Occasionally my senior hall offers tours of independent and assisted living facilities. Wednesday I hopped on the bus with twenty-four
others and off we went to two new places on the other end of town. One fed us lunch and
the other served us coffee and the best peanut butter cookies I’ve had since my
mom used to make them. Both of these places are the type that steps you up to
increased care when you reach a certain point and we learned a lot about those
trigger points. One was when you require a two person assist to make transfers.
I never would have thought to ask the 'triggers point' question but it’s an important one because
the cost of your room about doubles when they step you up. I’ve toured five
places like this, but this time we had a guy who came
with us who owns a business that specializes in in-home care and assisted
living placement. There are a lot of placement specialists around---even
national chains that do it---but I never knew much about them. He says they get $2,500 for every client they place, paid for by
the facilities and all facilities pay the exact same amount to all the
placement specialists in town.
At first, one of these places seemed kind of creepy with all
its high tech surveillance gadgets. Each resident wears a watch-like gadget
that automatically unlocked AND locks your apartment door, tracks your every
move by GPS and gives you a way to talk directly to the staff, and them to you.
But the creepy part is they also have motion detectors in your apartments (the
units were cute, by the way) and those motion detectors spend two weeks
learning your habits---like how many times you pee and how long it takes you to
do it, what time you get up and go to bed---then after that if you break your
pattern someone will check on you. The staff all wears a red “tag” that electronically
logs where they go and how long they stay with each resident and those logs can be
reviewed by families. I jokingly asked them if the microwave in your unit is
eavesdropping and we were assured that the only listening device is on your
arm. Like that’s a big comfort! We talked about this ‘big brother’ kind of care
on the bus afterward and at first glance it creeped most of us out but as we
talked and compared it to other assisted living places where lights
are flashing and call bells are going off in the halls, this place felt less institutional,
more homey, and we soften our views on these high tech babysitters.
I am nowhere near needing or wanting to move to an independent or
assisted living home but Mr. Specialist says that’s the best time
to check them out and make decisions so families aren’t making decisions like
that in an emergency situation. He also has resources to calculate if you have
enough money to go to places like this compared to in-home care. That “resource
calculation” service is free and I'm going to make an appointment with him for that. It
will be helpful to know how long my
assets would last if/when I need care. Can I afford to redecorate now? Take a trip? The assisted living places we saw this week cost $4,000 a month and doubles if they have to step you up. He said
the lowest priced place in town is $1,500 a month and I know it to be a Medicaid
dive. When you get through talking to him about your finances, he can tell you
the price range you need to stay in and he gives you a list of places in that range.
He’ll even drive you around to see them, if you want. I’m thinking whatever he has
to say it will be fuel to keep me on my self-imposed, Spring of Getting Physically
Fit program. Two person assist transfers? Heck, we all need to make sure we don't need a one person assist if we want to age in place!
This week I also went to a fascinating and funny senior hall lecture
about bald eagles. It was delivered by a woman who lives on a pond where a couple of eagles nested for five years and raised fifteen baby eagles, many of which
were banded as babies by researchers who climbed up to the nest to take blood
samples and weigh the fuss balls and take the cutest baby pictures. The
lecturer had wonderful photos and she made you fall in love with the
personalities of the nesting mamma and poppa eagles. She wrote poems about the
eagles, funny poems that where illustrated with slides. One was about ice
fishermen who have their fish snatched by the eagles if they don’t hide them as soon as they reel them in.
Others purposely threw their catches on top of the ice just to get a close up
view of the eagles diving in for the steal. What a thrill that would be!
I had three options for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, one
with the Red Hat Society girls for lunch out in the boondocks for a traditional, boiled Irish
dinner. I called to cancel that because of an impending storm that was supposed
to include ice, snow and rain. Another was to go with the Movie and Lunch Club but
I had no interest is seeing The Beauty
and the Beast so I e-mailed my regrets. Then at the eagle lecturer some friends invited me to tag along with them
to an Irish Pub close to where I live. I figured I could get in and out before
the storm hit but this morning that got canceled, too. I am SO sick of winter
and spring playing chase-and-flee tag with our lives! ©
 |
| Stock photos, our lecturer was not online. |
