Sometimes it starts with a fall; sometimes it’s a stroke; sometimes it’s because simple, routine chores have become overwhelming. And sometimes it is simply safety concerns or loneliness.
But whatever the impetus for a person giving up his or her home for supervised senior care, the process can be full of emotion, uncertainty and upheaval.
For Wilbur Wilkinson, 82, selling his Mt. Greenwood house and moving to the Washington & Jane Smith Home in nearby Beverly was an easy decision because of his declining health and his concern for his daughter.
“I’d been in the neighborhood for years and I’d known this place was here,” he says. “I’d even been in on occasion to visit people. As my health went down, I’m thinking about where to go and the first place that came to mind was the Washington Smith Home.
“I could see myself going downhill,” says the sprightly Wilkinson. “My only child is in Coronado, Calif. I didn’t want to fall apart and have her all of a sudden have to come and sell the place.”
Wilkinson’s self-assessment and thoughtful reasoning about moving into a sheltered environment clearly are the best tools to use to make such a difficult decision, according to Beth Decker, community relations director for the Smith Home, but lots of people wait until their choices are limited.
“Don’t decide when you’re in crisis,” Decker advises, “because you’ll be in somebody’s office and they’ll say, `You can’t go home,’ and there’s no bed for you where you want to go, so you’ve got to go someplace on the other side of town and your family will wind up having to travel. They’ll put you where there’s a bed.”
It’s rare that an elder comes to Signe Gleeson and her Naperville-based ElderCare Solutions for help in making decisions about life issues on his or her own, she says.
“The people who come to us are children, grandchildren, nieces,” says Gleeson, whose agency specializes in helping families from all over the Chicago area make informed decisions about meeting the needs of their elderly relatives.
Typically, people turn to ElderCare Solutions “when they are having difficulty making these decisions or they’re not able to make these decisions or there’s conflict in the family between what the elder wants and what the kids want.”
For residents of the Norwood Park Home on the city’s Northwest Side, the move to a sheltered living community “is very need-based,” says president and CEO Marsha Hagopian.
“We see families stepping in, making decisions for their parent or their loved one. Or sometimes it’s neighbors, sometimes it’s friends” who spot problems.
“They’re having trouble bathing; families have identified that their hygiene and grooming have slipped,” Hagopian says. “Maybe they’re having a harder time walking up and down the stairs in their home and they’re having a harder time getting their groceries and bringing them in and cooking. Or they may have the beginning signs of dementia.
“It may be as simple as they’re afraid to live alone because there have been several break-ins in the area and for security reasons they’re uncomfortable,” Hagopian says.
Jane Hansen, 90, says she used to go around her house two or three times at night “to see if I’d locked my back and front doors. I knew they were locked, but I would do it. And now I don’t have to worry,” she says.
Both men and women who live alone have safety concerns. Earl Mayer, 79, says he had some fears about being safe too. “Living by myself, I thought if I fall somewhere and can’t get hold of the phone, nobody’d know where I was. In my own home, somebody could have broken in and shot me.”
Wilkinson, Mayer and Hansen had to consider a lot of factors when they made their decisions to move to the Smith Home, which has independent and assisted living and skilled nursing all under one roof. After a hospital stay, Hansen says she “knew there was no way I could stay at home. I knew it. I went home for two days and I was just holding on to furniture and I thought, `I can’t go on like that. Somebody will find me dead on the floor.’ I knew I had to have care.”
She was admitted to Smith’s skilled nursing level and worked her way back from being almost incapacitated to absolutely independent, Decker says. “It was just unbelievable progress.”
There are times when elders bounce back from serious illness and resume their independent lives, but there also are times when they have no choice about going into assisted living, such as “when there’s a stroke, when individuals are clearly in danger of harming themselves because they can’t care for themselves,” Gleeson says, adding that her bias is to keep elders in their homes.
“Certainly lots of elders stay in their homes, so I guess the question is, `Is it a given that the person needs to move, or how do you determine that it’s necessary?’ “
Gleeson says it’s very important that people making this life-change decision for themselves or for another understand that in all of life there are risks and benefits and there are always tradeoffs.
“Autonomy and sense of control and being in the home are so important that (in the case of one woman) we made a decision that the risk of having something happen to her is outweighed by her sense of well-being. She does not want to leave her home. We haven’t neglected her, but the intervention is minimal. Sometimes people would rather risk falling and breaking a hip than leaving the home they love,” Gleeson says.
But sometimes it’s that home is the biggest problem.
“My house was starting to run me instead of me running it,” says Millie Sandquist, a vibrant 81-year-old who has lived in the Smith Home for a year. “I lived in the same house all my life; it’s like 110 years old. There were always things going wrong, and I couldn’t find service people to come fix it. One day a resident here invited me to lunch, and I fell in love with the place because it is so lovely.
“My daughter who lives in Florida wants me to come live with her. But she and her husband work and the boys go to school, and there I’d be sitting by myself. Here I’ve got all these friends.”
Having friends to socialize with is extremely important when considering a move to a group setting.
“Sometimes we get people in here who will say to themselves, `All my friends have died; all my kids live out of state. But my church is here and I want to stay in the area, and I don’t want to live alone,’ ” says Norwood Park’s Hagopian.
Mayer’s wife died in 1980, and there’s still a catch in his voice when he talks about her. He says he lived alone and did everything for himself until he moved into the Smith Home in October 1997. “But when I reached the point where I couldn’t go up and down the stairs anymore, I thought, `What am I doing here beating my head against the wall when I could be somewhere and be more comfortable?’ “
Mayer cites failing health as the deciding factor in his move. He put his name on Smith’s waiting list in April 1997, put his house up for sale and had an estate sale.
“It took almost six months before I got (the house) sold and then I came in here,” he says. “And the first couple of weeks I was here, I thought I’d made a big mistake. It seemed like it was too regimented.
“But I sat down and analyzed things a bit. In fact, I went and looked at a couple of apartments and decided, well, maybe I could have my own place. But I did an analysis of what it would cost me to have my own apartment again and all the other expenses I didn’t have to worry about here. I haven’t had any second thoughts about it since.”
