Former journalist draws on decades in long-term care for a candid look inside nursing homes

Fairfield, California resident and Bay Area nursing home administrator Aldwin Fajardo-Ponder has released his first book, Would You Leave Your Parents Here? The Weight of the Keys, a collection of stories offering an unusual view of nursing homes from someone who has spent more than two decades working inside them.

The eBook is now available, with the hardcover edition forthcoming.

Fajardo-Ponder currently works as a nursing home administrator in the Bay Area. But before healthcare, he was a journalist—a background that followed him into an industry he never expected to join.

“I didn't leave journalism because I had always dreamed of running nursing homes,” Fajardo-Ponder said. “I took what was supposed to be a temporary job in medical records. Somehow, medical records became compliance, compliance became administration, and more than twenty years later, somebody apparently thought I should write a book about it.”

Would You Leave Your Parents Here? takes readers beyond the inspection reports, star ratings, staffing numbers and regulations that usually dominate conversations about nursing homes.

Instead, Fajardo-Ponder writes about the people.

The book tells stories of residents and families, nurses and nursing assistants, therapists and housekeepers, administrators and spouses—and the strange, funny, frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking moments that unfold inside facilities caring for people during some of the most vulnerable periods of their lives.

Its title comes from a question Fajardo-Ponder has asked employees throughout his years as an administrator:

Would you leave your parents here?

For Fajardo-Ponder, the question is deliberately more personal than any regulatory checklist.

“You can have policies, inspection results and quality measures, and all of those things matter,” he said. “But there is another question underneath them: If the person in that bed were somebody you loved, would the care you are providing right now be good enough?”

While he was completing the book, that question unexpectedly became his own.

Fajardo-Ponder's 88-year-old father suffered a devastating road accident in the Philippines. The longtime administrator suddenly found himself navigating healthcare as a family member rather than the person sitting behind the administrator's desk.

The experience became part of the book.

“For years, families had sat across from me asking what would happen to their mother or father,” he said. “Then suddenly I was the family.”

Despite its subject, Fajardo-Ponder said the book is neither an indictment nor a defense of the nursing home industry. It is instead an attempt to show the complicated human world that exists behind a phrase as institutional as “skilled nursing facility.”

“There are extraordinary people working in nursing homes, and there are things the industry absolutely needs to do better,” he said. “Both can be true. I wanted the book to be honest enough to make room for both.”

Fajardo-Ponder lives in Fairfield and continues to work in skilled nursing administration in the Bay Area. He began his professional career in journalism before moving into healthcare, eventually working in medical records, quality assurance and nursing home administration.

Would You Leave Your Parents Here? The Weight of the Keys is published by Alduart Press.