What I look for in an Assisted Living Facility...

After a fantastic and relaxing weekend in Philly, I came back and continued my quest to find my Grandma an Assisted Living Facility. I took another tour a couple of days ago and thought maybe I should right about what I have been looking for. 

Ultimately my Grandma is going to be making the decision, but due to her inability to travel and visit a bunch of different facilities, I thought I would go around and make the first pass. In a previous post, I mentioned that it seems similar to finding a college apartment. Now, for a couple of the facilities, I feel like it depends on the facility. There are a couple of facilities in particular that did not listen to me on the phone during my initial conversation with them and they scheduled me on a tour with the wrong department. That facility and another has called me or emailed me multiple times per week over the last couple of weeks. Come on... no matter the reason, that just makes you look desperate and they were immediately chopped from my list.

Currently I have two facilities that I like and it turns out the directors of these two facilities are best friends. The are both reasonable in price with a ton of activities throughout the day. When I visited and took a tour, the facility was nicely decorated and clean. They smelled fresh and the residents were active and social. I have seen facilities where almost every resident were in wheelchairs and they all had a vacant look in their eye. There were other facilities that just looked scary. 

So as a summary, the things I look for are the cleanliness, atmosphere, and activities of a facility. I look to see how active and about the residents are. Is the facility nice and clean? Are the aides and concierges nice and friendly? What is the overall feel of the place? After my tour, do they follow up with me or are they absolutely obnoxious?

I'm sad and missing my dad, so I'm having a hard time coming up with a Pop-ism today. I've actually been having a hard time sitting down and writing this post for a few days. When depressed, sometimes the simplest task is ridiculously hard to complete. So my Pop-ism... He is incredibly smart and knew some much about so many things. He was always teaching and seemed to know everything. He could build anything too. I wish that I had half of the knowledge that he does. I wish I had even a small amount of his ability to build things from scratch. He was and is an amazing person.