My Move To Assisted Living http://www.oakmontoffresno.com/

L

Lon

Well-known Member
Location
Central California
Having nailed down all the details and costs I have decided to make the move voluntarialy some time before the first of the new year. I have been to Oakmont several times to check out all the facilities was impressed. It is fairly close to all family members when they choose to visit I will have a one bed, one bath, kitchinette, apartment with wi fi, utilities and cable TV included. Three gourmet meals per day that I can have in the dining room or brought to my apartment. This facility is not inexpensive and I will be paying up to $5,700 monthly with most of that being paid by my Long Term Care Policy. I no longer enjoy or even feel like cooking for my self or performing other tasks that I now am doing in my two bed, two bath apartment. I look forward to having these things done for me. The best thing about this whole idea is being able to make these decisions on my own instead of reaching a point where a family member has to step in and make choices for me.

http://www.oakmontoffresno.com/
 

I know you'll be happy there Lon, I remember you shared a lot of your home cooked healthy meals here with us and really enjoyed your independence. Sounds like you'll still have it without all the work and in a nice place. You're smart to make the move on your own....enjoy!
 
What SeaBreeze said. It sounds ideal Lon...3 gourmet meals, dine in or out, no cooking, no cleaning, no stress. Sure sounds good to me :)
 

Lon,

It looks like a wonderful place to live, will they help you with the move?

Please provide us with updates on daily life at Oakmont when you get settled.
 
Manatee makes a good point. I have had several friends go to places like that and the weight went up. I guess when you are doing it for yourself, "happy hour" snacks go well with the wine and cover things pretty well. But - when you're paying for it anyway and it is a social thing - "chow time".
 
ooooh it's just beautiful Lon, it's going to better than living in a 5 star hotel for you..


I wish I could afford somewhere like that.... oooh what bliss that would be !!



Wishing you much happiness in your new home!!
 
Looks like a great place. In the dining room, can you sit anywhere? Do you then have to wait for a server to take your order? If so, would you have to wait for it to be cooked? It would be like going to a restaurant three times a day. Could get tiresome after a while, at least for me.
 
zogburr said:
Looks like a great place. In the dining room, can you sit anywhere? Do you then have to wait for a server to take your order? If so, would you have to wait for it to be cooked? It would be like going to a restaurant three times a day. Could get tiresome after a while, at least for me.
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Yes you can sit anywhere you like.
 
zogburr said:
Looks like a great place. In the dining room, can you sit anywhere? Do you then have to wait for a server to take your order? If so, would you have to wait for it to be cooked? It would be like going to a restaurant three times a day. Could get tiresome after a while, at least for me.
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Lon mentioned in post#1, " Three gourmet meals per day that I can have in the dining room or brought to my apartment...I no longer enjoy or even feel like cooking for myself...I look forward to having these things done for me."

Sounds like a perfect fit for Lon. And gourmet...yes! "Wishing you champagne and caviar dreams", Lon :love_heart:
 
There were once hostelries called apartment hotels or residential hotels. They ran the gamut from near flophouse to the best in the nation. President Hoover lived at the Waldorf in NYC for years after leaving the White House. They offered residential suites as well as full dining services. The staff would have been the best available. That's the Waldorf.

I don't buy package deals. Gourmet food? Suppose they change chefs? Staff? Do they promise that there will be no illegal aliens or any with criminal records? What about pets? Do the rooms have safes—real safes? What are their security arrangements? Old people are targets.

The apartment hotels of yore always had arrangements with restaurants to deliver food to rooms, generally at any hour. This is no big deal.

Have they offered some arrangement that allows you to stay for a week or so on a trial basis? Then you could judge whether they really serve gourmet food.

It may be more work to live in my own home, but I know that I'm lord of the manor. I determine who has access to my home.
 
Horn - there is more involved than the quality of the cooking. My wife and I are checking out similar places in our neck of the woods. The idea is to be considering the realities of what one's future needs may be and making arrangements in advance. There are places like the residential hotels you mentioned. There are ways to receive future care as it becomes needed. And there are places for total care (physical as well as mental). The point of these places is to provide a"package" allowing you to make arrangements well in advance so as to let you enjoy the present without the nagging worries about the future interfering - as well as removing the potential for laying a heavy load on your kids.
 
