A Place For Papa

A couple weeks ago we placed my father-in-law in an assisted living facility.  It is the nicest retirement home I've ever been in...

 His room has two areas - we brought his chair, side table and lamp down and placed it in the section of the apartment where the kitchenette is.  He won't need or use the kitchen.

 We put up a white board so we and the nurses could leave messages for him.

The room is divided between the living area...

And the bedroom.

He has a door leading to the courtyard - where he is free to safely wander around outside.  The building wraps around it.

He has a chair so he can sit outside if he likes.

His apartment door is inside the hallway.  We put up a decoration on the door from his house so he would be able to find his room back.

This is a really nice place.  This room is the theater.  They call it the "Rialto."

The main common area (the first two pictures in the post) has a grand piano at one end, and they have people coming in to provide entertainment several times each week.

My boys especially liked the horse statue in that area, and kept going back to "pet the horse."

They have nice artwork throughout the building.

 This is the game room.  Lots of small tables in here.

 I took a bunch of photos from their house and made copies of them, framed them, and labeled them so the nurses could help him remember who everyone is.  (Their names are below each picture.)

 The boys liked the huge closet.

There are always lots of activities each day.

 On the Saturday we moved him in, a group from the Seventh-Day Adventist church came in to provide music.  Papa is somewhat anti-religious, but the guy was wearing a western suit and playing a guitar in the style of old country, playing hymns.  Papa clapped and tapped his hand and enjoyed the concert.  He and my husband are sitting near the fireplace.

I have to say I'm very impressed with this place - no bad smells, everyone and everything are extremely clean and well cared for.  When I need to go to a nursing home, I want to go somewhere like this.  It's the first place like this I've been in that I would be willing to move into today :)  They also have a lockdown memory-care unit that he is on the waiting list to get into.  That will be a better fit for him.  He wanders a lot and is very confused.  But they take residents first for openings over there, so we had to put him there before we could get him into memory care.  He still has lots of assistance and supervision. So far, we've been impressed.  The unfortunate thing is that it is in a town 100 miles away from us.  But we didn't have any other options, and this seems to be a perfect fit.