When Your Mind Goes AWOL, Your Body Will Still Have a Home

I looked at a third assisted living/memory care facility today. I don’t have anything negative to say about it, so I won’t try to prevent people from figuring out which one it was. The company that runs it is called Elan, and it’s part of The Villages.

The Villages is like Westworld for old people. It’s a big retirement complex south of Ocala. I have not been into the Magic Kingdom, or whatever the main complex is called. All I saw was an assisted living place which is associated with it.

The places I visited yesterday were one-story buildings, and they were not particularly elegant. The windows didn’t let a lot of light in, and a lot of the carpeting was entering the home stretch of its existence. The Elan facility was different. It’s several stories high. The construction appears to be fairly new. There is a lot of tile on the floors. There are a lot of big windows, and everything is very clean.

I didn’t smell anything while I was there. That sets this place apart from the others. I didn’t know it was possible to have an old folks home without potty smells, but these people have pulled it off.

Like many other facilities, this one had areas for people with memory issues and people who were simply old. I looked at both. The memory care side didn’t look too bad. They had a big room with a kitchen and a lot of tables, and people were hanging out there playing games. A staffer was doing dishes. There were slices of cake on dishes, waiting for anyone who wanted one.

The rooms were a little depressing, but that’s not because there was anything wrong with them. They’re depressing because once the door to one’s room shuts, the patient knows how alone he is and what his situation is. When the door closes, you’re in what is clearly an impersonal environment designed by the same kind of people who design Holiday Inn rooms. Your wife didn’t pick the counter in the kitchen area. You didn’t choose the paint or the carpeting. You’re not independent any more, so strangers who are very busy have to put your living space together, and you get what everyone else gets. If you walk into the next room over by mistake, you’ll feel right at home, because it will look just like yours.

There isn’t much that can be done to make these places feel more like homes. The company hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s the nature of the business. People who can’t take care of themselves don’t sit down with architects and designers and take charge of their environments.

It must be like a hotel stay that never ends.

He would have to change doctors again if he moved to this place. They drive people to appointments, but they don’t drive far enough to take him to the doctors he’s seeing now. That’s not a big deal. He’s not attached to them, and it doesn’t take a genius to handle my dad’s boring health problems. You give him the same 8 pills every day and wait for new issues to develop.

If he moved in today, he would be looking at around $60,000 per year. The VA would pay about $22,000. My dad didn’t buy insurance to pay for long-term care. Instead, he opted to live forever without health problems. I’m glad the VA money is available. I didn’t know about it until this week.

Shelling out $38K per year is not the end of the world, but the lady who explained the costs to me failed to mention the obvious concern: whatever they charge him the day he walks in will be the lowest rate of his entire stay. It can only go up after that, because he is going to deteriorate, and he will probably deteriorate significantly this year. The more help he needs, the more they charge. If I understand things correctly, the maximum will be in the high 40’s.

The place I visited today is the best option I’ve seen.

I’m not sure what to do. I can get someone to come here for 20 hours a week, considerably cheaper. He would not have to leave me or his home. I don’t know how much she could do to take burdens off of me, though.

Is the benefit of being around other old people worth the trouble of moving? He probably won’t make friends in any real sense, because he’ll forget new people from day to day.

I don’t know what life is like for people in memory care. They walk out of their rooms every day and see the same folks, but do they know who they are? Do they have to introduce themselves to each other over and over?

The more I get into this, the more I realize that most causes of death cause less suffering than dementia. My mother died 8 months after her cancer diagnosis. She knew who we were, she was able to read and talk and use the phone, and she made some preparations. I talked her out of disinheriting my sister, unfortunately, but she did do a few things. Anyway, 8 months into it, she passed, and then we moved on and got over it. We didn’t have to put her in a facility. We didn’t have to explain what we were doing for her over and over. She never got paranoid. She didn’t get agitated at night or in the morning. She understood what was happening. That’s better than 4 or 5 years of taking the same ground repeatedly.

I was not close to my dad’s late sister, so I never knew she was ill until she died, but I know a little bit about what happened to her. Her dementia progressed very quickly and then killed her. She stopped speaking English. She spoke gibberish, and she was convinced she was speaking normally. She talked to the family members who were looking after her, and I suppose she could not comprehend their confusion. I’m glad my mother didn’t go like that.

We didn’t visit my aunt while she was ill. My dad didn’t suggest it, and I would have been very uncomfortable going alone. My relatives would have been shocked to see me. Says a lot about how close we are.

When dad’s mother died, I skipped the funeral. Two of my first cousins died young. I didn’t go to their funerals, either. I didn’t know them, because my aunts and my grandmother had very little to do with us. I can only guess that my aunts were very glad when my dad left home, because after that, they made almost no effort to stay in touch. They told my mother he was impossible to get along with.

I don’t know what I would do if I had vascular dementia. I have a strong prayer life, I’m not obese, I don’t drink heavily, and God heals me of things, so I don’t expect to go that way, but what if I did? Would I tell my doctors to stop treating me so my dementia would get worse and I would die sooner? If I did that, the problems I was hoping to escape would intensify quicker. I wouldn’t be able to avoid them. I would only be able to make it all happen faster. That would be unpleasant to face.

I would have to create some kind of directive to prevent people from keeping me alive too long. That much is certain.

Cancer is better. Heart attacks and fatal strokes are better. Car accidents are better. The body should die before the mind, and money shouldn’t be wasted on empty machinery that refuses to quit running. I don’t have any kids, but I know people I would like to leave money to. I would rather see it go to them than a company that runs a home.

Some of the people I have seen in memory care seemed happy. I don’t think my dad could be happy. He can’t accept his status now, so I don’t expect him to adjust well when he is surrounded by invalids and realizes he is one of them.

I’m done looking at these places for a while. Now I’m going to look into nursing attendants. Maybe my dad’s condition will change before I make a decision, and that will force me to choose an option.

Don’t lose your mind if you can help it. You are better off falling off a cliff.