Big Horn said:
There were once hostelries called apartment hotels or residential hotels. They ran the gamut from near flophouse to the best in the nation. President Hoover lived at the Waldorf in NYC for years after leaving the White House. They offered residential suites as well as full dining services. The staff would have been the best available. That's the Waldorf.

I don't buy package deals. Gourmet food? Suppose they change chefs? Staff? Do they promise that there will be no illegal aliens or any with criminal records? What about pets? Do the rooms have safes—real safes? What are their security arrangements? Old people are targets.

The apartment hotels of yore always had arrangements with restaurants to deliver food to rooms, generally at any hour. This is no big deal.

Have they offered some arrangement that allows you to stay for a week or so on a trial basis? Then you could judge whether they really serve gourmet food.

It may be more work to live in my own home, but I know that I'm lord of the manor. I determine who has access to my home.
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You are a real unjustified SKEPTIC Big Horn. I have always been LORD OF THE MANOR with everything because I always pay my own way and don't seek FREEBIES or DEALS.
 
I have had two maids who also did home health care. They would stop at the client's home one or more times each day to take care of the client. I don't know the cost, but it can't have been more than what a "facility" charges for those services. The reason for this is to allow people to remain in their homes longer, ideally until their deaths. Most would consider this beneficial. In fact, there have been a number of changes in both Medicare and private insurance plans to make this possible.

I had both hips replaced five years ago. While I was in the hospital for the first operation, I was bombarded by various staff members trying to convince me that I needed to go to the nursing home that they own (and which had many empty beds) for "rehabilitation." I refused their blandishments with contempt. One who had been well-trained in the art of frightening doddering old fools could barely contain her rage. I returned home where I live alone. My insurance covered the cost of a health aid as well as a physical therapist making thrice weekly trips to my home more than twenty miles from the hospital. They came on cold and snowy days without fail. It didn't cost me a nickel. The physical therapist came out for almost four months, the aid for a much shorter period. I'm good as new today.

It would be wise for the OP to consult an appropriate physician regarding clinical depression. His statement about not wishing to perform normal household tasks is a real danger signal.
 
Big Horn said:
There were once hostelries called apartment hotels or residential hotels. They ran the gamut from near flophouse to the best in the nation. President Hoover lived at the Waldorf in NYC for years after leaving the White House. They offered residential suites as well as full dining services. The staff would have been the best available. That's the Waldorf.

The apartment hotels of yore always had arrangements with restaurants to deliver food to rooms, generally at any hour. This is no big deal.
Click to expand...

My ex-husband worked in one of those hotels – a very nice one – when he was in school. The hotel had a good restaurant and provided room service to people who preferred to eat in their rooms. They also accepted deliveries from all of the local restaurants. I met some of the lovely people who lived there, mostly widows but there were a few men as well. There were some tenants who traveled for business. The hotel had different-sized suites and people could choose furnished, unfurnished or partially-furnished suites that were decorated to suit them. Most of the people had lived there for years and seemed quite happy with the arrangement. It's my understanding that larger European cities still have those apartment hotels.

I hadn't thought of it before, but the hotels may have been the precursor to the kind of retirement community where Lon is going to be living.
 
Smiling Jane said:
My ex-husband worked in one of those hotels – a very nice one – when he was in school. The hotel had a good restaurant and provided room service to people who preferred to eat in their rooms. They also accepted deliveries from all of the local restaurants. I met some of the lovely people who lived there, mostly widows but there were a few men as well. There were some tenants who traveled for business. The hotel had different-sized suites and people could choose furnished, unfurnished or partially-furnished suites that were decorated to suit them. Most of the people had lived there for years and seemed quite happy with the arrangement. It's my understanding that larger European cities still have those apartment hotels.

I hadn't thought of it before, but the hotels may have been the precursor to the kind of retirement community where Lon is going to be living.
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I watched a documentary about retirement "hotels" for opera singers in Europe. At the start of it, retirement hotels for other entertainment/arts industries were mentioned; retired composers, retired ballet dancers and choreographers, etc. These people were once famous and/or revered and were now in their 70s to 90s, and all but forgotten until a woman whose name I forget wrote about some of them living poorly, sparking public interest and public demand that the government intervene. The result was the creation of the retirement hotels.

