Our Story
Paula was very close to her uncle all her life. He had cognitive disabilities, and she helped explain things he didn’t understand. She looked out for him with patience, valued him for the good he stood for and the caring person he was, and saw him not only as her uncle but also as someone she treasured.
In Uncle Bill’s final hours, Paula stood by him frozen and in shock as he suffered. The goodbye between her and her uncle will haunt her forever, with images that will never go away and cannot be unseen, and guilt that he was begging for help and she could do nothing. If she had had the knowledge she has now, there were so many things she could have done differently. Paula had to go to counseling for six months because she was so traumatized by what she saw during her uncle's last hours. With terror in his eyes, she looked at him on his deathbed and told him she knew they failed him, and she was not letting it go; she would do something about it. She started Elderly Advocates to acknowledge this broken system, help others prepare for it, and advocate loudly for meaningful help. The more she advocates, the more she sees how broken this system is and the challenges many will face in the future. She strives for others to heed the warning to be prepared and knowledgeable, with just some basic information that could make a difference in a loved one’s life.
In Uncle Bill’s final days and hours, he was dying from an infection he obtained in the hospital (HA MRSA). Paula feels the doctor was not on top of it; the delay in getting the proper antibiotics did not give him a chance to fight to live. He was a fighter and deserved a chance. Paula had gone to a supervisor several times not to put a BiPAP on him; he did not want it, and it highly bothered him. However, they paid no attention to his right to refuse this treatment, and strapped him to a bed to make him have this treatment. On the morning he died, when Paula arrived at the hospital, he could only verbalize her name. He kept saying Paula, Paula, Paula for hours and hours. There was sheer terror in his eyes. He extended his arms and hands toward her, grabbed her arm, and also reached out to other family members in the room for help. Paula also found out later that day that the hospital had not turned off his defibrillator, which shocks you when your heart is failing. This was probably a part of what he tried to tell her. Paula told him she knew what they did, and she would do something about it. She did by forming a community organization, Eldelry Advocates, to educate, support, and advocate.
The final chain of bad events started in the nursing home, around Christmas and New Year's. Paula didn’t know this was a particularly concerning time of year when many staff members quit or call off. Her uncle told her he didn’t know if he should just give up. He couldn’t do things anymore, and they would not help him. Paula told him not to give up; she would find help for him. He died a week later. Her uncle fell multiple times the week before he died because no one came to assist him to the bathroom. His last fall left him unconscious in a pool of blood by the bathroom, which sent him to the hospital, where he got the opportunity to get the HA MRSA on cuts from the fall they didn’t clean or cover up on his foot until it was too late. The week of all these falls included one from the shower chair at 3 am; the staff must have left him alone.
Paula and her uncle kept changing nursing homes (about 8 to 10), but after the honeymoon periods, it was the same thing. The same lack of care, the same playbook used by the nursing homes, the same excuses, the same false hope that things would change. They never did. Now private investors and equity firms have found a lucrative business in long-term care, where they can prioritize profits over care.
They blamed his death on CHF and COPD. They didn’t list falls or HA MRSA; he was just on his last leg, and they had his usual diagnosis for this bad event, but it was the falls and the HA MRSA that caused his diagnosis to flare up. Her uncle had just turned 80 a couple of weeks earlier. With a big party! He walked in by himself, no struggle, no oxygen, and then took his birthday money to go to the casino. It was a lie that he was on his last leg.
“Uncle Bill”
Uncle Bill was a dedicated Boy Scout leader in Johnstown, Pa for over twenty years. He prided himself in teaching scouts how to hike, camp and fish. He was also a member of the Sierra Club. In younger years, Bill was proud to work at Yosemite National Park putting out the fires the campers left behind. He loved to tell the stories of climbing Mt. Whitney, hiking through the Grand Canyon and fighting off bears when they tried to steal the food from his campsite.
Bill also wrote and was very proud of an unpublished book called Step by Step. He wanted to show how easy it was to learn to hike and camp. Bill was also a very loyal member of Memorial Baptist Church in which his elders were one of the original founders. He also was their dedicated Janitor for over twenty years. On 10-11-12 Bill came to Ohio to write the last chapters of his life.
“William P. Bennett”
In Loving Memory
