Home to Assisted Living
It was early in the morning, I received a text from my mother, “when you get a chance come see me”. No subject, quite out of character. I knew exactly what it was. My grandfather had fallen a few days before, at 96-year-old, it didn’t take much guess work to sort out what the cryptic message meant. My grandfather had complications and had passed away in the hospital. While it was sudden, it wasn’t altogether unexpected. There wouldn’t be much time for grief, my grandmother was still alive and at 93 years old and dealing with dementia, something needed to be done.
Decades before, my grandparents had moved from Redmond, WA to Lacey, WA in order to live in a 55+ retirement community. Three of their adult children still lived locally on the Eastside, which meant an hour and a half drive with good traffic to visit them, it meant that even from the start, visits weren’t all that common. As time went by, even less so. Now that my grandfather had passed, we had my grandmother hours away, 93 years old herself with some level of dementia that we had yet to understand the full scope of, she obviously couldn’t be alone, and family as way too far away. It was time for Grandma to move.
As someone that works with helping families place their loved ones into Adult Family Homes, there was something very familiar yet different about this situation. We had the Nurse Delegator that we typically work with go and do a full assessment of her, it would seem her dementia was at about a level 2. She had plenty of assets, was still very mobile, minimal care requirements. She was a great candidate for an Assisted Living with a Memory Care unit.
It was decided to move her into an Assisted Living Facility that had a nice feel to it which would appease grandma and a trusted name. The name doesn’t really matter because our experience wouldn’t have been different regardless of the brand of facility, how Assisted Living Facilities operate is essentially the same.
Initially the experience was fine. She got to go on a field trip to see the tulips and visit a museum, she even made some friends. She had herself a “2 bedroom” apartment, which is a bit of a misnomer. It’s a 1 bedroom with a living room, apparently a studio is a 1 bedroom in assisted living parlance. For this level of “luxury” they were charging around $14,000 per month for rent and care points.
As things go, the dementia seemed to progress fairly quickly. My grandparents had been extremely co-dependent, she had lived in that house for a couple of decades and they even had a little dog. In a matter of weeks, she had lost it all. Her husband of some 74 years was gone, her home of two plus decades was gone and while she did get to keep her dog initially, after she had been found dragging the poor thing on the leash it had to be given up. Now she had lost pretty much everything she knew and that seemed to wreak havoc on her already declining Alzheimer’s.
Soon enough, she was transferred to the “secure” memory unit, not anywhere near as fancy, not happy, not fun. Of the small group of people living in that unit, she could quickly find herself on the outs, basically imagine golden girls meets mean girls.
In short order, her doctor put her on Hospice, I still have no idea how he justified that, but at least it meant the doctors could be much less restricted about adjusting her meds and Medicare picked up more expenses, but here’s the irony, the Assisted Living Facility actually charged MORE money to “coordinate” with the folks from Hospice that were actually doing their part of their jobs for them. $500 extra per month for performing LESS services, make that make sense. The caregivers tried their best, but the ratio of caregivers to resident made it difficult to get personalized care.
The move to the secure unit also came with a lovely price increase, now this facility was charging $15k per month for what amounted to somewhere between subpar and non-existent care. That was the last straw, the family was done with the Assisted Living Facility. It was time to find something that suited her needs better.