There are retirement hotels in L.A. for actors. In general terms, they're called Industry Retirement Homes. Actors who join the Actor's Guild, basically an actors union, partially support them via their mandatory dues. Or, at least, that's my understanding. There's a retirement home for stunt men, too, that operates the same way. I met a guy in L.A. who belonged to the Stuntmans Guild (or something like that; also like a union) though his job it was only to move "stunt cars". That's what he did all day, park and re-park stunt cars, tow them in, tow them out...
 
Big Horn said:
I have had two maids who also did home health care. They would stop at the client's home one or more times each day to take care of the client. I don't know the cost, but it can't have been more than what a "facility" charges for those services. The reason for this is to allow people to remain in their homes longer, ideally until their deaths. Most would consider this beneficial. In fact, there have been a number of changes in both Medicare and private insurance plans to make this possible.

I had both hips replaced five years ago. While I was in the hospital for the first operation, I was bombarded by various staff members trying to convince me that I needed to go to the nursing home that they own (and which had many empty beds) for "rehabilitation." I refused their blandishments with contempt. One who had been well-trained in the art of frightening doddering old fools could barely contain her rage. I returned home where I live alone. My insurance covered the cost of a health aid as well as a physical therapist making thrice weekly trips to my home more than twenty miles from the hospital. They came on cold and snowy days without fail. It didn't cost me a nickel. The physical therapist came out for almost four months, the aid for a much shorter period. I'm good as new today.

It would be wise for the OP to consult an appropriate physician regarding clinical depression. His statement about not wishing to perform normal household tasks is a real danger signal.
Click to expand...

No Clinical Depression for me. My reason for not wanting to do many household tasks is because of my personal comfort. Many of these tasks cause not only pain. but dis comfort to this aging body of mine. I don't believe that any of my posts since joining the Forum reflect depression of any kind. What the hell!! I no longer can or want to do many things that I could just 26 years ago, like Scuba Dive, Golf, White Water Rafting,Raquet Ball, Boccee Ball. etc. etc. A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations. (Clint Eastwood)
 
Cap'nSacto said:
There are retirement hotels in L.A. for actors. In general terms, they're called Industry Retirement Homes. Actors who join the Actor's Guild, basically an actors union, partially support them via their mandatory dues. Or, at least, that's my understanding.
Click to expand...

There's an Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey too. It looks like it might have been a wealthy family's mansion that was turned into a retirement home for actors.

I read an article a while back about Stuart Damon, who played Alan Quartermaine on General Hospital for years. (He was also the prince in a non-animated fairy tale, maybe Snow White). His health was failing because he couldn't control his diabetes on his own. He went to live in an actors home in SoCal that provides medical care and a controlled diet. He's been doing well since then.
 
Smiling Jane said:
There's an Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey too. It looks like it might have been a wealthy family's mansion that was turned into a retirement home for actors.

I read an article a while back about Stuart Damon, who played Alan Quartermaine on General Hospital for years. (He was also the prince in a non-animated fairy tale, maybe Snow White). His health was failing because he couldn't control his diabetes on his own. He went to live in an actors home in SoCal that provides medical care and a controlled diet. He's been doing well since then.
Click to expand...

It'd be cool if all unions used a percentage of member dues to fund retirement homes for people in their industry. The Veterans Administration does, but the home my father could have lived in (in central California) was kind of crappy. Don't know if all of them are. I like to assume that isn't the case.
 
Lon said:
No Clinical Depression for me. My reason for not wanting to do many household tasks is because of my personal comfort. Many of these tasks cause not only pain. but dis comfort to this aging body of mine. I don't believe that any of my posts since joining the Forum reflect depression of any kind. What the hell!! I no longer can or want to do many things that I could just 26 years ago, like Scuba Dive, Golf, White Water Rafting,Raquet Ball, Boccee Ball. etc. etc. A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations. (Clint Eastwood)
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I have a similar mindset, Lon. Except with me it's called "lazy as the day is long". Hey, if I don't want to do it and can afford to have it done for me - Shazzam!!! - I'm goin' that route.
 

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