Mon, Tue & Wed went pretty good. I was chipper and keeping up with things. Yesterday, I started going downhill. Friday I barely functioned.

This is not working out. But I look at the alternative. The care he received in 3 facilities (over the past 3 years) was extremely disappointing. That's putting it mildly.

I should, at least, go round and look at some other facilities. It's not likely any of them will be much different. When he was in those 3 facilities where he had short stays, I ended up going in and doing much of his care. Even that is not so bad. I was able to come home at night and be "off duty" till the next day. What is going on here in this apartment I can't sustain.

Nursing home work is becoming like fruit picking and meat processing. Americans won't do it. The licensed nurses are brought from Nigeria. Nothing wrong with Nigerians. The ones we met seemed nice. But my bf could not really understand anything they said. I thought their accent was very pretty. But for a person with dementia, they might as well be from Mars. Unless I was ready to translate and facilitate the interaction, there almost was no interaction . . . just robotic dispensing of pills. This is a nightmare.

What has happened to nursing homes is just awful. No wonder lawyers got those ads on TV all the time. Even immigrant labor is not expecting to work the way people used to work. They've grown up watching TV. Life isn't supposed to be hard. A contractor is doing major roof work over at where I live. The immigrant laborers (Americans don't do roof work.) drink from cans inside paper bags during their breaks. They've got to get half lit to tolerate going back up on that roof as the afternoon Sun gets hot. So it is with nurse's aids. They've got smart phones in their pockets. Changing stained sheets is not their idea of the America dream, which is supposed to kick in soon after they get here. So they leave the sheet to dry and just pull the spread over it. But they're pleasant enough. Nobody's going to fuss at them to try harder.

Have money, when you get old, or don't get old. These chain operated nursing homes are efficient at turning those Medicare dollars into profit. They get over $8000 a month. The aids don't get even $15 an hour. All of the help does, basically, just what they figure they can't get away with not doing. In a business where your customer has dementia, you can get away with a lot.

I didn't think he'ld take this long being this sick. Well, had he been in a nursing home on Medicaid, he wouldn't have been at it this long. So many medical interventions he's gotten, he wouldn't have gotten . . . unless I was there everyday pushing the issue. It's like dropping a kid off in an orphanage.

But the past 24 hours, I barely functioned. I've got to change something. I don't like my options. That's just too bad for me.