My mom resided at Saunders House and received good care from warm and friendly people. She always enjoyed the food and nursing service until it all changed. I believe in 2008, the aides joined a union. Many of the wonderful aides were given different assignments and many left or were fired. The feeling of one big Saunders House family was no longer there, and we were unable to depend on those original aides in such a way that we felt secure and loved. Everything changed and not for the good. New aides and ones from other floors were then rotated and the feeling of family went away because no one really knew my mom...she was just a patient and nothing more. During her last 6 months as she began the process of dying and needed more care, her call bell wait time was 20 minutes or longer. Many times I had to visit the nurses' station to ask for help and was usually greeted by an unenthused aide. One aide wouldn't lift my mom because she said she had a bad back! Others would scowl when I asked them to help her from her bed to her chair. As Mom became more frail, she could barely feed herself. The supervisor on the floor said that they didn't have enough help to feed the patients, so I tried to be there to feed her myself especially for dinner. On the day she died, we received a call from an aide who told us to come to Saunders because Mom was not doing well but was in no danger of dying. We rushed to her side but she had already passed. No one was in the room with her and we asked the nurse to have a look. The nurse listened to her heart and pronounced her dead at that moment. Other than the nurse hugging me, no one else came into the room. My mom was paying Saunders House $90,000 per year out of her life savings and we certainly were expecting better care!
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