Photo by Scarbor Siu on Unsplash
I thought I knew what good elder care looked like.
I had been inside dozens of long-term care facilities as a paramedic. I knew the smells, the hallways, the residents calling out to anyone who might stop and listen.
But when my own father entered the system, I learned how little I really understood.
“For years, I’d been observing the machine. Now I was inside it — and I’d put my father in here too.”
The first facility was new, beautiful and efficient. The second was older, worn around the edges and profoundly different.
There, people had time to be human.
The difference between those two places changed the way I think about elder care, profit, dignity—and what it actually means to care for another person.
Read the full story: From Restraints to the Hearse: Two Kinds of Elder Care
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