For Elderly in Rural Areas, Times Are Distinctly Harder

[groovedaddy]

LINGLE, Wyo. — Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places. Alone, it took her three hours to drag herself the 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury.

A dutiful farm wife, Ms. Clark somehow even got to her feet to latch the gate. And her first call when she got to the house was not to 911, but to a daughter 30 miles away.

“I told her she’d better come feed the horses,” said Ms. Clark, telling the story from her living room overlooking her 900-acre wheat farm.

Growing old has never been easy. But in isolated, rural spots like this, it is harder still, especially as the battering ram of recession and budget cuts to programs for the elderly sweep through many local and state governments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/us/10rural.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

[havocmom]

1. locations for medical care getting scarcer and scarcer in rural states

It is getting bad out here, where your food is raised.

[TwilightGardener]

2. I used to take care of elderly ranchers in a rural South Dakota nursing home.

Toughest old birds you'd ever hope to meet.

[Zoigal]

3. Now, IMO that's one tough lady. I am her age and not a wimp

but don't think i would have closed the gate. :) People like that deserve a lot of admiration.
Wonder if she'll get a cell phone to carry with her on her chore rounds?.....z

[newfie11]

4. Hey Lingle is in my neighborhood

Yep if you are rural here you learn to take care of yourself but I gotta add you also have great neighbors, of course they maybe several miles away. I would bet she has neighbors feeding her horses now.

Last year when our well pump died our neighbor told us to open the gate and let our horses in one of his his fields for water. Turns out the well guy got a new pump in before the water tank dried up.

This is a very rural place and a tough country to farm but having lived all over America I would not trade it for anything.