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Loading ...The perils of aging while gay
When Gayle had a stroke one Sunday evening nine years ago, she was rushed to Hennepin County Medical Center’s emergency room, Minnesota’s third largest hospital.
But when Gayle (a senior trans woman) got there, she was told that in order to receive treatment, she would have to re-assume her old identity: She had to become Glen if she wanted to be helped.Gayle did not protest. She wanted her life to be saved. But when she was taken to the Veterans Administration Hospital for follow-up care, she was forced to do the same: she was told she’d be Glen for every medical provider who worked there.
More recently, an openly gay man who had no family or friends hanged himself in a room of a nursing home in an East Coast city; because others on his floor were made uncomfortable by his sexual orientation, the 79-year-old had been moved to a floor for patients with disabilities and dementia. The resulting stress made him too depressed to live.
As the elderly population swells—it is expected to double from 44 million to 90 million in the next 25 years—abuses like these and the general lack of humane care for LGBT elders are becoming more and more visible.
According to statistics from SAGE (Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders), the senior LGBT population will multiply from 3 million to 6 or 7 million in the next 25 years, and their communities are not prepared to give them proper housing and the appropriate healthcare. Researchers and activists see a crisis looming.
“The number of seniors could become a kind of crisis like the HIV epidemic in the next five to 10 years, and there is no structure to deal with it. They’re not ready for us,” said Amber Hollibaugh, senior strategist for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Next page: The challenges LGBT seniors face
More needs to be done for elderly LGBT people. We are all in the same boat, Sweeties, and why this isn’t a concern on everyone’s lips is beyond me.
There needs to be AFFORDABLE LGBT senior housing just as much as LGBT retirement communities. Not many seniors have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on some of the upscale villages that have popped up.
And the one low-income LGBT senior housing project in Los Angeles, CA, “Triangle Square” has a waiting list a mile long.
Wake-up people, even if you do have the funds to live wherever you choose, you’ll still need help and senior villages sound like the ticket.
Readers,
This is a topic which I have been writing about now for a while. Not specifically nursing homes, but health care. Being a disabled gay man myself I had to fight govt. bureaucracy for 18 years till I finally won my ssi and medicaid benefits. My concern is that in America if you are not a viable commodity you are less than a useful and needed member of society.
You may be under the impression that we beneficiaries have a free lunch on the public tit and are just raking in the dough.Truly believe me when I tell you this is so not true.
I’ll be painfully honest with you. My ssi money is $637 a month. Do the math and we fall into a tax bracket 1 and a half level below the poverty level for a single person reporting income for a year. That is about $7,500 a year. Try to live on that and you can see the jet set lifestyle I live. I am so very lucky to get this. If you ever have to go on disability God helpou cause no one else will. It’s extremely difficult to get even the simplest question answered, the SSA is so hard to access that most will just give up. That is what they want you to do, in my opinion. You have to be willing to hang in there and fight like the dickens. Let me tell you a little about medicaid. Without this Iwould have been dead 7 years ago. They pay 100% of all my medical needs. A recipient like me only has tp pay $3.00 a prescription. Yes, Iknow this is great. I am truly blessed to be covered and Iam grateful to the max.
I know this is off the topic of this article but I have written before about the need for medical care for everyone,everywhere regardless of any excuse they may try to give us. Those poor souls who felt no one loved them. My heart goes out to anyone in that situation. I was there, I know. Those of you with a healthy body should think about how blessed you are and not be envious of those of us who never had the opportunity to be given a good strong body. Most of us don’t want pity, just compassion and love like anyone else.
Healh care is a ver important issue in this election and it is way past time to fix this catastropic problem. After all, if you don’t have your health, what do you have?
My opinion, instead of trillions of $ for bombs to maim and kill, just look what could be done with that money.
