While driving to work, I passed this woman many times. She and her lawyer often stood outside a nursing home/rehabilitation center with this sign and one that read that the state had rated this facility below average. I decided to speak with her and have her tell me her story.
Her mother was in her middle eighties with many of the typical illnesses that beset us at that age. She told me that her mom was a very active person and probably had a better social life than she. She put her mom into this facility because she needed some rehabilitation.
This facility is associated with her family’s religion and she felt comfortable that her mother would receive excellent care. The day her mother was admitted she took the upper left picture and the day her mother passed away she took the picture in the lower right: approximately seven weeks later.
She is suing the facility for medical malpractice. I will save you the litany of things she claims the facility botched in her mother's care. She told me that she visited her mother every day and complained bitterly to the facility's doctors and administrators about her mother’s deteriorating condition, but to no avail.
It is interesting the response she has received to her almost daily protest vigil. Older women who visit friends at the facility, who are also members of the church that sponsor it, question her integrity and her right to protest. Individuals who have lost family members while staying in this facility have come to her feeling guilty that they did not protest what they also sensed was an unnatural death to their family member.
I cannot say whether she is right or wrong in her claims -- I do not have the evidence. However, in my lengthy conversation with her, I came to admire what she is doing. She has already gotten the facility administrators to admit to the community that the state rates its services below average. Probably more important to her than any financial reward she might win is that she wants to improve the care this facility offers (she related to me circumstantial evidence indicating that it already has) and get the facility administrators to admit their wrongdoing in her mom's premature death.
Eventually, her case was settled. I do not have the details of the settlement.
