Apteryx Owenii said:
I know some people have addressed this idea but there is no reason to think Lucas has been declared "legally incapacitated"
Nobody is saying he has been as far as i'm aware
Apteryx Owenii said:
so he enjoys a lot of rights even if he's living in assisted living
You give up plenty of rights when you move into a nursing home. Your rights boil down to comply or leave
Apteryx Owenii said:
Dietary restrictions are part medical treatment
Dietary restrictions are mandated by law. They are required by law to have them developed by a licensed dietician and assign them to residents as required by their particular needs. Residents are required to adhere to this as a condition of becoming and remaining a resident and the law requires the nursing home to enforce this, its literally part of them being licensed to operate a nursing home. I'll say it again, they have a duty of care to those residents. If they fail to enforce it they're guilty of negligence and are responsible for any injuries that result from it. They can't just say 'ok go ahead and stuff yourself full of sugar if you want' until he goes into diabetic convulsions on the common room floor. If he wants to do something that'll put him in that kind of a situation he has to leave, either voluntarily or by getting kicked out for non compliance. As for meds, again, duty of care. As long as he remains there its not optional. The moment he says he's refusing them its the nursing homes responsibility to send him to the hospital immediately, as its a safety issue for everyone involved. They are liable for anything that happens if they don't. That can lead to serious issues for the resident and in the case of people like lucas who are batshit mental without their meds, can lead to all kinds of unpredictable right up to potentially violent behavior against themselves, staff and other residents. no nursing home can allow that, they'd be liable if anybody got injured, whether staff or resident. They can't have a resident going cold turkey on psych meds going batshit and attacking someone or harming themselves. Lucas for example is huge. If he ever went unhinged and got violent he could do serious damage to someone. You'd be lucky if you had enough people to hold him down to sedate
Apteryx Owenii said:
They're not gonna slap a big mac out of his hands.
a big mac? not in his case, but if his blood sugar gets high enough they'll absolutely take anything he could harm himself with away. for example, if he reverted back to eating really weird shit and did something nuts like, say, coming in with a bag of sugar and trying to eat it with a spoon or whatever, that could kill him and they have an obligation to intervene per their duty of care, to keep him from putting himself in the ER. To say nothing of the fact those aren't the actions of a sound mind making a rational decision, which in itself gives the staff the right to override any decision in the name of resident safety until a mental health evaluation can be arranged to determine competency. That said I once had to take a roast beef sandwich away from an end stage renal failure resident because she was on a strict diet when it came to protein (grabbed it off the dinner cart when staff weren't looking). she was neither pleased nor willing. I ended up bitten, scratched and bleeding over that one
Apteryx Owenii said:
I don't know why a number of people seem to think that a facility is legally liable for the actions of a (legally competent) grown man who is determined to ignore all medical advice and eat himself into an early grave.
There is no 'seems to think' about it. They are liable for such things. In fact they are explicitly liable for it per licensing regulations and their duty of care mandate. As well as part of the agreement made when someone becomes a resident. They are not a hospital, they are a nursing home. If a resident wants to refuse they have to leave, one way or another. The entire point of a nursing home is to provide care and keep people from being a danger to themselves or others
Nobody is saying he can't refuse meds or eat himself to death. What he can't do is do it so long as he is a resident of mallon place, or any other nursing home for that matter. He can't refuse and stay there, its a requirement of being there and one they have to enforce
Apteryx Owenii said:
This goes in the chart: "Patient was counseled on proper diet habits and urged to avoid food not included in dietary plan. Patient remains non-compliant." Lawyers are happy. Lucas gets to eat himself into an amputation. This shit happens all the time and it's not just because the place he's in doesn't care (although they don't).
Not at a nursing home it doesn't. Duty of care. That kind of thing only flies at actual hospitals and requires actual doctors to sign off on and usually an evaluation, and even then isn't going to cover your ass if the person loses a limb and sues, or dies and the family sues, claiming they should have stopped him cause he's a sped who they can't prove knew better and why he was in that situation to begin with. Especially with someone like lucas, who is stupider than a bag of rocks and has a long history proving it, publicly and medically. He would have no issue playing the sped card and claiming he isn't of sound enough mind to have been allowed to do such a thing. It fits with his history of abusing the mental health system by playing crazy to get a roof over his head. Everybody knows how greedy he is to get money