Vancouver Magazine

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A Son's Story: BC's Dwindling Senior Healthcare System - continued

By Andrew Findlay published Oct 1, 2010

Still, no amount of joviality or decorative accoutrement can conceal an aged, institutional atmosphere. The walls, of whitewashed brick, are adorned with pastoral murals presumably meant to recapture something of the natural world that most residents have long left behind. A faint but pervasive antiseptic odour mixes with smells of laundry, food, and stale coffee. Wide windows in the dining room look out over a peaceful inner courtyard, in the centre of which lies a simple wooden structure, the Chapel of the Pines. Generally there is more laughter than sadness around the lodge, and there are few secrets; normally discreet topics are discussed as casually as the weather among visiting family members.

The lodge is one of those publicly owned and operated facilities that are clouded in uncertainty. The provincial government wants to close it but can’t: there are simply too many old folks lined up and waiting for beds. The uncertainty that hovers over the place is reflected in the slow erosion of amenities and the awkward management. When Dad first arrived there was an active social calendar organized to engage the minds of residents, Happy Hour every Wednesday afternoon, visiting musicians and storytellers. Eventually the recreational activities slowed to a trickle.

Decisions about residents’ care can be baffling and deplorably handled, such as on the day one woman arrived for a visit and was told that her resident husband would be shuttled off the next morning to a privately owned, publicly funded facility across town. No advance notice—just get packed. Such callousness is symptomatic of a system under critical stress and does little to engender faith in the province’s approach to seniors’ care. Neither do some of the bizarre, Kafka-esque redundancies, such as the ongoing closure, renovation, reopening, and closure again of floors at the lodge; beds are often left empty while seniors languish (expensively) at a nearby hospital awaiting placement in a facility. This egregiously inefficient use of public resources is no doubt connected to the government’s desire to offload responsibility for seniors’ care; it would be laughable, in a Monty Python sort of way, if people weren’t being put through an emotional meat grinder.