The Nursing Home

Two days later I received a call from a nursing home two blocks away - the one that was first on our list of choices. They had a room for mom, and did we want it? She'd need to move in the next day. Did we want it? Of course we did.  This was an answer to prayer - and when God knows you're that far down, I guess he figures a little lift wouldn't hurt. That and I am fairly certain my doctor called in a favour or two.

Besides that first room, which we took - we had the offer of another one. Later that afternoon.

Anybody in our city who has ever had to wait on a list for nursing home space will understand just how amazing that was. You simply do not get a room (let alone TWO), not here anyways, that quickly. Ever. It just doesn't happen.

Moving mom into the nursing home was not going to be easy. She didn't want to go. Even with her mind in the state it was in, she didn't want to go into a nursing home. I couldn't blame her. I didn't really want to put her in there either.

At the hospital it was decided that the best way to move her would be to have a patient transfer service take her. Patient transfer is similar to using an ambulance - a large raised van style vehicle that is set up to move patients either by wheelchair or on a stretcher. With mom, even though she was ambulatory, they put her on a stretcher since she was a little resistant to the move.

We were on hand at the hospital to gather up what few belongings she had there, and to make sure she knew we were there with her. Once loaded into the transfer vehicle we hopped in the car and headed up to the nursing home to meet her. Since the nursing home was only two blocks from the hospital, the trip was short - this made it easy for both mom, and the guys transferring her, since they wouldn't have to deal with multitudes of non-stop questions along the way.

We waited until they had her in a room before going in...besides, I needed to stop crying and wipe my face before I went in. Mom may have had alzheimer's, but she wasn't blind.  We had asked for a private room for mom, but there were none available in this home so she was in a shared room. The room was across from the main desk, which meant the nurses and  PSWs could keep an eye on her while she became accustomed to her new home. They tended to try and put new residents close to the desk, moving them into other rooms as they needed.

Mom's room was smallish (which appeared to be the standard size in this home), so we needed to assess the space first and decide what we could bring to make it feel a little more like her own space. She had a night stand, and standard hospital bed. We measured for space and realized we could fit in a standard dresser and her TV/Entertainment unit, which had a small built-in fold-down desk, cupboards, shelves and three more drawers. Her bed was also at the window, so we could utilize a part of the window ledge to hold some of her keepsakes. The closet was large, but needed to be shared, so the hanging bar had a divider in the middle.  There was also a shelf and lots of room below where the clothes would hang.

The family services co-ordinator came in and chatted with mom, and we asked a lot of questions. She helped us set up a telephone service and TV cable service for mom; we signed more papers than I can remember, provided documents and photos and whatever else was asked for. She walked us all around the home to the various areas. On the main floor where mom was there was a large gathering room two doors down from her - "the lounge". There was an enormous TV that was used for special TV programs, showing movies and anyone who didn't have their own TV could go down and watch it. The room was equipped with nice sofas, a few easy chairs, some tables and chairs along with a very large wooden bird cage. This was quite large, taking up a good portion of one wall, and stood near a large window. There were big branches from real trees in the cage, along with a variety of bowls and water feeders, and about a dozen small birds -  I don't know the bird variety, but they were colourful ranging from yellows to pinks, and about the size of small finches. My mom was taken with this for some reason. While she used to watch birds outside, she wasn't overly fond of birds.

Apart from the large room with the bathtub and patient lift, and a small kitchen where we could keep things in the fridge for mom, the balance of this floor was mostly client rooms.

Downstairs we were shown the front lobby area which opened onto the street, another lounge and a large dining room with round tables covered with pretty table cloths and center pieces and pink padded dining chairs with arms. The dining room also had a large fireplace at one end.

Outside was a back patio (enclosed with iron fencing, but pretty) with a covered sitting area, and around the side where the largest part of the grounds sat was another outdoor patio space - very large, that looked out onto the street. The neighbourhood itself was residential, so the view from either patio was simply other homes in the area. Most of these were old - from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and pretty well kept. It was much nicer to look out her window, or sit on the patio and see that, than the decidedly more utilitarian district around the hospital.

Still...mom wasn't all that happy when we told her we had to leave and would be back the next day.

Neither was the staff. They prefer that family do not visit during the first few days so they can get the new resident familiar with the schedule and routines. I wasn't having any of that, at least not until mom had her clothing and furniture, and most of all her TV. So after some discussion with the family services co-ordinator we arranged to return the next day with all the things we'd need to make mom as comfortable as we possibly could.

The next morning we spent bringing in her furniture and setting up her room, and the TV cable and

her telephone were activated. Once her clothing was stashed in cupboards and drawers, her pictures were hung up and her favourite baubles were displayed on shelves, she settled in to watch her old westerns on TV. We realized that there was just enough room on the window side of her bed to bring her in a small, comfortable chair to sit in, so that was next on our list of things to do. Her own furniture included a very large leather recliner that wouldn't fit in that space, so during the next day or two we'd hit the furniture stores and find a chair.

Before we left I made up a sheet with the TV channels - their call letters and the channel they'd be on so if she wanted to find something else, she could, and a list of the phone numbers that I knew she'd want - she could still use the telephone at that point, but she couldn't remember the phone numbers. There were maybe seven or eight numbers - all of us family, and only two that were long distance. I printed the names and phone numbers larger than I normally would, and separated them carefully with lots of space between each one so she wouldn't be confused.

What a mistake that was!