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A short while ago I received a comment on this blog from Anthony Cirillo in response to one of the ‘Snippet’ entries I had published a day or two earlier. Anthony is an entertainer performing in Long Term Care Homes around the United States and, by all accounts, he does a sterling job. It is a job, nay a privilege, which brings him into close contact with all kinds of long term care and respite care establishments and to see for himself what goes on in them and thus gives him an excellent opportunity to dispel the myths surrounding long term care provision.
As a result of that comment on my blog he and I became friends and exchanged contact details. The other day he sent to me a package containing a book he had written, entitled, ‘Who Moved My Dentures’ and asked me if I would mind reviewing it for him on my blog.
I’ve never reviewed a book before: the nearest I’ve ever got to it was in English Literature classes in school, back when Adam were a lad! So I hope Anthony can forgive my faltering efforts to review his (I have to say) quite excellent and intelligent book.
I entered into this task with some trepidation since my usual response to reading is to fall asleep and I didn’t want that to happen with Anthony’s book. I needn’t have worried. It is a slim volume; just 162 pages long, but packed with a light hearted though serious review of the life he has personally witnessed in various care homes, all reported on from the perspective of residents both past and present with whom he has talked to over the years.
It can easily be read in just one or two sittings and is an entertaining and informative read, full of insight and revelation about the lives, loves and antics of care home residents.
There are a great many myths surrounding long term care, myths that do a lot of damage to this vital service and which serve to deter its potential users from taking up its use. Myths such as ‘long term care facilities are places you go to die’, or ‘long term care facilities are depressing, unclean and the last place you would choose to spend time’.
Anthony takes many of these myths and, one by one, expertly debunks each one with anecdotes gleaned from his conversations with those very residents who should know best exactly what life is like for them in long term care. Again and again his short chapters resound with the joy and exuberance flowing both from his own experiences and of those recounted to him by his all too willing subjects.
I can only witness from a different country and a different time, but I have memories of my Great Uncle Cyril’s stay in an NHS care facility and from where he subsequently passed on – all the inmates I saw, including Uncle Cyril, just sat around like wheel chair bound zombies; their expressionless stares providing a sterile backdrop to the stench of stale urine. It was not a pleasant experience and one guaranteed to bolster the kind of myths Anthony now debunks in his book.
Does this mean I am at variance with Anthony’s views of long term care? Not at all. Thankfully, I also have pleasurable memories of a great aunt’s and, much more recently, of my own mother’s stay in long term care. The love and attention afforded them could not have been bettered.
My own experiences, though, do seem at odds with Anthony’s tales of the lucid and intelligent folk he has met over the years as a care home entertainer. I cannot remember seeing a single resident capable of holding an intelligent conversation, so Anthony’s regaling of the free spirits he met was a welcome relief, concerned as I was that all care homes only ever catered for were senile old dears, blissfully unaware of their condition.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Long term care facilities serve the needs of all who need care: from the infirm but rational to those with dementia and Alzheimer’s; from the physically to the mentally disabled; for those recovering from heart attacks and strokes; and for all ages, from the young to the old. All life is here and, seemingly, some of it is very much alive and refusing to stop kicking.
For anyone needing long term care, but afraid of what’s facing them thanks to the myths they have heard about it; or for those charged with putting their loved ones into care but reluctant to bite the bullet for fear of what they’re letting them in for: this book is for you.
The final chapters provide an excellent resource of helpful information, designed to facilitate making a better choice and which follow a remarkable insight into how one might fund long term care costs: never a small consideration. True, the book is aimed at the American market and the final resource chapters are specific to that sector, but the book is just too good to miss, whatever part of the world you come from or are currently residing in.
If I have whetted your appetite and you would like to purchase the book (and, if you’re faced with going into long term care yourself or with placing a loved one there, then you could do a lot worse than read this first!) it can be obtained from Amazon
It has certainly dispelled some of the myths I had been carrying around with me for a long, long time.
Well done Anthony and thank you.
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