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- Ελληνικά
Nightmarish experiences that marked his old age, violent behaviour against himself and other elderly people and situations beyond human understanding, describes a 76-year-old, former guest of the elderly care unit in Chania.
Mr. Christos Dermitzakis and his wife Eleni spoke of malnutrition, torture, poor sanitary conditions, coffins in the basement, old men and women desperately calling for help.[/B] Their descriptions are a punch in the stomach. They themselves called the nursing home they had the misfortune to enter a "graveyard", as guest the first and as visitor the second.
Born and raised in Vatolakko, a village in the municipality of Platanias, a few kilometers away from Chania, Mr. Christos Dermitzakis makes his cross today that he managed to survive the inferno, as he says. Unable to hold back his tears, he breaks down, sometimes praising God that some were brought to justice.
[/P]They welcomed us into their home with kindness and gratitude. They wanted, as they said, to get this burden off their backs. To talk. In the year 2022, what they revealed is, if nothing else, chilling.
"Wood, I got a lot of wood." In the butt. I was in pain and screaming. They injected me for no reason. They beat me mercilessly" said Mr. Christos Dermitzaki
He had the misfortune to be temporarily placed in the facility, fortunately, due to the necessary submission of his wife to surgery in a hospital in Heraklion. His children, working, with a heavy schedule, found it difficult to keep him close to them for care and so they jointly decided to accommodate him in the said facility. They paid the 76-year-old's entire pension, a total of 800 euros, while they also paid out of their own pockets for his medicines, the cost of which amounted to about two hundred euros.
The scene of horror was soon to be revealed.
Mr Christos called his wife every now and then: "Eleni, come and get me, because I'm going to die in here. Helen, call them. I'm dirty and they won't come and change me. They didn't have any money. I slept on thick nylon like the kind we use to cover stove wood."
At her husband's pleas, there was not much Mrs. Helen Dermitzaki could do while she was preparing for the operation. But she phoned the management of the facility and insisted that her husband be cared for. "In a while she would call me back. Helen strapped me in. I asked, 'Why did you tie my husband up? They answered that they were tying him so that he would not slip off the chair."
The painful memories bring tears of grief and anger at the torture, abuse, malnutrition, poor sanitary conditions: "Next to the entrance I was sat down and tied up to keep me from moving. In the area where we were bathed, there was a pile of towels from previous patients, wet. I'm like, "You guys are gonna wipe me with these? If you like it, they said. If you don't like it, complain to the manager's office," said Mr. Christos who, lying in a bright room of his house now, in the warmth, remembers his nightmare.
At 76 years old, what he experienced in that nightmarish quarter will follow him for the rest of his life: "I was eating onions out of hunger. And when I told them I was hungry they would say 'that's it , we don't have any more'. For breakfast they would bring us black tea or milk and we would cut ourselves. I had never experienced such hunger before," said Mr. Christos, without catching up with his thoughts.
One day when his wife visited him, after he had been operated on and before taking him back to her, she witnessed first hand the inhuman treatment, not only towards her husband, but towards all elderly people.
As Mrs: "He was brought to eat wretched lentils in a small bowl like the one I feed the cats and half an egg! When I asked where the other half egg was, I was told they would give it to another inmate. Luckily, there was someone in there selling bagels and cheese pies and when I gave him something to eat he ate like a starving man!"
Mr. Christos was ninety pounds when he entered the elderly care facility. When he returned home, infected with filth, he was down to fifty.
The cries of the elderly still echo in the couple's ears
"Help, my child, my son, the women were crying," said Mrs. Helen. And the deaths were as frequent as they were incomprehensible. "It's a hellhole in there, not an institution. When we went down to the basement to take a bath, you could see the coffins, lined up. I'm like, "Guys, what's going on? One died, the other died, what's going on?" asked Mr. Christos Dermitzakis, fearing that his turn was coming.
People wrinkled and weak, yet dignified, went there hoping that they would get the care they deserved. Many went out helpless, and the luckier ones got away in time. The shocking accounts of the private nursing home go on and on.
"I saw a grandmother with dementia have her mouth opened and her food spoon forced into her mouth. She wouldn't eat and they would push it away with a towel. I saw another being pushed like an animal up the stairs," the elderly woman from Vatolakko said, among many unbelievable and inhuman things.
Descriptions like these are included in the voluminous dossier on the private nursing home with at least thirty suspicious deaths, the three hundred recorded in the last six years. For a facility plaguing society and the human condition that continued to operate with the blessing of the state.
Source: neakriti
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