After returning to Australia to sell her home, Germaine Greer, 83, put herself into aged care last year. As Covid lockdowns came and went, she was at times ‘not a patient, but an inmate’.
Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps
I find that very concerning, unless Greer herself started to feel it was time to let others represent her!
Do you know what her health issue is?
I am closer to 96 than 95 but am not ready nor willing to think seriously about an aged care unit? I have one daughter in an adjoining suburb and someone cleans my clean house every Friday Am I selfish? My house is reasonably large on ten acres, I can still drive although I often take cabs depending on my self confidence. I hope I just drop dead one day but I have very strong heart which some think is marvellous but perhaps that is not so and may keep me alive when I have no wish to do so? Fifty years ago, as a member of the NSW Humanist Society, I was part of the Voluntary Euthanasia movement and I recall a Doctor member saying the problem with it is that people NEVER think it the right time? I agree with him although I have known people who have been brave enough to’ grasp the nettle’! Whether I am on the right path only time will tell but so far so good!
It’s a very personal decision as we age about whether or not to go into care- I think women,in particular, as we age are socialised into thinking we are a burden.As long as I can genuinely live autonomously I will.
I’d be a menace in a facility organised around its need for my compliance!
Dear friends: usually one does not place oneself into residential aged care. There must be what’s known as an ACAT done. Now, this can involve mobility, cognitive and other tests. Effectively if you don’t have a private nurse and you require daily personal and clinical care of some complexity, you may be assessed as appropriate for residential aged care. While home packages exist, the wait to be properly resourced and set up can be 18 months. I’m not sure of Germaine Greer’s circumstances, but the sale of her property would no doubt be part of the process. Her family and friends may have been concerned for her health. In lockdown it has indeed been very hard for residents. Not all facilities are dire and in disrepair. Can someone find a link to the whole article?
I’m rereading this article by Germaine Greer as I’m writing an article about aged care and I remember noting how in it Greer observes that nearly all the workers and visitors are women. I have noticed this exact same phenomenon in my experience with finding places for my father. My father resisted aged care until he was 91 and has opted to pay a weekly rental for his accommodation (rather than the lump sum fee) which means he is free to come and go, which he has done three times to date. He has been in three different facilities and in each, the rent is worked out as the interest the facility would get on the room price; e.g. if the room is a $350,000 room you pay the interest (calculated at about 4% – this is means tested, so you also have another daily fee.) Anyway, it roughly works out at between $800- 950 a week. If you don’t have savings this fee is considerably lower, but I think then it may be harder to get in. My point is that you may have more agency as a paying customer by not giving the facility your lump sum. He has only ever had to give two weeks’ notice to leave and moving is not so difficult at this stage of life in the way that one’s possessions have usually already been whittled down. I am bothering to post this because it seems many people are not aware of the “rental” option in aged care, which I think on balance, is far better than feeling stuck and like an inmate who is unable to leave.
You sound like an amazing woman. I am only 84 but I hope I feel like you 95!! I am still independent and have a daughter nearby.
Staying in your home as an older person i.e 80 (which I think is around the age Germaine went into care) is all about your health and support network. My mother went into an aged care facility in June last year at 100. She’s always had quite good health and had 7 children (5 girls) and we have all worked hard to keep her at home. Very hard decision for us to move her into care but she was living in the family home alone and it was too much of a worry re her med’s and the worry of a fall. She got very lonely when we weren’t there. The right care facility can be a very positive move, especiallyif you don’thave a support network. A good facility is all about the quality of the staff. the food and the facity itself in that order. Arcare are generally good I’ve heard where Germaine is? Her interview on the Louis Theroux podcast is very good. She said how impressed she is with the way the women in the families care for their loved ones. I hope she gets lots of visits. She’s such an important person and such a character.