Will we step up to the plate?
I recognize how much we owe to the medical community - honestly, I do. But sometimes I really wonder what they are thinking.
My 88 year old father needs an allegedly quick tune-up to his pacemaker, so after much arranging he was taken to the local hospital to have this done. This was to be a local anesthetic, short visit sort of surgery. He is a bit confused these days, possibly due to the pacemaker failing, so it was hard to get him on board with the whole thing. So he gets taken to the hospital, which is stressful enough, but then waits a few hours only to be told that the job is too complicated for the local hospital to do. He will have to reschedule for a later date at the university hospital in Worcester, much farther away, since they put it in in the first place.
Now, how hard was this to figure out beforehand if you simply read the medical file of the patient prior to transporting him all over the place and placing a lot of stress on him?
At this point very little surprises me. I know there is a lot of concern about privacy issues relating to creating databases that are easy to access regarding patient files, but there has to be a better way of running things than there is now.
I have learned to fear getting older from all of this. How my parents would have managed this far without the CONSTANT support of their children is impossible to imagine. What hope does a childless person like myself have? I will be at the mercy of strangers for the basic things. It makes me shudder to think of it. While the cats are good fun, they can't sign paperwork and watch out for the finances. My hope is that at some point soon the gay community will take the sort of initiative they showed regarding the AIDS crisis and set up social and medical support groups to aid gay and lesbian seniors. More than a generation of gay seniors were wiped out, so the problem of handling these issues was put off until now.
I really hope we can sort this out. Being at the tender mercy of someone with hate in their heart terrifies me.
When I first moved to NYC I spent much of my free time doing unpaid legal work for GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis). It was amazing the breadth of the services provided, free, to anyone with HIV. I spent a lot of time drafting wills, powers of attorney, health care documents, and even child custody agreements (often doing these things at bedside in a hospital). Will we respond in similar fashion to the needs of aging gay and lesbian people, as these become a larger population? Or will we simply dispose of our elders as "not my problem."
I hope to see us respond better.
I still don't trust the good will of the majority population when it comes to elderly and vulnerable gay people. I still remember their lack of good will in the AIDS crisis. There were many notable exceptions to that rule, but for the most part the majority only cared when "innocent victims" got sick and died. I'm still mentally scarred by that. I find thinking of my own future incapacity frightening when remembering those days. I'm not convinced enough has really changed.
My 88 year old father needs an allegedly quick tune-up to his pacemaker, so after much arranging he was taken to the local hospital to have this done. This was to be a local anesthetic, short visit sort of surgery. He is a bit confused these days, possibly due to the pacemaker failing, so it was hard to get him on board with the whole thing. So he gets taken to the hospital, which is stressful enough, but then waits a few hours only to be told that the job is too complicated for the local hospital to do. He will have to reschedule for a later date at the university hospital in Worcester, much farther away, since they put it in in the first place.
Now, how hard was this to figure out beforehand if you simply read the medical file of the patient prior to transporting him all over the place and placing a lot of stress on him?
At this point very little surprises me. I know there is a lot of concern about privacy issues relating to creating databases that are easy to access regarding patient files, but there has to be a better way of running things than there is now.
I have learned to fear getting older from all of this. How my parents would have managed this far without the CONSTANT support of their children is impossible to imagine. What hope does a childless person like myself have? I will be at the mercy of strangers for the basic things. It makes me shudder to think of it. While the cats are good fun, they can't sign paperwork and watch out for the finances. My hope is that at some point soon the gay community will take the sort of initiative they showed regarding the AIDS crisis and set up social and medical support groups to aid gay and lesbian seniors. More than a generation of gay seniors were wiped out, so the problem of handling these issues was put off until now.
I really hope we can sort this out. Being at the tender mercy of someone with hate in their heart terrifies me.
When I first moved to NYC I spent much of my free time doing unpaid legal work for GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis). It was amazing the breadth of the services provided, free, to anyone with HIV. I spent a lot of time drafting wills, powers of attorney, health care documents, and even child custody agreements (often doing these things at bedside in a hospital). Will we respond in similar fashion to the needs of aging gay and lesbian people, as these become a larger population? Or will we simply dispose of our elders as "not my problem."
I hope to see us respond better.
I still don't trust the good will of the majority population when it comes to elderly and vulnerable gay people. I still remember their lack of good will in the AIDS crisis. There were many notable exceptions to that rule, but for the most part the majority only cared when "innocent victims" got sick and died. I'm still mentally scarred by that. I find thinking of my own future incapacity frightening when remembering those days. I'm not convinced enough has really changed.