Making Myself at Home in a Nursing Home

Sandra Gaffney entered her first nursing home for long-term care at the unusually young age of fifty. Fourteen years earlier she had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig''s disease. Over the next sixteen years, Gaffney lived in nursing homes in Florida, Virginia, and Minnesota, as the ways she could be close to family changed.


She describes her situation...