Moving to Memory Care

Karl38

I have been agonizing over how I will move my wife of 65 years to memory care. I know it will come unless I die first. Friends of ours live in an assisted living apartment. She needs assistance with many things but he does not. This is expensive but they are still together. I've been thinking this could be a solution for us. This would be a much better situation for my wife since she would not be alone and feel abandoned. Has anyone out there done this. It would be great to hear from you.

SDianeL

I don’t have experience with AL but the subject has been brought up many times on this forum. There is a search feature at the top of this forum where you can search for all posts with the term assisted living. The big question is whether the facility will separate you when your DW requires care that an AL facility doesn’t provide. If you find a facility that has both AL and MC you may be in different rooms and areas as the MC area is locked for safety. I would ask the facility that question. Don’t wait. And Have a plan B. Please keep us posted.

Joe C.

I considered a similar arrangement early in DW progression but decided it was not right for us. You mentioned that your wife was 65 yo but did not mention your age. I was in my mid 60s and very active when I was considering the AL option. One of the major points I considered was how would living in a community with much older individuals impact me personally & I decided this would not be a good choice for my mental health. The comment above about the AL community requiring your wife to eventually move to MC is the most likely outcome as the disease progresses. If that does happen then you would have the both the increased cost of your AL apartment and the cost of MC on top of that. Then you need to consider will you be happy living alone in the assisted AL community once your wife has transitioned in MC.

Karl38

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/236106#Comment_236106

Thank you Joe for your advice. Just to clarify, my wife and I have been married for 65 years. She is 84 and I am 85.

BPS

I considered that for a while but in the AL I looked at they come and help when you push the call button and when my wife was in the hospital for a month she could not remember to use the call button when she needed something, so I would still need to be there 24/7 never going to the store or anywhere so that I would be there to push the call button if she fell or needed any kind of help. My mom was in AL and that was also the case for her. She could still use the phone and would call me wanting help with some little thing and I would have to remind her to push the button on her pendent. My wife doesn't remember how to use a phone.