Treating women with dignity

I was appalled to read this Editorial title:
'Little old ladies are crashing the system' MARGARET WENTE
First they blamed women for being raped, now they blame our precious elderly women for being ill, frail, or blame their caregivers for placing them in hospital. I have a pretty low opinion of Ms. Wente, perhaps it was her editor? I hope so.

Why do we blame the women, do you suppose? We know that senior women are the most impoverished. Many of our homemaker grandmothers and mothers were stay-at-home moms. They don't have pensions. My generation is juggling children and failing parents. I gave up a phenomenal teaching job, with a new, gem of a principal, and a classroom community of precious gr. 8s, to care for my parents.

Where does the blame lie? The lack of beds, the unpreparedness for physicians, with little time, many chronic care patients, with complicated comorbidities. But the media blame the women.

• We don't blame the many nurses, who monitor CADDs to ensure that our palliative patients are not in pain. The medical community, it has been said, has a 17 - 20% shortage of nurses.
• We don't blame the physicians, who march into a hospital room and declare, "She just won't die!" and provide less than helpful homecare or palliative care. Or the shortage of geriatricians in this country.
• Don't blame taxpayers who, like the Americans, want to be able to pay for private insurance plans, but not pay for other's healthcare: those in poverty, between jobs, or the working poor. Insurance companies who can deny their American members at the drop of a hat.

I am shocked at the tone of this article and some comments. We blame adult children (primarily women, daughters, daughters-in-law) who cannot cope with an ill senior. Hospitals who send them home, telling the daughter to provide care for mother, father, mother-in-law, father-in-law who all had surgeries.

My late father, 2007, with one of his favourite PSWs

We cannot blame the system, we can blame the women for being ill, not the shortage in trained Personal Support Workers (PSWs) who are undertrained, inadequately trained, not regulated, nor monitored by any agency. We do not blame the government for the lack of foresight in naming Aging at Home as a priority, but not providing further funding. nor do they rely on much but for-profit agencies. Long-term Care homes who reheat 'retherm' meals, which are awful, do not provide fresh fruit, yet send dividends to shareholders. Something like 5/6 of LTC homes are for-profit. Is this right?

The good news is that many nurses, working and retired, are spearheading projects, like Hospices, and supporting an organized system of caring for these frail, at-risk elders in our community. Most want to be home. Most want highly trained medical personnel to help them in their homes, or in residences, not institutions.

Look around your community. You'll see many seniors volunteering and keeping their hands, brains, and bodies busy. Knitting for others. Creating quilts for raffles, or family and friends.

You're Welcome

You're Welcome is becoming an endangered species.

I have heard...
~waiters, upon being thanked for their service state: "No problem!"

~people being interviewed on radio and TV, responding to "Thank you for being on our show!" with "Okay!" or "Sure!"

Valerie Pringle, funnily enough, was featured as host in Where Are Your Manners? , a CBC documentary. What an excellent show!

It touched issues such as worker incivility, inappropriate language at home, on the road, at work and in public. We hear and see rudeness everywhere we turn. To the man who urinated off his boat in the lake in front of our cottage/home, I say shame. Rudeness is proudly portrayed on clothing, too. To young women with 'princess' stencilled on the butt of their pants, to baby t-shirts that say, "Spoiled, The Brat, or The Boss".

She spoke to Lynne Truss (Talk to the Hand), Miss Manners, Dr. Jean Twenge (Generation Me), and Dr. P. M. Forni, head of the John Hopkins Civility Project.

Dr. Twenge feels that children raised in the 70s were raised with a false sense of self-esteem, and an ability to resist rules. These young people are still questioning authority and disrespecting elders. They were raised by children who were treated by their parents as friends, not authority figures. I have worked with teachers who have made these mistakes: treating students as friends and pals. This is a dangerous enterprise.

This professor found that students would argue with their professors, and I found this in my personal experiences as a part-time lecturer at uOttawa working with student teachers.
Miss Manners, in part of the show, cited bigger battles such as those with sexism and racism, during which time young adults learned to rebel against these entrenched ideas, and continue to battle everyone in authority. This, she says, was the basis of civil behaviour, transferred to interpersonal work-related relationships.

I find that rude behaviour can be experienced in stores, both by surly customers and employees. You find such behaviour in all sorts of places: stores, resaurants, at the gym, in a bus or a bus shelter. It is intolerable. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. I refuse to tolerate such behaviour. I ensure that I speak to managers.

Simply walking along the sidewalk I am amazed at the people who will walk two-abreast, on a space that is only two people wide, who walk without giving people walking towards them any space to exist. We often talk in my family about a 'sense of entitlement' in cottage country, where people act as if you were born to serve them. They are very important and must drive around you, passing in dangerous conditions, and showing little respect for other drivers, traffic laws and speed limits designed to ensure our safety. Boaters are similarly abrasive in their quest to enjoy their holiday at our expense. Bonfires, and obnoxious fireworks all pollute our natural world.

The media is full of poor role models and examples abound of characters acting badly. Renzetti, in an article about "Potty mouthed comics", said it all. Poor taste cannot be taught. Media wants ratings, and does not care what messages it sends us as they lower standards of behaviour, while deconditioning us to intolerable messages and acts.

We have to speak truth to power and let a manager or boss, or business owner know if their employees are being rude. We must turn off the TV, and other media, and write letters of complaint. We have to reward and laud those who exhibit excellent manners. Vigilance is required.