Creature Comforts

The "care" facility is located on a small city block and shaped like an H, end to end, with two long halls bisected by the lobby (nurses' station) area and one short hallway. The back has a small parking lot, separated by an alley from the back of houses on an adjacent street. The rooms are double occupancy, and most share a small toilet with the adjacent room. Sprinkled among the rooms and several tiny offices are three poorly-kept patios where a few residents can smoke (and occasionally urinate and vomit). Fortunately, during my stay, the weather was usually cold, so I never went on the patios.

My room had a view of the alley. Occasionally, I saw a dog chained in the backyard of one house, but few people. Usually the scene was quiet, punctuated only be some CNAs or housekeeping staff having a cigarette. (I continue to be amazed how many "health care professionals" smoke, and how many eschewed the facility's "healthy" food for fast food.)

There was no temperature control in my room. Although I was told alternately, by the same person, that there was and wasn't a thermostat, it appeared to be a random on-off proposition. Sometime in the afternoon, the heat started to blow intensely until the following morning. It meant that during the sleeping hours it sometimes caused me to perspire. Two actions tended to alleviate the condition -- leaving the door, or cracking the window open. The door option was less desirable because the one hall light that stayed on all night was right outside. My first roommate and I made an accommodation to open the window, and we were able to close the door. My two subsequent roommates were much older and frailer, and they feared the open window, which was, after all, next to their bed. The first only stayed a week. (He begged his doctor to let him go home, even though he wasn't ready.) The other was there when I left. He was on oxygen from a noisy, heat-generating machine, and I had to request a fan be set to blow on me. The fan was not enough, however, and I was forced to leave the door open. Sleeping was sporadic but possible.

One weekend, when the temperature dropped to the 20's at night, the heat went out. Friday night I needed two blankets. Complaints on Saturday fell on the deaf ears of those who had no authority to do anything and no clue who to contact. Finally, at 5 p.m. on Sunday, a heating professional appeared and, in ten minutes, cured the problem. Shouldn't he have been there on Saturday morning? After all, it's a health care facility.