Personal experience provides me with a wealth of information on the subject of elder abuse that I would have been content never knowing. Even the thought of composing an article on this topic is unsettling because it evokes such unpleasant memories.

As shocking as it might seem, a huge number of elderly citizen abuses occur at the places we naturally assume are the safest – our licensed elder care facilities. My father’s story is heartbreaking.  

As my father’s dementia progressed past manageability, my siblings and I searched three states for the best dementia facility we could find.

After traveling hundreds of miles visiting several nursing homes specializing in dementia care, we chose a brand-new facility that hadn’t even opened yet for business.

Life rolled along fairly smoothly for my father, after he adjusted to living at “Elder Village.” I didn’t see him often because we’d moved him back to his roots, at his request, to be near his own siblings - very long distance for me.

Now, according to the Elder Village CEO, my options were: 1) to traumatize my father by moving him, or 2) to allow Elder Village to continue to medicate him into an incoherent oblivion.

Elder Village’s nurse took umbrage at the doctor’s instruction and insisted my father was not over-medicated. She insisted that Dad required a pacemaker, apparently believing she was more qualified to diagnose my father than the E physicians.

I was shocked to learn later that Elder Village’s nurse initiated a conversation with my father’s primary care doctor about execution of a DNR order should this scenario recur a fourth time, with absolutely no knowledge or consent from the family! 

On May 12th my siblings and I kidnapped my father. I drove 48 hours round trip in three days, to bring him home with me to Florida, while my sister and brother towed a U-haul trailer long distance to secure his personal belongings.

The Elder Village drug cocktail, which was touted as necessary for my father’s well-being, his best interests, his very existence, was never necessary at all. This very dangerous drug combination was prescribed primarily for behavior control, to render my father docile and easily manageable.

Miraculously I was finally able to locate an outstanding facility in Daytona Beach, with one vacancy.  All rooms were private, and no one minded too much if a resident broke the blinds or flooded a toilet because daily mishaps are normal in the world of dementia.

After finally getting Dad settled in, with less than an hour’s drive from my home, I was able to stop in regularly and check on him. He was adjusting well, and no one was trying to dope him. 

Though my father had no history of heart malady, high blood pressure, black outs, or any other health issue except an enlarged prostate and dementia, almost immediately after being force fed the unneeded drugs, he suffered the first episode of passing out.

Due to over-doping, my father was diagnosed during the third ER visit as being dehydrated and malnourished, with dangerously low potassium levels, yet Michigan found nothing wrong. 

The facility nurse conspired with my father’s primary care M.D. to execute a Do No Resuscitate Order, with no attempt to contact or obtain consent from the family, yet Michigan found nothing wrong. 

When I appealed the state’s decision, I got the same result and was so upset that I contacted a nursing home abuse attorney about suing Elder Village on behalf of my father. I was referred to the very best of Michigan’s elder abuse attorney firms, and was subsequently surprised and very disappointed to learn that, unless my father suffered permanent harm to his health or actual death, the chance of a verdict in our favor was three percent.