Elder care, such as it is

[dem in texas]

12. I don't know if this helps, but here's my story

My mother was living with my sister out in West Texas. My sister worked so Mother was alone during the day. She fell, same as your Mom, but was found by my sister when she got home from work. We knew she could not stay alone anymore, so we decided on assisted living. We thought it would be best to move her up to the DFW area where most of her kids lived. We visited 5 assisted living places and settled on 2 we liked best - we judged them on location, size and price. We selected 2 out of the 5 , then my sister drove Mother up to Dallas and she visited both and picked the one she liked best. It was close enough that my sister and I could visit her often, we decided to take turns visiting, so it worked out well.

It was a one floor building with a center that had the offices, kitchen and dinning rooms,meeting and craft room, plus a little beauty shop. The rooms for the clients went out in wings from the central area. Each wing had a station staffed 24 hrs a day. Mother lived there for 5 1/2 years until she passed away. She was not happy at first, but she ended up liking it.

The reason I am describing the facility to you is that many of the Assisted living places in the DFW are multistory buildings requiring the resident to take an elevator downstairs for meals. My sis is in one of these bigger assisted living places and it is hard for her to navigate, it is so large and she has trouble walking or using a wheelchair. Plus it is harder for a visitor to get in the building, have to make an appointment to visit and it takes a lot of planning to take her to the Doctor, etc.