May you have a long and happy and healthy life. Peace..
p.s. I just couldn’y quit just yet. Go into a nursing home and smell the difference in a private room {those with the money to pay outright or with expensive insurance coverage} as opposed to the low to no coverage rooms. I bet you smell urine! It’s disgusting. I noticed this when visiting my mom at a home in Fla. It was also not very clean. The patients were not taken care of as well as the private room patients were. These poor people were so lonely it broke my heart. Yes I am an emotional guy and I’m glad I am too. I cry easily when I see suffering of any kind, even my animal friends too. I think it’s criminal to promise all sorts of help while campaigning and then conveniently ignore the issue when in office. You just have to vote your heart and hope that the candidate is sincere. I would imagine a glbt person would probably be less cared for just by the nature of discrimination against us. Just imagine being elderly and gay and being left to suffer just because of who you might be. It’ shameful and not a very niceway to treat someone’s mom, dad, grandma or grandpa, aunt or uncle or even a close friend of your or your family. If nothing else, volunteer to help out in the nearest nursing facility. I have taken my dog to one and the look on folk’s faces when they get to pet an animal is spiritually uplifting. Better stop before I short out my keypad. Thanks for reading. Love, Doug….
To Doug Loves You:
You keep on fighting, Sweetie. I’m glad you are telling it like it is. No one should have to live like that.
Matters such as these should be extremely important to everyone, especially when in todays society our young GLBT persons are committing suicide because of their sexual orientation.
Imagine working your entire life, being a productive person in society and still having to be subjected to such an injustice.
Whether we are young, elderly, black, white, straight or gay we all deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
These are our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts that are being treated this way.
Many thanks to Doug Loves You. As Alex stated before, I’m glad you are telling it like it is. No one should have to live like that.
Thanks 365 for posting this series.
At 62 I’m very worried about my future.
This has been a concern of mine for quite a while. I am a nurse and during my training it was called to my attention by a staff member of a nursing home that their was a gentleman that was a cross dresser in room #____ so don’t be shocked if you go in his room, as they laughed!!! I was not amused! I felt like he was being singled out and made a mockery of. I started to think about our community. They say we have a strong earning potental and a large expendable income. I do not have children and have no one to leave my money. My thought is: Why not open nursing facilities that cater to the LGBT community and make them the recipients of our wills. Then the government can take our left over money in the form of healthcare. Please pass along this idea and see what others think. I don’t want to be alone and old and made fun of because of who I am! I want show tunes night and drag queens in wheel chairs doing numbers and makeovers and poetry and art and most of all dignity in my last days!
This story actually has a rather unfortunate title.
“The perils of aging while gay” makes it sound as if being gay is a temporary or changeable state of being. It seems to imply that, if one is aging, he or she should stop being gay while growing old, because aging while gay is dangerous. It apparently communicates the idea that one can choose not to be gay.
Some might say I’m splitting hairs here, but given the way those who want to harm us have managed to twist even the most seemingly untwistable words around to use as weapons against us, we have to be extremely careful not to give them ammo like this that can easily be used in such a manner.
Thanks guys for being so kind in mentioning me. I’m just a man who is very passionate in my feelings towards healthcare for everyone, everywhere regardless of your politics or faith or sexual orientation. Help us all fight this absolutely shameful practice of letting people suffer because they’re poor or gay or the wrong skin color or any of the other excuses the powers that be have decreed. We can do better, and I believe that we’ll succeed. Bless you and Peace
Sobering article. As a gay man not far from sixty, this hits home. It is simply astonishing that my homosexuality should play any role whatsoever in this arena. Astonishing and shameful.
In 2002, my Lesbian aunt was forcibly taken from her partner of 35+ years when they became too ill to live together and take care of a home. She was late 60’s and her partner was almost 80. They lived outside Columbus, OH. I live in Florida and could not help the situation.
It broke my heart and made me the most frightened of my life. My 32+ years with my partner is the only thing I have in this world that is worth anything at all. I am over 60, and on disability as well. I cried for days, fearing that we might be separated when we become too infirmed to keep house together. I would not know how to live with him gone.
His 80 year old mother (whom I consider to be my mother now) has lived with us for 10 years now, and she begs us not to put her in a nursing home. Because of a broken leg from a fall, she was in a rehab room all of 3 days before we took her out and moved her back home. It was so bad and the food and service was just disgusting. And this was supposed to be a good place, and she has extremely good insurance. The elderly are treated so badly in these institutions.
My father just died this past February from a broken hip where he fell in the snow (in Ohio too), and he was put in a nursing home by my sister. His doctor owned the place, and it was not a great either. He eventually had to go on Medicaid, and they took all of his assets. Due to their incompetence, and some oversights, their paperwork was invalid, and he died 2 weeks after approval for Medicaid. I was fortunate to get a small token from his insurance, which is just enough to pay for my funeral, hopefully one day in the distant future.
