How You Get Into a Nursing Home

Just about the easiest thing in the world is to get into a nursing home by accident that is what happened to me. It was a beautiful day in early March when I went to visit my friend Bill who lived in a neighboring town. Although it was approaching spring there was still plenty of snow and ice around and when I got too Bill’s house I thought; instead of that I went to his mother’s old house by mistake. The two houses were next door to each other and it had been several years since I had been to Bill’s house. The result of this mistake was that I broke my leg on the ice trying to get to the front door. I had to crawl back across the ice to where my car was parked about 200 yards away to get my cell phone and call for help. I don’t know what I would’ve done had I been in the dead zone for cell phones. I guess I would’ve froze to death because it was quite cold that day. I had my car keys with me and pushed the button to make the emergency horn blow on my car, Bill heard the horn blowing but he thought it was some truck backing up because a couple of days before the it had snowed and the town was in the process of clearing the snow away from the side of the road.

After crawling over what looked like the Antarctic ice cap I finally made it to my car. Upon reaching the car I discovered that I had broken my leg because I was unable to stand up on my right foot. I made the call to the emergency people and eventually they came. I was kneeling beside my car with my head inside the car and the rest of me was on the ground outside the car. They backed the ambulance down the driveway and got me loaded onto a gurney and proceeded to take me to the local emergency room. There one of the doctors had my ankle x-rayed and discovered that I had indeed broken it. He put me in an temporary cast that was more like a splint but at least I can walk a little bit in the thing if I was very very careful. By that time my friend Bob had arrived at the hospital and he helped me to get into my apartment.

The following morning I had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to set my leg. The x-rays that were taken at his office revealed that I only split the end of my tibia and if I was careful I shouldn’t have any great trouble having the bones grow back together. The doctor put me in a cast made out of fiberglass that was a dark color of purple. Bob was still with me when I returned home fortunately because I was unable to get into the place and finally sat down on the sidewalk in front of my front steps. Bob eased me down onto the ground so I wasn’t further injured, and from there I called for the ambulance again.

After the ambulance arrived one of the attendants was a woman who came walking across our front yard and she too slipped on the ice and she flew about 4 feet into the air and came down flat on her back. She claimed she was uninjured but I’ll bet that hurt like a son of a gun anyway.

The ambulance crew had to use a special stretcher to get me out of where I was that was in two pieces and built like a clamshell. They lifted me up off the ground with this and carried me over to the ambulance where they eventually got me onto a gurney and took me to the hospital in a neighboring town.

When I arrived at the hospital the emergency doctor examined me, and wouldn’t admit me to the hospital. Instead of that he released me directly to a nursing home. Almost 4 months later I discovered that this was a huge mistake because for my Medicare benefits to take affect I had to be in the hospital for a minimum of three days before entering a nursing home. The net result of this was that after 4+ months I suddenly received a bill from the nursing home for almost $40,000. I left.