Meet Grandma Ruth
Jody Moore's "Why"
Grandma Ruth was 82. Widowed, mother of three, grandmother of six. She bowled every Friday in her league. Once a week she led a water aerobics class. She walked two miles a day, rain or not. Rummy and Mah Jongg with her friends whenever she could get a game together. She was sharp and busy and fully herself.
Then, the day after Thanksgiving, everything changed. She needed surgery. The surgery didn't go the way anyone hoped, and she had a stroke on the table. It left her paralyzed on one side and unable to speak. One day she was beating her friends at cards. The next she was trapped inside a body that no longer responded to her. The doctors told us she'd need a nursing home for what came next.
In a lot of ways, Grandma Ruth had more going for her than most families in that situation. One daughter had worked inside a nursing home and knew that world from the inside. Another daughter didn't work outside the home and could sit at the bedside day or night, however long it took. And I was a lawyer, though at the time I was on the other side of these cases, defending nursing homes for a living.
So I did what I knew how to do. I called facilities and asked questions I knew to ask. I talked to administrators and directors of nursing. I dug through records, took tours, called in every favor I had with people in the healthcare world. By the time we picked a place, the staff there knew exactly who Grandma Ruth was. They knew her family was caring and attended and informed and watching. They knew I did this kind of litigation for a living. If anyone's grandmother was going to get good care, I thought, it would be mine.
A few days after she was admitted, she was neglected anyway.
A bedsore developed and nobody treated it. She was in pain with no medication to ease it. Evaluations were few and far between. We would push the call button, and no one would come. She couldn't speak, so she just endured it, until hospice finally got involved to manage what little time she had left. She died a few days later.
I still carry what she went through. I carry the fact that we couldn't get her better care, relieve her suffering, ensure a more peaceful passing. For that, I say, “I'm sorry, Grandma.”
Shortly after her passing, after the shock, the funeral and the grief, it hit me that if my own family, with everything we had going for us, couldn't keep her safe, then who could? If we couldn't do it, most residents and their family members don’t stand a chance.
So I quit my job. I hung my own shingle. I opened my plaintiff’s side elder abuse practice. I never went back to the other side. Every case I have ever litigated, I litigate in honor of Grandma Ruth.
And for that, I say, “Thank you, Grandma.”
