Meals in public hospitals tend to be bland and somewhat repetitious, but they are of a reasonable quality, if not lacking in taste. Can always get a 'Chicken Chow Mein' smuggled into the ICU if you know the right person, and get out of bed at 2am and make yourself a cup of coffee in the staff kitchen. Some concerned nurse might question why a heart attack patent in intensive care is making himself a cuppa at 2am. Well, just say; "I'm a Fatalist, and besides I like coffee", a week later he's still there, and still making himself cups of coffee.

"One of my grandparents had to go into a nursing home after having a fall in their retirement village home. However, they had to spend 4-5 months in a public hospital until a nursing home space could be found for them. It's not something they wanted as they were forced into it. "

Well its an issue of semantics. I also had a relative who was forced into a nursing home following a series of falls at home where it became abundantly plain that she was no longer capable of living independently. Since I had guardianship which she'd signed many years earlier, I made the ultimate decision to put her in a nursing home.

That she didn't want to go isn't, in my view, the same as being forced. By that time she was incapable of making a rational decision as to her best interests and being in the nursing home was the ONLY viable option. Not only did it give her several extra years but it also improved her quality of life since she was in the company of similar people, received 24hr care, and her diet was vastly improved. Additionally it significantly improved her husbands quality of life since he had been slowly killing himslef trying to look after her at their family home, when he was clearly incapable of doing so.

Whilst she was at home, she received significant government funded help as well as help provided and/or funded by her family. But there comes a point when significant in-home help is insufficient as compared to 24hr care.

There are only two ways a person can be forced into a nursing home if they don't want it:

* if a legal guardian authorises it.
* if the medical profession determine it to be in the patients best interest AND gets a court to agree with that.

People being unnecessarily forced into a nursing home may happen but is extremely rare. I'm sure there are urban myths out there to the contrary, but it just isn't so.

Dear Mhaze,

What you did to your relative was indisputably legal - but not moral.

So what if she was no longer capable of living independently - at least she was capable of dying independently, at least she could have preserved her dignity while starving at home, like the elderly Japanese people who at the end of their useful life walk up Mount Fuji to die there in the snow. Who are you (or a medical professional for that matter) to tell that her best interest was to live rather than to die? All people end up dying anyway!

Your relative got care she did not ask for. Her dignity was violated and she was incarcerated among people she did not approve of. Is that something you would have liked being done unto yourself?

Even if being in a nursing home was the only viable option for her to live (and that too is only because Australia does not allow caring visas to non-family people in 3rd-world countries), your relative had the viable option to die, which she would eventually anyway one day.

Her husband's quality of life could too have been significantly improved if Australia allowed your relative to bring in her own cheap but dedicated 24x7 carer from overseas to care for her in her own home.

I wonder what did HE say in the matter?

Yuyutsu,

I'd said that she'd had some falls. The second last one resulted in her ripping her leg open on a piece of metal in the laundry requiring 20 stitches, a blood transfusion because of her weakened state, a 4 week stay in hospital and a regime of pain killers.

The last fall occurred in the middle of the night as she tried to get out of bed. She couldn't get up again and so rang me to come help. When I arrived she was on the floor, covered in piss, sh!t and vomit and somewhat delirious due to what turned out to be a significant UTI.

Explain dying with dignity to me again.

Hi Yuyutsu,

I don't often back mhaze, but he's acted correctly in the case of his grandmother. What would you expect him to do, let her die. Don't forget sometime back you were calling for the extinction of 97% (I calculated) of the worlds population. Remember that call!

Dear Mhaze,

That your relative had some falls is a fact.
That your relative was found with a ripped leg that required 20 stitches and a blood transfusion is a fact.
That she could not get up again and called you is a fact.
That she was covered in excretions and delirious is a fact.
That otherwise, if not taken to hospital she would most likely die, is a fact.

That her preferred response to these facts was to be taken to hospital and subsequently to a nursing home, is not a fact but a speculation - unless of course she told you herself that this is what she wanted.

Rather than "dying with dignity" (your expression), I was referring to being allowed to live the last moments of her life with dignity, that means to have her wishes respected, that means to be related to as a conscious being, as the sovereign subject of her life, rather than as an object, a mere body that must be kept breathing at all costs.

To make that difference, all you needed was to ask her, then respect her choice - and my apologies if you have in fact done that.