores deep down into the bone fulminating with infection and pain? While the patient is too medicated to tell anyone about the pain.... even those who are charged with changing the diapers if they remember - perhaps once or twice a day. Some who do not get their dinners and those who do but cannot feed themselves and the plate is removed with nothing eaten?
I wonder why we don't dispense wonderful methods of ending life, giving our seniors the opportunity and
choice for their moment before they become helplessly entangled in our "do-good" "do nothing" society, while they are still able. Do you think what we offer is more humane? NO.
Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 4,612
December 13th, 2006, 01:51 PM
WoW Curiosity
Imagine a world where there wasn't any taboo around an elderly person, of sound body and mind choosing to schuck this mortal coil! I have friends who've come up with interesting ways like barbecues in the bathroom...let Carbon monoxide do its thing... and other because they're teetering on that event-wave of deteriorating well-being and don't want to add the burden of their slow and frequently painful demise on their children..
Some would call this selfish and some would heap guilt on the whole idea...
Just wait for the "believers" to tell us all how WRONG and how SINFUL this would be...
WoW Curiosity
Imagine a world where there wasn't any taboo around an elderly person, of sound body and mind choosing to schuck this mortal coil! I have friends who've come up with interesting ways like barbecues in the bathroom...let Carbon monoxide do its thing... and other because they're teetering on that event-wave of deteriorating well-being and don't want to add the burden of their slow and frequently painful demise on their children..
Some would call this selfish and some would heap guilt on the whole idea...
Just wait for the "believers" to tell us all how WRONG and how SINFUL this would be...
Senate Member
Posts: 6,500
December 13th, 2006, 02:21 PM
Hi MikeyDB
I started a thread a while back on Euthanasia and Self-Suicide but it seemed more concerned with the act of another having to perform the deed, whereas I have often thought that people should be able to choose when they wish to end their lives.
The response was pretty good - when I expected empty sardine cans to be thrown at me....the people here are kind and forgiving however and responded as they often do with thought out posts.
It is such a shocker for civilized people to be talking about end stages of life and suicide, but the alternative is more gross to me than considering death with pride and making it a loving act.
What if there was one simple pill - easier to swallow than an aspirin - which could be taken with a glass of wine, or a beloved and favorite beer, or any liquid of the person's choosing... in their own time at their own speed.... All wishes carefully written out and documented for the legal community and for the ease of their beloved families who would be left to make horrendous decisions about the future care of the suffering (or soon to be suffering) loved one....
Pretty far from center I realize. I guess I have seen too much....and have become biased. The usual argument against having such a method accepted, a simple pill and blessed sleep - is that the "pill" would be abused.
Look at our alternative however.... warehousing..... is that not abuse as well?
Hi MikeyDB
I started a thread a while back on Euthanasia and Self-Suicide but it seemed more concerned with the act of another having to perform the deed, whereas I have often thought that people should be able to choose when they wish to end their lives.
The response was pretty good - when I expected empty sardine cans to be thrown at me....the people here are kind and forgiving however and responded as they often do with thought out posts.
It is such a shocker for civilized people to be talking about end stages of life and suicide, but the alternative is more gross to me than considering death with pride and making it a loving act.
What if there was one simple pill - easier to swallow than an aspirin - which could be taken with a glass of wine, or a beloved and favorite beer, or any liquid of the person's choosing... in their own time at their own speed.... All wishes carefully written out and documented for the legal community and for the ease of their beloved families who would be left to make horrendous decisions about the future care of the suffering (or soon to be suffering) loved one....
Pretty far from center I realize. I guess I have seen too much....and have become biased. The usual argument against having such a method accepted, a simple pill and blessed sleep - is that the "pill" would be abused.
Look at our alternative however.... warehousing..... is that not abuse as well?
Senate Member
Posts: 6,500
December 14th, 2006, 09:37 AM
I just saw your comment from yesterday. I agree the elderly are a vast collection of experiences and knowledge from whom we should consult and glean for they have lived what we have to in our future times.
I in no way meant to expunge these beautiful people from our lives - only to point out that when time and disease and a future of pain with eventual terminal illness arise on the horizon for these people, should they not be allowed a final decision in the outcome of this?
Rather than suffering - should they not be allowed a rational (while still able) option which is truly theirs and not their doctors or caregivers - but theirs alone? They are the ones with the wisdom to know their own wishes.
Quoting Northboy
Northboy
The elderly, in my opinion, are the repository of a generation's history, both local and global. Old age should be a time of reflection and sharing of ideas. To lose this would give us no rudder.
I just saw your comment from yesterday. I agree the elderly are a vast collection of experiences and knowledge from whom we should consult and glean for they have lived what we have to in our future times.
I in no way meant to expunge these beautiful people from our lives - only to point out that when time and disease and a future of pain with eventual terminal illness arise on the horizon for these people, should they not be allowed a final decision in the outcome of this?
Rather than suffering - should they not be allowed a rational (while still able) option which is truly theirs and not their doctors or caregivers - but theirs alone? They are the ones with the wisdom to know their own wishes.
