Aging and Indiana's Adult Protection Service Gestapo

Couples not allowed.

Like blood thirsty stormtroopers, the Adult Protection Service from Monroe County, Indiana is once again on the move!  Marching without fear of retaliation, its paid mercenaries again swoop into a home they've already destroyed and won't be satisfied until they have all members confined in a nursing home status.  

Like most laws created, a law office, hired by the service, has found a way to gain financially.  A year ago, they found their prospective cash cow, took advantage of an elderly man's naive nature, and proceeded to separate him and his wife of thirty-six years by having themselves declared her legal guardian.  

(*I've discussed the how's in a previous post.)

So, all of her property was taken to be sold, retirement annuity and burial policies cashed in, and 24 hour confinement in a nursing home was her fate. 

Of course, all of the husband's property, income, and personal information had to be disclosed for this process to move along.  Information, to which, they had full access.

Access which provided a future target for financial gain ... $10,000 per person.

So is the continuing saga concerning my stepmother and father.

Tuesday, I received phone calls from a nursing home administrator, the Monroe County Prosecutor's Office, and the lawyer's office which seems to be the sole contracted receiver of funds from those they chase.

It's a new form of "ambulance chasing" only under the guise 

of protecting those unable to protect themselves.

They all presented themselves as "worried" about my father.

What a false facade!  One could feel the drool and dollar signs dripping against the receiver of the phone as they expressed their supposed concern.

Allow me interrupt this oratory with a little information about their prey.  

"I've done things my way my
whole life.  Now, the APS wants
to tell me I'm crazy for doing them.

My father is 82 years old and is in better health than I am.  He's never had heart problems, spends an substantial amount of money monthly on vitamins, and eats a low fat diet which excludes all fast food.  He mows four acres of lawn weekly, chops his own wood for a Mother Earth News style home furnace he built by hand, plants and cares for an annual garden, and has no problem in maintaining an impeccably clean home.  He's never late on bills, has never had a complaint filed by any neighbor for any reason, and is a respected member of the community.  He keeps up on community news, small town gossip, and can relate it to you without hesitation.

He has devoted himself to a seven day a week, seven hour a day obligation of staying next to his wife in the nursing home to ensure she's cared for properly.  He has taken on the tasks of feeding her, cutting and styling her hair, and even changing her bed when the nurses seem to be "too busy" with other patients to do it.  So much for the prime nursing home care one would expect a patient to receive.

Although more a wish than a reality, he has had a hard time believing that his wife will never be allowed to return to their home.  Yet, even though the experience has been an exceptional physical and mental strain on him, he never stopped his daily visits and care.  

That has been his mistake.

Being exhausted at times, he has dozed by in a chair beside her bed.  One evening, he fell into a deep sleep and when awakened at 2 a.m. from a nightmare, he asked, "What funeral home am I in?"  

After a moment, he recognized where he was at and left the facility to go home.

This was noted and written in a record that someone obviously started on him without permission.  Of course, the nightmare was ignored as being such and instead the incident was listed as a state of dementia.  

The person making this claim was not a licensed physician!

If you would like to tell me that you've never awakened in a strange surrounding and wondered where the hell you are, I would be very close to telling you that lying is a sin.  

If you've never awakened from a nightmare, whether it be one where you're being 

chased or are falling, and not taken a few seconds to gather yourself, I would have

 to repeat my statement from a sentence ago.  

And, if you've never jumped out of bed thinking you were late to work, only to find 

that it was the weekend, I'd say you have a habitual lying problem.

Mind you, never once did I accuse you of exhibiting Dementia!

  

What I want to know is why it took the staff until 2 a.m. in the morning

 to wake a visitor that was in a locked door facility?  

Sounds like nursing home security need be investigated instead of my father.

They also say that he feels he is "at home" there.  My father is at home wherever his wife is.  His whole purpose in being with her is to share the love he has with the one who has been taken away.  He knows he's not like the patients there, is shocked by the way the nursing home has terminated personnel due to budget cuts, and, again, only spends so much time there because he felt he was "helping" with the care of his wife.

Little did he know it would be used against him in a quest to incarcerate him.

Last week, my father was driving his pick-up truck.  As he crested a rise, he found himself facing a lawn care trailer that had been backed out into his lane of the road.  The driver had exited the vehicle and left it there as he did something else.

My father hit his brakes and skidded to a stop, but not before hitting the trailer.  It damaged his truck just beyond "driving" ability, but there were no personal injuries.  

"I used to love to laugh.
Now, I'm just waiting to die."

Unable to have transportation to get him to the nursing home, my father decided he would walk.  This was a distance of about five miles.  He had walked this distance to and from school during his youth, and felt himself still physically capable.  

(I had to do it during my youth, too, usually in the dark of night after basketball practice.  Icy rain, an armload of heavy books, and cars speeding along the highway are my memories as my father worked night shift and couldn't pick me up like the other kids fathers did.)  

Anyway, he did this for several days (proving he was physically capable to all of us) before I became aware of the situation Monday evening.  His response to my shock was simply, "I walk that much around the yard every day.  Walking is good for you.  Besides, most of the time a neighbor will stop and give me a ride."