We three are not at all well-to-do, and many are worse off that we three, but there must be a better way than what I have recently experienced. When I was young, the elderly stayed with relatives who took care of them. Most of them were not incapacitated, but just a bit weak or frail, still able to do for themselves. Nearly all died a sudden death and did not linger for months to years on end. Now we have the ability to keep the elderly in a captive, stationary or vegetative state. It only helps the doctors and medical institutions get rich, for the quality of life of these old people is a shame, at best.
We have chosen to have DNR paperwork, and keep us off the machines. I certainly do not want people like the Bush’s and his cohorts interfering in my life like they did with Terry Shiavo.
We all need decent and fair health care, but we do not need the government and insurance companies from making health care decisions for us. While I do believe in the sanctity of life, I do not think big business needs to profit from the elderly in such a nasty and greedy fashion. Le the families make the decisions, and let my partner and I make our own decisions.
There truly are perils in growing old, no matter the person or how much money they have. I sure hope discrimination is one ill they can eliminate immediately. Oh how scary the end of life has become! It is not the religious issues of going to heaven, hell or whenever. It is the living near the end of one’s life that is the worst of the issues and is complicated by all the interfering hypocryphal religious rancor.
All our finances and assets are inextricably linked, and we have as much expensive paper work to protect our selves, our home, etc. as we possibly can. But it is just scary how we do not have the protections of (same-sex) marriage and how much it costs (hundreds of dollars yearly) to do the paper work and KEEP IT CURRENT. And if I one of us should die, there are no spousal benefits to be claimed by the other. We pay taxes on my “domestic partner” insurance from his work. While it is currently worth the cost, what will happen when he retires in a few years and I loose that coverage? It has kept us from catastrophic medical problems so far.
Sometimes I feel I am ready to explode from all the crap dished out to our community, and to denigrate us when we are old and feeble is nothing but pure evil. I feel so helpless and often do not know to where to turn. It is nothing but depressing and defeating to find one’s self in such situations. And of course, the hetero world could care less.
These issues, amongst others, above all else, could be somewhat mitigated with (1) same-sex marriage nationwide, (2) more and decent health care for all, and (3) with fine support from organizations who cater to minority interests in well-run supportive assistive group homes.
Doug, you have my sympathy and support. You said it well, as well!
This is why everyone should start preparing for retirement at an early age. Do you realize that if you do become disabled or reach the retirement age of 66 yrs old that the government looks over the last 3 years of your income to deciede the amount of your ssi or social security check. Please be pro-active and not wait for someone else to help you when you are not able. PLAN AHEAD! LIVING WILLS AND SAVINGS ACCOUNTS DO HELP!
We were pleased to see that 365 had finally addressed the issue of gays and aging. What was disturbing about the links, though, is that they bring you into contact with Gay Senior Developments that are catering to John McCain’s “Middle Class” – those making millions of dollars a year! Where is the “affordable” housing for senior gays & lesbians? Who can afford a cute 850 sq. ft. condo for $400K, such as Rainbow Visions is trying to sell us. My partner and I would like to retire in the next 3-5 years, but do we really want to use ALL of our savings to buy the house or condo and then be house poor? And since one of us is HIV+ and the other has had cancer, we will be devoting a huge chunk of our retirement benefits to purchasing health insurance, so do we really want to be making a house payment as well?
So, much like the gay travel destinations and cruises, gay entrepreneurs are out to make BIG BUCKS off the poor and unsuspecting middle class gays and lesbians by presenting visions (yes, RAINBOW VISIONS) of a retirement that will be filled with shuffle board and aerobics in an all gay, fun-filled environment. Such is not always the case. We work hard and save as much as possible, but we are not going to be going into our retirement years with a multi-million dollar nest egg.
Thanks for the articles, but GET REAL!
This is a concern for everyone in the LGBT community. It should be a concern for the younger members as well. We are all going to be there one day and the long term healthcare industry will not do anymore than it has to do, legal or otherwise unless they know that other people care and are watching them. I have seen situations like that in one or two of the places where I have worked.
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