One glance at the graceful Victorian, with its wrap-around porch and wooden rockers, and it would be easy to think that this is just another cozy bed-and-breakfast: a getaway for stressed-out Midwesterners longing for some peace and quiet.
It is all those things, but the people who are really getting the break aren’t listed on the guest register; they’re back home.
This is Golden Years in Joliet, the area’s–possibly the state’s– first inn for those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, strokes or dementia. What this means for seniors is that they can enjoy comfortable rooms, home-cooked meals and a full slate of activities. What it means for caregivers like Janet Gustafson is that she was able to take her first vacation in a decade.
The eight-bed facility has been booked solid since it opened on Memorial Day weekend, when Gustafson’s 90-year-old mother-in-law, Lisa, checked in for a three-day stay. Guests can remain as briefly as overnight or as long as two weeks for a daily fee of $80, including meals and laundry, compared with an average of $150 for a nursing home.
“Up until now, the first question was always, `Who is going to take Mother?’ Well, now we have somewhere,” said Gustafson, whose mother-in-law was diagnosed with dementia in 1987.
“You don’t even have to go away. . . . Just to have a day for yardwork is a blessing. We can’t leave her in the house alone because it’s too dangerous, and we can’t take her outside with us because she wanders off. It’s like having a toddler, except that you can put a toddler in a playpen and you know that, eventually, things will get better. With Alzheimer’s patients, it only gets worse.”
In a society in which the elderly are the fastest-growing segment, Americans are desperate for innovative care solutions. Four out of five seniors will have long-term care needs, but only one out of five will live in a nursing home, which means that the formidable task of keeping them fed, clean and safe falls to family members–many of whom live thousands of miles away and are already juggling full-time careers and children.
“In this country, the word `caretaker’ equals unpaid, female relative, and they are burnt out,” said Dr. Cheryl Woodson, medical director of the Ingalls Geriatric Consultation Center in Calumet City, adding that today’s Baby Boomer women will devote more time to elder care than child care.
“When people care for demented patients, you are asking them to do–by themselves–what it takes three shifts of nurses to do–and the nurses get to go home after eight hours,” said Woodson, who has been known to write a prescription for caregivers to go to the movies.
And they are shouldering the responsibility longer. A few generations ago, no one expected life to stretch into the 80s, 90s and beyond. In 1900, there was only a 7 percent chance that a 60-year-old would have a living parent; by the year 2000, that figure will be 44 percent, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina. At the same time, the majority are committed to not putting loved ones in a nursing home, Woodson said.
“If we could get them a break, maybe they wouldn’t have to,” she said.
As a proprietor of adult day-care facilities, Sherry Tucker witnessed firsthand the emotional toll of caring for the elderly, severe enough to destroy some marriages. But she could do little for her clients’ charges besides offering a list of aides or short-term institutional care, neither of which were ideal.
“Even a senior with dementia knows the words `nursing home,’ ” she said.
Eight years ago, Tucker was on the frontier of elder care when she transformed a Glenwood storefront into a place where incapacitated seniors could go during the day for nurturing and socialization. She started the center (she has since opened other locations in Tinley Park and Bridgeview) after witnessing the slow, steady decline of her grandmother after she moved to a nursing home.
“I knew I could do better,” Tucker said.
Now, she feels the same way about overnight care. She envisioned an inn that was affordable and offered guests plenty of stimulation, from spelling bees to sing-alongs. The concierge and desk clerk have been replaced by a registered nurse and nursing aides (the staff-to-guest ratio is 5-1). Most guests would come from Tucker’s day-care facilities, but she plans to take others with a doctor’s referral.
Most of all, the place had to be homey, without a white coat or a square inch of green linoleum anywhere. When guests opened the door, she wanted them to be greeted not by the smell of disinfectant but of something tasty simmering on the stove.
Not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Her proposal was rejected flat-out by a handful of communities, nervous at the prospect of disoriented senior citizens in the neighborhood. At a Joliet Zoning Board meeting, the response was equally chilly, as dozens of irate residents opposed her petition request, which was denied.
But she found a valuable ally in Don Fisher, Joliet’s director of planning, who thought the concept had merit. By steering Tucker to a more appropriate site, he felt certain the project would get the green light.
It worked. After looking at 30 homes, she found the handyman’s special on Center Street, in the heart of the historic St. Pat’s area. The 125-year-old Victorian had been vacant for two years, but beyond the crumbling walls and weed-choked yard, she could see the promise.
For four years, Gustafson, who is in her 50s, took primary responsibility for both her mother-in-law and her own mother, who had heart trouble. Both women lived with the Gustafsons in their Flossmoor home–one mentally sharp with a failing body, the other strong as a horse “but with no mind,” Gustafson said.
Gustafson’s mother died last March, but the job of looking after her mother-in-law is still all-consuming. She recently started draping sleigh bells across the hallway at night so she could tell if, during nocturnal wanderings, her mother-in-law was venturing too near the stairs.
Still, Gustafson ticks off a lifetime of warm memories–of holidays and her mother-in-law baking bread with the grandchildren.
“When they have been there for you, how can you possibly turn your back?” she asks plaintively. “You can’t.”
Every day she sees others quietly going about the day-to-day mechanics of living for people who don’t even know who they are.
“There are no heroes or heroines, just people trying to do the right thing,” Gustafson said.
Back at the inn on a recent evening, after a dinner of chicken and stuffing, the guests adjourned to the living room for trivia games and other memory-enhancing exercises. (Question: “Do you remember your first love?”) One retired outside for some serious rocking, while another opted for an evening stroll around the block, accompanied by an aide.
“When I see them sitting on the same kind of porch they might have grown up with–just being free–it gives me a lot of joy,” Tucker said. “I’m not doing it for the money. . . . I’m doing it to give my caregivers a break and to keep my seniors out of long-term care, so they can live out their final years in peace.
“My last caregiver said I was an angel sent from heaven. How can you possibly put a price tag on that?”