As I said, his physical health has been excellent.

I was told Tuesday morning (in a call from the nursing home administrator) that he didn't bring anything to eat for the day, They felt he was forgetting to do so, displaying early Alzheimer's memory loss characteristics.  I was surprised as he always prepared a sandwich for himself and a bowl of fruit or vegetables for his wife.  When I asked him about this, he stated, "It would have spoiled in the heat during the walk. I eat before I go and when I get home.  It's no big deal."

Sounds like a man that isn't thinking sanely, doesn't it?   

I don't eat breakfast.  I guess that makes me a target, too!

Call me "naive" also as I thanked the nursing home administrator for telling me she'd arranged a ride home for him Tuesday with a nurse that traveled that direction and would provide him lunch that afternoon.  Yes, I thought it was being done out of human kindness as it was being portrayed.  I didn't know she was going to use it as another black mark against him in an effort to have him confined.

I had planned on going up to see him on Thursday, my day off.  I wanted to check on the progress of his truck repair and probably purchase a car for him to drive.  I was worried more about his safety than his ability to walk the distance as the elderly are targets for many wrong doers.  

That was before the Tuesday morning blitzkrieg!

I was barraged by calls from the nursing home, the prosecutors office, and the law firm representing them.  I was informed of the file the nursing home had obviously been keeping, their reporting of that file to the prosecutor's office, and the somewhat "threatening" warning  of the open case file that now existed.

The gestapo had been activated.

What has to now be done?

Since a person is guilty until proven innocent in this situation, my father now has to undergo an examination to determine his cognizant ability, an examination to determine his physical ability, and a driving examination to determine his driving ability.

Welcome to Indiana!

After discussing these new developments with him Tuesday evening, I found myself having to take two days off of work to travel the 250 miles to him to get the ball rolling.  Since 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, I've set up appointments with the Veteran's Administration Hospital and for a driving test, I have a car for him to drive in the meantime (after riding with him and finding nothing wrong with his driving at all), and am on my fourth pack of cigarettes.

But, the Gestapo is breathing down his neck.

I'm supposed to keep them updated as to all results.  I find it hard to do so without major malice coming through in my responses to them.  The term "witch hunters" comes to mind and the days of Salem haunt me and my willingness to supply them with any response.

Guilty until proven innocent is not part of our culture!  

Why has the state of Indiana accepted it as theirs?  

I'm sure that the state didn't intend for innocent individuals to be 

wrongly charged, so why is it occurring and 

what can be done to stop this atrocity?

My stepmother is a victim of Alzheimer's Disease and does have bouts of Dementia.  I saw this and knew it was only a matter of time before it got to the point of my father having to do something with her.  However, the state determined they needed to do something immediately and within a very short period of time took control.

However, my father does not have Alzheimer's Disease.  He remembers what he wants to, takes notes on appointments and important matters (as most of us do), and casts away what he could care less about, such as general non-important conversations with which he feels no need to remember.  

I do the same with my wife's conversations, as most spouses do.  If you live in Indiana and are over eighteen years of age, be careful as you may find yourself confined to a nursing home for doing so.

He exhibits no signs of Dementia.  He's the same stubborn old man any time of the day without change.  In his life, being engulfed in his obligations to his home and wife, it doesn't matter what day of the week it is as long as the bills are paid and there's milk in the house.  Since every day is has the same routine, knowing the date holds no importance to him.  Some people just can't understand that not everyone finds the same things important as they do.  Ask me what the date is and I'll look at my cell phone to see.  Do you do the same?

So, who's being hurt?

First, my stepmother.  Why?  Because the nursing home is definitely understaffed.  There's simply not enough staff to handle the individual feeding demands of the patients.  Why will she suffer?  Because, with my father now under the spotlight of "evil eyes" watching his every move, I've limited him to a maximum of two hours a day with her.  We simply can't take the chance of them reporting another normal activity as some sort of mental illness.  Without his assisting her, she will become another that has to be fed a cold meal by the time the staff gets around to feeding her, one that lies in a wet bed until they get around to changing it, and one that sit's listlessly awaiting death to take her while individual attention is impossible to share.

Also hurt, my father.  With his visiting time being cut short, he worries about her and the situation of which we're forced to allow her to remain.  Also, being accused of what's been stated is agonizing to him and his self worth, not to mention being required to take exams to prove his innocence and sanity.  He considered his efforts at the nursing home admirable.  He was relieving others of taking care of his wife so they could assist others.  He considered them his friends.

He now realizes they've stabbed him in the back.  All the joking and conversations were simply a ploy.  It finally hit him square between the eyes when I took him there Wednesday morning and he saw they'd removed the chair in her room that he normally sits in.

One can only surmise it was their way of saying, 

"You're not welcome here."

So much for "Thank you for helping."

Kind of shows the attitude they have, doesn't it?

Kind of makes you wonder what the state of Indiana really had in mind.

Then again, lawyers always help lawyers make money, don't they?