SYLACAUGA – Paul Green was stunned when he learned that his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, would have to find somewhere else to live after mere days at Sylacauga Health and Rehab.The retired Rev. John Milton Green was placed at Sylacauga Health and Rehab after a brief stay in the senior behavioral unit at Coosa Valley Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized and the staff developed an individualized care plan for him. Now the man who served his community in Talladega County for decades as a pastor and chaplain is finding that in some facilities for the elderly, there is not enough room for Alzheimer’s patients like him.
"At first we were ecstatic that Daddy was going to be right here in Sylacauga," Paul said. "Everything looked like it was going to be pretty good — he was happy to be there because he had visited many times, and his mother had been there, so it was a familiar area for him. He would take his Bible and walk around talking to people just like he thought he was visiting."
But John Green was released from the nursing home on Thursday, Sept. 4, only a little more than a week after his admission, with administrators citing “behavioral problems” common to Alzheimer’s patients. The behaviors included wandering into other patients’ rooms and acting in ways that could harm himself and other patients.
They told John’s wife, Bobby Sue, that she needed to remove him immediately; he could not remain another night.
"My stepmother called me so upset, crying uncontrollably," Paul said. "All she could tell me was that the nursing home had called her, and they were kicking Daddy out that day and he could not stay any longer."
He and his stepmother were devastated by the news. Bobby Sue knew she could not meet her husband's needs as his dementia progressed, since her own health also shows signs of age and wear.
The apparent catalyst for this sudden expulsion was an incident on Wednesday, Sept. 3, that involved John entering another patient’s room and falling over her bed, Paul said. It was not the first complaint from other patients about unwanted visits from John, but the nursing home had told his family not to worry since they would take care of it.
“He was in their care, and they should have been taking care of him to see that he was not in these other persons’ rooms,” said Bobby Sue.
It was not John's first fall at the nursing home, either. Three days after moving in, when John was reading aloud to some nurses from the book of Isaiah, he stood up from his wheelchair and it rolled away before he sat back down. He landed on the floor.
Paul said the Coosa Valley Medical Center behavioral unit told him that is never supposed to happen since nurses are always supposed to lock the wheels on wheelchairs for patients who are capable of standing.
But the second incident occurred shortly after John had been medicated with Respidol, a drug his individualized care plan notes said to avoid giving him.
The treatment alone was enough to upset his family, since John never does well with medications, but Paul said nursing home administrators would not share details, including what time the medication was administered to his father the night of the accident. Sylacauga Health and Rehab also did not give Bobby Sue time to make other arrangements. Jillian Randall, a case manager in the senior care unit at Citizens Baptist Medical Center in Talladega, said patients have a right to 30 days of notice before eviction, but occasionally a situation like John Green’s will arise and the unit at the hospital does its best to fill the patient’s immediate needs.
The Greens were therefore able to take John back to the behavioral unit at CVMC where Paul said the nurses are akin to angels. The staff there has agreed to keep John for as long as it takes the Greens to find him another home.
"They really, really saved us from a lot of heartache and aggravation that Sylacauga Health and Rehab gave us," Paul said.
Executive director of Sylacauga Health and Rehab Valerie Scoggins said HIPAA laws prevent her from discussing patients. She did, however, state that Sylacauga Health and Rehab never kicks out patients when they have nowhere to go. And while approximately 80 percent of the residents at Sylacauga Health and Rehab suffer from Alzheimer's and dementia, Scoggins said the sprawling facility is not conducive to creating a smaller designated lockdown unit for patients with more advanced Alzheimer’s.
She said it is important to keep an Alzheimer’s unit as small as possible, with a separate dining room, nurses station and activities room, in order to keep sensory stimuli to a minimum so as not to excite the patients.
“There is no good way to have that in this facility,” she said. “It’s important for patients to get the care that they need, and if we are not equipped to handle a resident, then we will advise them to find the care that they need.”
Bobby Sue said her husband’s situation has begun to open her eyes to the unique needs of a patient with advanced Alzheimer’s.
“I went into this thing as blind as a bat,” she said, adding that her stepchildren and the behavioral unit have helped her a lot, as has Sylacauga Health and Rehab, which recommended some Alzheimer’s-specific units in the area.
A main concern for families with highly mobile Alzheimer’s patients like John is to find a lockdown unit.
“If (John) had been bedridden already so he couldn’t get up and roam, this would have been a different story,” she said. “But he has been — and still is — mobile.”
Bobby Sue said she is writing off her husband’s situation as an isolated bad experience with Sylacauga Health and Rehab, explaining it was simply a matter of the nursing home’s inability to care for such an advanced case of Alzheimer’s. She repeatedly expressed that she does not want to slander the facility or cause trouble.
“They really didn’t want him, and nor were they able to take care of him there,” she said, adding, “I don’t want to be so negative about (Sylacauga Health and Rehab) that others would not receive the care there that they needed. I know of a lady there from Childersburg, and that’s home for her. That’s great, and they have apparently taken excellent care of her.”
Right now Bobby Sue said she is patiently waiting to hear if her husband will be accepted into Autumn Trace, an assisted-living facility in Talladega that has a lockdown Alzheimer’s unit.
But no matter where her husband ends up living, she said it will always be hard to leave him there. She said on one of her visits recently, John told her, “We don’t need to be separated.”
“It just tears your heart out when your husband tells you that,” she said “And nobody really ever knows until they’ve walked in these shoes.”
