Poet's Walk Fredricksburg Review

I wanted to write and opened an honest view of this facility because our experience there was not good.  This is not a good review.  My mother was originally in a facility in Florida and we moved her to Fredericksburg and into Poet’s Walk because that is closer to where I live, but I believe this was a mistake.  When my Mother went into Poet’s Walk she was suffering with Lewy Body Dementia and while she had declined rapidly in the last year she was walking well on her own steam and she seemed pretty upbeat most all the time.  The first thing that should have sent up a red flag was that they told us not to visit for ten days and looking back I think this was not good for my mother.  I’d hate to think she thought we just dumped her there and forgot about her.  I fear she thought something like that because her mood never quite bounced back.

When we did show up ten days later she told me that she hated the place and that she didn’t think the staff was very nice.  I thought she was perhaps just being fussy and I suggested we go out and get some pizza but when we got to the car my Mother who had been mobile was afraid to stand up and started sobbing and telling me how depressed she was and how she felt ‘stuck’ in Poet’s Walk.  I never saw her stand again.  I believe this is because even though we told her she needed physical therapy to keep walking they never started it with her.  This conversation occurred many times and therapy never started, but there’s more to it than that.  The staff does not encourage walking or standing for almost all patients.  I have witnessed on several occasions a person stand up to leave a room (like the dining room) and be put back into their chair over and over and over until they were angry and cursing the staff.  My Mom told me that she wasn’t even allowed to get up from her bed in the morning or she would get into trouble and that she had to lay there until they came in.  Some patients had alarms on their chairs that beep when they stand and when this happened my Mom would say, “Beep beep beep, someone’s gonna be in trouble.  Not supposed to stand up or walk!”  This to me is not in the best interest of the person.

Truly, I believe in part it was because they are understaffed and that the staff that they do have is not properly trained.  In her last place they encouraged walking as much as possible and when my Mom wanted to get up and walk somewhere someone would come over and make sure she didn’t fall and help her get from point A to B.  They said, “We love to see them walking!  That’s good.”  Not here.  The staff really seems stressed out and as though they can not cope with these sorts of extra demands.  I witnessed a woman in a wheel chair approach one of the nurses and ask if she could go lay down in her room and she was told, “Look, we don’t have enough people to have someone come take you to bed.  Ask again after dinner.”  This same nurse then looked up and saw me standing there and hugged the lady suddenly gushing over her with this fake saccharine sweet, “Okay, honey.  I’ll see you at dinner and then we’ll talk again, sweetie.” I should mention that no one is allowed in their own rooms except at night.  There is no freedom to come and go and it is mandatory that they be in the main room.

Next, I will tell you that my Mom got bedsores here and in the end I believe that is what killed her, but that’s just my own speculations and I have nothing to back that up.  However, here is how it went down.  My Mom started developing bed sores which is a sign of neglect (look it up) totally unnecessary and only about 11% of women get them and almost always from neglect.  This is a completely preventable thing that causes a lot of pain and is hard to heal.  In the end her heel was ‘black’ and I was told that the tissue was necrotic and the bedsore was unstageable because we did not know what was underneath the hard black exterior.  There was supposed to be a wound care expert coming in to see her, but if one was around I can’t understand how it got this bad in the first place.  She was also beginning to them them on her buttock and lower back.

Back track, my mom had pneumonia from aspirating food and was on antibiotics.  In the hospital she bounced back and the infection was clear – but now she was completely immobile with bedsores on her foot and the beginning of bedsores on her back and buttocks.  We were in the process of placing her elsewhere at this point but my Mom tragically would not live that long.  A few days after she got back from the hospital I came to see her and she was crying.  I asked her what was wrong and she said, “They are mean to me.  They curse at me.  They threatened me.”  Now, I do not believe for a second my Mom lied about this, but take it as you will – the words of a crazy person or truth.  This day she started complaining about pain in her foot.

The pain in her foot got worse progressively and by noon she was howling in pain, but the doctor was in the building and coming to see her.  He came in and seemed nice enough though he never looked at her foot and just prescribed morphine.  My Mom was delirious at this point and clenching her teeth and crying, “Why, why, why….  Please don’t leave me.  It hurts so bad.  I’m scared.  Why are they doing this to me.” This is what she said all day and began to believe that someone was sitting at the foot of her wheel chair cutting away at her foot.  She was in agony.  I went and asked where the morphine was and it they said it would take 2 hours.  I was never given the option to go get it myself.  I went back after two hours and they said it still hadn’t been picked up.  I went back in 30 minutes and I asked if I could get it myself after calling my Dad and having him suggest this.  They said no because it had just been picked up.

For the next four or five HOURS my Mom would sit in agony waiting for this morphine that never came.  I must have talked to the nurses 15 times and one time when I went to talk to them they closed the door in the face of my sister and I.  Remember that my Mom is sobbing in the other room and sucking air through her teeth because she is in intense pain so I say, “I’m just calling 911.  This has gone on long enough.” And they tell me that my Dad has requested her not go to the hospital.  Looking back this was more likely for pneumonia because it would be a vicious cycle but she should have gone for her foot and I will regret to the day I die that I did not yank her out of that place and take her to the hospital.  At 6:30pm I had been there seven hours and my Mom was beginning to get drowsy with her seroquil and so my sister said she would stay until my Mom got her meds and I left.  At this point we had decided that we shouldn’t leave her there and were ready to put her in respite care until her bed was opened at the other place.  At 7pm the morphine showed up and my Mom was in bed waiting with my sister still in her room.  I guess they thought my sister had left because the nurse said she would be right back with the morphine and never came back.  Instead someone came in to lock up the room for the night with my Mom still howling about her foot and this person never checked on her.  They were, I believe, just going to lock her in there without ever administering this drug and leave her crying out in pain all night.
The next morning my Dad called and said that my Mom was unresponsive.  I rushed over and found her laying in bed and making sounds like she had aspirated on food.  Turns out that they force fed her while she was sedated and she aspirated on her food.  They had to be TOLD not to feed someone who is sedated to the point that they can not eat.  She roused a bit at one point and her lungs eventually cleared but within two days she was dead.  I was told that the antibiotics were still working against pneumonia and would for the next 7-9 days so I don’t believe that is what got her.  She never stopped moaning about her foot and died a painful death.  I think it was the bedsore that killed her perhaps by sepsis.  I am not a medical professional and I have no proof to back that up.  That is just my uneducated opinion.
So, my experience with this place and my Mother’s experience was pretty dire.  I would not place another loved one at Poet’s Walk and would go to great lengths to avoid doing such – take from that what you will.