Send Ma and Pa to India for their care
Posted by Kim on July 29th, 2007 / Print This Post
Outsourcing the care of our elderly. To India.
After three years of caring for his increasingly frail mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family’s last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home.So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India.
Today his 89-year-old mother, Frances, who suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer’s patient, has a full-time personal assistant and a cook who has won him over to a vegetarian diet healthy enough that he no longer needs his cholesterol medication.
Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do in the U.S., and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment. They aim to use the savings as an emergency fund, or to pay for airline tickets if family members want to visit.
In the end, it’s always about money over much else. I find this option, as it is, a sad example of the selfishness of American people.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Another example of ecomics and big/small business and money. I would never send my mom or dad to another continent for care. They had other options. Is this going to be a new trend for the ungreatful american kids?
July 30th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Seem like leeches that want to suck up their parents money. who in the family is going to take a 20 hour plane ride to india to see ms Betty for a week? Why would you send her where everything is unfamiliar-I can’t go on. I’ll just type obsenities. You get how I feel.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:47 pm
I know…this is just wrong. TO send your parents off to another country; and it’s not like India is the most friendly nation in this world of ours.
Selfishness and greed seem to be the traits of Americans who have little respect for their elders. It shows in our culture and society.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:24 am
Damn. I never knew people would do such a thing. I guess, if they moved their entire family to India I could see this as being okay…and it’s interesting to note the “savings” they have. I wonder about the quality of care though.
Either way it is selfish and so typically American.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 pm
It’s my family your talking about. It was not easy for us to decide for them to move WITH MY BROTHER. The fact is — my mother — who died on Monday, received far better and more extensive care than they could afford here in the states. Typically American? No. Typically American would have been putting them in a Medicare funded nursing home that would neglect and warehouse them. My mother died at home with dignity.
August 5th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Some how J, I don’t believe you are who you’re claiming to be here in this comment.
And, point well taken; if you are the son, you’re Mother died.
Point well taken.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
J-if you are who you claim to be (seriously doubt that!), then I am sorry for your loss. However, my point still stands. I just don’t think that a third world country that has poverty and sweat shops would give an American Citizen great care. Same care they got there, they could have recieved here. How do you know what went on in there since you are accross the globe? I think you are playing a silly, sick game.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Let’s talk about the “Third World Conditions” in American Nursing Homes! My mother’s neurologist told us that there was nothing more medically that he could do for her. She needed round the clock attention. He suggested that she needed stimulation more than anything else. My brother supplied much of that attention in FL, but over the course of three years, he began to break down himself, We all tried to pitch in — but with distance, family obligations and work — it was limited help that could be offered by long distance. My father was another factor — refusing to even give a Power of Attorney to anyone. Yet he couldn’t be left alone with my mother so one could even run to the grocery store. We needed to find a solution.
My mother would not have gotten the amount of stimulation and human contact that she had the past few months in an American nursing home — and we — as a family, could not afford to pay someone out of pocket to do what was needed here in the states.
As far as India is concerned — Pondicherry is NOT Mumbai. It is a beautiful sea resort…similar to Florida in climate. The help that my brother hired were off-duty nurses from teaching hospitals — looking to make a little extra money. The care and respect that they gave my mother in her last few months was priceless and I thank them.
Think what you will about India — or the solution we chose — if you read the article carefully, my brother makes it clear that this is not a solution for everyone — fortunately it worked for us.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:29 am
J I think you miss the point here.
Yet you say it without seeing it:
“but with distance, family obligations and work”
all those little things that get in the way of taking care of those who sacrificed these same things to raise US. Surely you or someone in your family could have made some sacrifices to prevent this removing your own mother from her country? Surely that was not the last resort, but rather the only option you all felt was left, cosidering these sacrifices were not possible in your eyes. Good thing your Mother died. I would have been heartbroken and felt very betrayed had I been her.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Holly, your last paragraph was harsh. I understand your point though. Lets all be happy she is no longer suffering!
J, no matter how you put it, I still don’t agree that was the best option. Seeing all you went through, you could have recieved the same benefits here! I am not going to get to into this but I feel it was a matter of money and inconvenience. Neither of which should come between a parent or child. My dying mother and father would never never be shipped off to a foreign country for care. The transition alone could stress them enough into death. That is a risk, I would never take on my loved ones. I will keep them close to me and close to home.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Hmm…yes a little harsh but I think it speaks to Holly’s utter frustration with this? (Holly can kick me if I’m putting words into her mouth!):wink:
I just think this was an extreme measure J. You could have done better no matter how good you make it all out to be. When it gets to the point of even thinking of these things, it might be time to give up some of your life to pay back the parents who gave up so much of their own, for you. It’s called taking care of our own. A little sacrifice, as Holly says, goes a long way. And I totally agree with her about how your parents must have felt.
I could never have done this.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Holly
You don’t seem to get it. She got better care at home in India than she would have in an American nursing home,
We all tried to find better solutions — but if you had read the entire article — you would have seen that my father nixed any ideas of “charity” from relatives and gov’t. With an intractable man like him — it is hard to find a workable solution. I loved my mother and miss her — have for years — as I watched her decline. And more importantly — I know that the way she died would have been her wishes…with my brother there, and surrounded by caring people — not in a warehouse with her relatives having to live on top of neglectful “professionals.” I suggest that until you have walked a mile in my shoes you simply shut the hell up!
August 15th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Okay J- I’ve opened up the comments for this post again.
First of all don’t come here telling others to shut the hell up. It’s not very dignified and it shows some defensiveness on you’re part. Maybe it’s guilt?
I don’t speak for Holly or anyone else but I can speak for my mother. She died a year ago of Alzheimer’s. She had it for over 10 years; she lived with ME. My family made personal sacrifices to make sure someone was always home with her. I had to change my working hours, as did my sisters and my husband at times. My friends helped out. We did this to keep Mom out of a nursing home- the one place she didn’t ever want to go. She always told us she didn’t want to burden anyone. But we were damned if we would allow her to go to a place where she was just another total care resident…
I think Holly is speaking to this mindset. I gave up income, personal lifestyle, habits and expenses to take care of my own. You did not. That’s the difference. Sending Ma over to India may have been you’re choice, and pretending that it was Pa’s choice is a cop out. The fact is you and your family weren’t about to move them in with you; did anyone consider giving up the lifestyle, temporarily even, to personally take care of your folks? Was India really the only option? I bet not.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
WOW J- you are defensive.
No one here, from what I am reading, suggested that an American nursing home was the answer for your family. Rather, having your parents move in with you or your brother, was given as an alternative. Either that or one of you moved in with them.
THAT is sacrifice. Something Americans have lost an ability to do the past 30 years or so. Selfish. Spoiled. Concerned with monetary issues and nothing else.