Victims made not born

Published March 12, 2007

"Help me. Help me, please! Please, someone help me."
Those were the words, the only words spoken - over and over and over - by the new roommate that the nursing home had moved in with my mother-in-law.
If this woman was my mother or grandmother, the words would have been heartbreaking.
But she wasn't. And the words did not break my heart; they made me angry.
I was working late last week when the phone on my desk rang.
It was my husband. He was calling on his cell phone from the nursing home to tell me about it. He was upset and he was angry.
"Where's her old roommate? Did you complain?" I asked him.
Apparently they had done some patient shifting at the nursing home that afternoon and the way it looked to us - the only way it could look - was that they put this troublesome woman in with someone who couldn't complain about her - my mother-in-law.
My husband's mother has been in hospitals and nursing homes for a year. Her health is steadily declining. She speaks a little but could never complain about a roommate.
And that's where her son and his wife come in.
"There's nobody to complain to," he told me. "The only one here is the night nurse and she doesn't know anything about the move. In fact, she feels terrible about it. She keeps apologizing," he told me.
Nobody to complain to? Quite impossible for this newswoman to believe.
I had an idea.
"I'll call you back," I told him.
It wasn't even 9 p.m. I had bothered people a whole lot later than that.
I got the phone book and looked up the number for the nursing home. The receptionist answered the phone.
"I'm Patti Ewald. My mother-in-law is a resident there. Can you please tell me the name of the nursing home director?" I asked her.
She promptly gave me the name.
"Would you like her voice mail?"
"Do you have her home number?" I asked.
"Just a minute," she said. With that, I cradled the receiver between my ear and my shoulder so I could use both hands to look in the phone book myself. Yep, she was listed.
I told the receptionist never mind and then I dialed the director's home number.
I was trying to stay calm but I was having about as much success doing that as I have staying out of the ice cream in the freezer.
"What happened to her old roommate?" I asked.
"She said she would move," the director answered.
"She asked to move?"
"She said she would move," the director repeated.
Now, I know this roommate. I talked to her often. I was fairly certain she had not asked to be moved.
The director continued dancing around questions until it became apparent what had happened: The patients who could speak up and complain were spared the wailing roommate.
And since my mother-in-law couldn't, she was the unlucky winner.
But not for long.
My husband and I complained enough that by the next night, my mother-in-law had been moved to another room with another roommate.
And the wailing woman?
I don't know what happened to her. This particular nursing home has no separate quarters for Alzheimer and dementia patients.
She probably was put in a room with someone else who is unable to complain.
But this new "someone" most likely doesn't have a son and daughter-in-law willing to insist on peace and quiet for a gravely ill loved one.
And that's a shame because that means they don't have a mother like mine who taught us not to allow others to treat us unfairly.
"You have to stick up for yourself," my mom always told us.
"Because if you don't, no one else will."