Pictured: Dr. Gerry’s Mother

Dr. Gerry, Family Member

Dr. Gerry is a longtime advocate for nursing home reform and the daughter of a nursing home resident who died during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was 106 years old. Click the black squares below to hear and read about Dr. Gerry’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The expanded interview (edited for clarity) is available at the bottom of the page.

And we have to put ageism in the spotlight because people will say “Well, she’s old!” – what does that got to do with one’s life?

And so [my mother] was well-rounded in terms of medicine and just a very bright sociable woman who had a lot of skills, and had had a wonderful life before entering into the nursing facility.

We saw neocolonialism, we saw classism, we saw ageism, sexism, racism. Se saw necropolitics and this is the use of social and political power to determine and choose how some people were gonna live and how people were gonna die. This is unacceptable.

We were there at the nursing home where there was one nurse one weekend by herself trying to take care of 60 residents. How could she do this? And she was eating her lunch sitting on a radiator and perspiring. And she couldn’t even take any time off because the residents, she needed, there were some people who were diabetics and they had to have their medication on time. She was sincere in her duties but the facility was lacking in theirs.

Now when we go into the nursing home, it’s supposed to be a 3 pronged system: one with the workers and the staff and administration, the resident, and the family members. All of that was torn down or torn away.

We have to get administrators who are concerned about the residents. We’re seeing few administrators who were less than capable of the job of protecting the civil rights, the personal rights, the human rights of the resident and the family.

And those who had dementia and Alzheimer’s and who were disabled— who fended for them? Who spoke on their behalf?

Click below for the expanded interview (13:59).