Elderly Woman on a Hunger strike!!

At work today, they brought in a woman from a nursing home. She was refusing to eat. It turns out that her children had just put her in a nursing home and she did not want to be there so she was refusing to eat. I talked a bit to her. She said she drank some water to take her medication.
On the eval, they asked her if she wanted to die and she said "yes." This put her in that observation room I mentioned here before. They put a mental patient in a room with a big window so they can be seen well and not hurt themselves.
I felt so badly for this patient who came in as I was leaving. She wanted to talk but I did not have time to do so at that moment, before they moved her, (and I had to move her,) to the observation room.
She was very thin and one nurse, a man, made the statement that she did not look dehydrated yet she was thin as a rail. They were waiting for a psyche eval before they decided what to do with her.
What a sad, sad thing!
I am going to see what they decided to do. She should not go to the mental ward because she is lucid and knows what she is doing, but I fear they may put her there. I also fear they will feed her through that tube!
Dancer9

I am as well, Anne. I'm going to check on her when next I am at work. She seemed very pleasent and did use the restroom herself!
She was brought in by ambulance with a rep. from the home with her. She did not seem the type to be trouble. She would tell me she was fine and not to worry about her.
I'm worried though so I'll go check.

Dancer

Before I would go to a nursing home for those reasons Anne, I would choose Assisted Living. It is a happier more social place than some nursing home. A hunger strike is not a bad way to die, after a day or so you aren't hungry anymore.

I cared for my mom in-home for 3 years to avoid a nursing home. At the end everyone around me was saying put her in a nursing home because I was collapsing emotionally and physically. I wonder what the families situation was of the woman. Could they have just reached a 'can't go on point'? Maybe they didn't have resources to quit a job? Who knows. Or maybe, like me, it is an only child just stetched too far?
Mom was in assisted living for 10 years before I moved her in here. She needed more care than assisted living offered AND her money ran out. There are probably many folks in Nursing Homes that could make it in assisted living but, at least in Georgia, Medicaid or insurance will not cover assisted living at all, but they will pay for nursing home care. I'm a big advocate of making some funding available for assisted living. It would be cheaper and more humane than nursing homes. I don't think the nursing home industry likes the idea.