Alzheimers Care By Senior Living MentorSeveral years ago, my sister and I were faced with the reality of searching for an Alzheimer's care home for our father. For a number of years we had watched our dad become more forgetful and felt this was just old age creeping in. It first started with him losing his train of thought in mid sentence and forgetting close friends names to then neglecting to take care of his personal hygiene and house work. Dad had lived alone since our mother passed away and had done very well on his own for several years. He was very independent, drove to the store regularly, and in general, took very good care of himself. I guess deep down, my sis and I knew that the day was going to come to find what (at the time) we only knew as a nursing home. After we received a call from the Pasadena police department informing us that dad was found wandering around 5 miles away from home we knew that the time had come to face reality. At first we looked into more affordable residential care and hired a lady to "come in" for 10 hours a day to look after dad, then put him to bed and return the next day. That went pretty well for about a year or so but then came another call from the police at 3 AM and we then had to pay for 24 hour home care. We avoided contacting nursing homes because of cost as we thought home care would be more affordable, which it was, but not by much. After realizing that dad had digressed from being forgetful, to slight dementia, to then being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, we started searching for the proper type of care. At the time we really didn't know the difference between senior living, assisted living, a nursing home, retirement community or Alzheimer's care but we began to research various locations in our home town and discovered the differences and actually found a number of Alzheimer's care facilities that we could afford. They were bright, cheerful and clean and not at all depressing. After years of putting this hard decision off because of our misconceptions of affordable Alzheimer's care, we were finally able to relax and not worry about our father. Looking at the affordability of Alzheimer's care, there was quite a bit of research involved. When we began to look at dad's monthly bills and expenses, one of the facilities we researched was actually less expensive per month than dad's normal living expenses were when he was living at home. We chose another facility because it was closer to home. One of the research websites we discovered was Senior Living Mentor . I believe we liked it because it was simple, easy to navigate and gave us access to thousands of facilities nationwide. |