Helpful Advice When Considering a Move

I would say, don't wait too long. I've seen people wait too long. They come here and they're not able to enjoy many of the things that are here because they immediately have to go to skilled care. And so that's the biggest thing I would say.

I would urge them to come visit and find out what's going on here. Eat a meal here. I'd think anyone visiting, thinking about moving here or moving a loved one here should ask about activities, about the degree of independence that people are allowed to have. For example, I manage my own medications, not everybody does that, not everybody wants to do that even, but for me, it's convenient because I don't wanna have to wait for somebody to come if I wanna get to the piano or whatever. But mainly I think they should ask about activities and about staff, how residents feel about staff.

The move has been positive. The atmosphere has been positive. It's been overall a very positive experience for me and my wife. We're glad we did it. Like everybody else we talked to, we wish we had done it a little bit earlier. I guess that's the other piece of advice I would give people is if you think about it, do it earlier rather than later. As soon as you start to think about it go ahead and start researching facilities. Put a deposit down at one or more facilities because I believe most of them have refundable deposits. So it's always, you can always change your mind. But I guess that's the big suggestion is do it earlier rather than later.

If it was left totally to my mother, we may not have been able to move her. My dad in his wisdom didn't want her to even be alone for a month after he passed away because she was starting to get very forgetful as far as how to get places driving. And he just really didn't want her to be in a house alone. Not that she was gonna hurt herself but it was just getting harder and harder. But it took two years for us to get her here.

And I hate to say it this way, but I've heard this. Sometimes the kids have to take over because our parents are loved ones as they get older sometimes they lose the ability to make really sound decisions. And again, this is a very emotional decision that you're leaving your home of 30, 40, 50 years where the one you loved and you're moving into your last place.

So the only thing is, it didn't happen but I just worry about people making that decision too late or they don't have the facilities anymore mentally to really making good sound decisions. And my mom, although she didn't lose her facilities, it was just too difficult I think for her to move emotionally, to move outta the home she shared with my father for 34 years. So as far as advice there's times where we really need the support of our loved ones to kind of give us a little bit of push in the back. So I urge family members and loved ones to really be a community watch out for what's best for the person that we're considering moving into assisted care. And that be kind of a group decision and sometimes it'll have to involve more than a little pat on the back.

From my experience, I did have to put a loved one in the nursing home before, so I would say, you know, you wanna know what, like, their nurse-to-patient ratios are. You wanna know what kind of like inspections they run on, where their deficiencies might fall, what their normal schedules are, what their routine would be, how often would they, you know see the physician, appointments, anything of that nature I'd say.