First of all, I wanted to thank Harold for his time and contribution.
As you can see, the interviewee is free to answer in any manner they feel to the questions I posed. The important thing for us was to find those like Harold who have a passion for helping seniors.
Here, Harold feels better with a narrative, which I have re-printed, un-edited.
The history of our site, established in 1998, dates back to a Sunday in the
summer of 1993. My wife, brother and myself had a standing invitation to have a
Sunday morning breakfast at our mother's apartment. That Sunday, we found her
passed out, brought her to the ER of our local hospital where she was
hospitalized for 39 days. The diagnosis was a brain stem stroke plus pneumonia.
A PEG tube was inserted for feeding purposes. She was evaluated for various
forms of therapy and found not to be a candidate. We undertook our own form of
therapy, and investigated various nursing homes. She was discharged to the one
that we thought would meet her needs as well as enable us to fulfill our obligation to her (See our article on "How to Select a Nursing Home".).
She remained active in this nursing home for 4 years. We had the PEG tube removed after many consultations with the treating staff when she had been at the nursing home for a year.. She went from 67 pounds when she entered the home to over 100 pounds before she died.
Following her death in 1997, our friends asked us how we selected a nursing home
and about other issues. My brother and I got tired of verbally responding to
these questions and wrote an article which we gave to people. Then we decided in
memory of our mother to start a web page dedicated to providing information that
could be of service to senior citizens and others. "How To Select a Nursing Home"
became the first article. Since that day, my brother and I have written over 400
articles that we think provide reasonably clear information about issues of
interest to seniors, their families and friends.
We pride ourselves in that the site is a public service site, containing no
banners or ads. We are the sole financial supporters of our site, despite frequent
requests for linkage to our site, with offers of payment that are sometimes hard to refuse.
Secondly, we try to update various articles daily and respond to all emails with
information related to the requests in the email. We do not give advice. Our
goal is to empower the individual so that they can answer their own questions.
From the emails we get, we know some of our articles are used as source material in
various colleges and nursing schools. This, and the many thank you notes makes
our labor worth while.
Can we improve our site? The answer is yes, but the suggestions must come from
our readers and they do come. One reader suggested our site was not friendly to
individuals with visual problems. We changed the colors to make our site more
readable. Another found a spelling error in one of the Latin words from an
article on medical abbreviations. It was quickly changed. Readers have asked us
to write on topics that were of interest to them (Our article on constipation is
an example of our follow through on request.)
How accurate is our information? We believe we are as accurate as the current
research literature. We have access to that literature through the fact that one
of us has spent most of his career associated with a large medical teaching
center and has access to their library and attends Grand round lectures at that
center. The best researchers present their findings to various medical
professionals who then question them. It is a great source of current
information that is ready to be presented at professional meetings.
Writing the articles and updating them is done in the late evenings (after 11
PM) and weekends. We also try to present some factual tidbit daily garnished
from the research literature with the specific reference for readers to check
further. At times, we have been able to get others to write on topics that
readers sent in and were beyond are professional scope of knowledge. Writers get no reimbursement for writing the
article for our site.
Information is the most important tool available to seniors to deal with the multiple of issues they will daily encounter. Our site, www.therubins.com, provides that information in an unbiased fashion. As long as we can keep on writing, we will continue to work toward providing the most up-to-date information that we can gather for seniors. The memory of our mother lives in this site.
Harold Rubin, Coeditor
www.therubins.com
To date, we have helped a multiple of individuals, if we are to believe the
emails sent to us. Our site location has been spread by word of mouth, being
selected high up on certain search engines, interviewed by a national TV station
and the decent job we do in presenting information. All this is for the memory
of our mother
