This post is for people who may be concerned with the grim subject of nursing homes and elder care facilities. In other words, anyone in middle age with living parents. The rest of you would be bored to distraction and you're invited to move on to another blog.
Bartlesville OK is a hotbed of retirement options. My sis thinks it's because so many oil company workers retired here. Today we visited three, plus a home care agency, and learned almost more than we wanted to know about what's available for Alzheimer's patients.
Every nursing facility we visited charges around $125 a day for 24/7 care, in tiny rooms meant for two patients. (Compare this with Green Country, where a room is $4,000 a month! And Green Country has been raising their rates every few months.) Each facility offers rooms with two single beds, a dresser, a couple of chairs and that's about it. The administrators try to limit each patient's wardrobe to six changes of clothing. Did I mention Mother has a walk-in closet, and that it's full?
The first one seemed entirely too much like a hospital; Judy and I both were underwhelmed because even though it had the grandest lobby, the space alloted each patient was claustrophobic, and we didn't get the friendliest of vibes from the staff. We preferred the second, Heritage House, which even has some single-occupancy rooms available now and then, and the one we looked at had a big sliding glass window looking out on a green expanse that made it seem larger, and an in-room shower (an attendant comes in to help with the shower). At each facility patients are escorted to a dining room for meals, no meals in the rooms. The third facility would be the longest drive for my sister, and the building is the oldest and least elegant, but a cat and a dog have the run of the place, which would be a big selling point for Mom.
We also stopped at a nonprofit elder care agency, where day care is offered for $800 a month and home aid workers can be contracted to visit on a regular basis at a rate of $16.50 a day. Mother tried out the daycare once, and slept through the whole day (I suspect because she's shy and doesn't do well around a lot of strangers, although one-on-one she's almost excessively friendly.) A woman from the elder care is going to visit tomorrow and give us an evaluation so we can work up a plan that would allow Mother to stay here at BCC for a while at least. A woman would come in each morning, help her shower and dress, deal with the little issues that Mother can't handle anymore like trimming toenails, taking out the garbage, taking her vitamins (she's no longer on any meds), finding things she's lost...
Part of the problem has been trying to figure out what level of care she needs. She's ambulatory, not incontinent, still talking (sometimes she makes perfect sense), more mild-mannered than she's ever been, and not at all combative as many Alzheimers patients are. Almost pathetically grateful for the smallest favor, the least bit of attention. She can still tie her shoes, button her shirts, wash dishes, talk to us on the phone. Just about everyone I saw today in the four facilities we visited was sicker, more helpless and less in touch with reality than she is. I saw so many vacant faces, so many people who seemed barely alive. I just wanted to be alone so I could cry for them.
Having lost sleep every night since I discovered just how much she's lost of her capacities, I'm relieved that we might have an option she could afford, that wouldn't require another immediate move. We'll know more tomorrow.
Anyway, it's worth a try.
Tomorrow: Where the cats are.