My 87 year old mother has been living in assisted living for 3.6 years. She has vascular dementia and has no short term memory at all. She can play scrabble and Chinese checkers and beat everyone. One sister wants to put her in memory care to get more care. The other sister thinks memory care is for wanderers and inappropriate behavior. I visited the memory care and my mother and 1 other woman are high functioning and the others are very low functioning. She doesn't socialize a lot because she has trouble hearing and she won't wear a hearing aid. Family visits her everyday and she watches a lot of TV to keep her entertained.
We would be paying almost twice the price and a smaller room. One sister thinks it would be good for her, since they encourage them to do activities. The other sister thinks she would be bored with the activities and be sitting in a smaller room watching TV. The care staff in memory care is 9 patients to 1 care staff. She dresses herself and we help her with showers, because we don't want her to fall. The sister that wants her in memory care says we are denying our mom care by not putting her in memory care. The other sister thinks the more independent she is the better and she would go downhill living there. She gets confused, but staff bring her to meals and back where she is. Please help with advice a room just came available in memory care and they are offering it to us for 1,400.00 less per month and had a hard time getting that discount.
Why don't you speak with the nurses and get their opinion? That’s what I did. Call a Care Conference and you and your sisters all go and talk it over with them.
to me, as long as she is getting along ok in AL i don't understand why you would move her? in my moms assisted living there is a big range of care given. some don't have dementia but are wheelchair bound. while my mom has very bad dementia, but is very mobile. ive seen confused and not so confused residents. as long as they are not disturbing other residents and are able to be re-directed, they stay in AL. i had one sweet lady lived across the hall from my mom - she was so nice, but she kept entering other rooms....so they moved her to memory care. (there was probably other reasons too)
i hope my mom can remain in AL as long as possible or until she passes away. i say that - because it will be hard on my mom. even tho her memory is horrible. she will know she has been moved. and i think it would be a negative thing. plus i worry about the cost. (its her money, but i still worry about the increase)
i had to laugh about the scrabble. ive been playing that game with my mom in AL twice a week since 2011. (but now,)her memory is less than about 10 seconds. but she manages to play (i help her a lot tho) but its still something we can do. when we are done, she doesn't remember that i helped her. shes always so happy to win.
oh and in my moms AL there is always something going on and everyone is encourage to attend. edit another thing... my mom does do some bizarre stuff but over-all she does OK, she takes some meds for that :)
Oh, I just read the bit about the huge discount - that does make it harder doesn't it. How may months would the discount remain in place, and will they put it in writing? Have you all spent a lot of time at the new facility? And what kind of specialized programs are offered there that your sister feels you are depriving your mother of, or is she just making assumptions?