Posted on 10/08/2016 6:29:09 AM PDT by Daffynition
The Lantern of Chagrin Valley, located in Chagrin Falls, Ohio is only one of three amazing facilities designed specifically for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.
Designed to look like small houses with porches leading out to a golf course, the living facility feels like a community in the 1940s. With incredible attention to detail, including paint schemes reminiscent of the time period, Lantern is an incredibly unique living facility.
Using special fiber optics in the ceiling, the facility recreates a special daylight and starry sky atmosphere in the building.
(Excerpt) Read more at shareably.net ...
Allergies. I know.
I can dream.
Our alzheimer’s facility will have nurses wearing love beads and bell bottom pants, passing out flowers with Hendrix softly playing in the background.........Oh, and don’t forget paisley painted walls.....LOL!
No kidding...they are SAINTS!!
This is a wonderful idea because lots of these folks apparently do have pretty good long-term memory. I recall a time while visiting my late mother several years ago at the nursing home she was living, when the staff used to play in the mornings various old tunes and the folks, many of whom couldn’t even remember what their names were, began singing along, word for word! One especially incredible moment when I happened to have been there, this happened with the playing of God Bless America. Hard to describe in words. I so much wanted to video it, but the staff said, for privacy reasons, and/or legal reasons?, I couldn’t.
At least I’d be happy! :-D Hopefully, God willing, dementia will not come my way. There is none on either side of my family. My mom is 95 and is sharp as when she was 20. The rest of my family is also free of the disease, thank God!
I used to be head of the nursing home ministry at my church. I formed a choir of the residents, most of whom had dementia or alzheimers. When we got to Jesus Loves Me, they all sang in full voice, and not one of them sounded frail or elderly. The rest of the service, unfortunately, was a wash.
The Truman Show Nursing Home.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
... words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company
We have a couple of Alzheimer’s patients in the senior band I play in. Music is great for them because playing and singing exercises multiple parts of the brain at the same time. For one of them I put a booklet together of the sheet music we play off of so she doesn’t have to flip around in the big book. The other guy I take with me to the venues we play at. I think I’m the only one who is willing to hear the same stories over and over. I try to direct his conversation as I drive and sometimes I feel like we’re both reciting off a script. Both are doing well, but are going downhill.
Heresy! They need to have Hendrix cranked up to full volume —it's the only way those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s are going to be able to "remember."
Amazing.
Using music to connect with dementia patients is going mainstream. The idea is moving from anecdotal evidence to a full-scale formal study (3 years, $1.4 million).
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/healthy-choices/article77919702.html
http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article71301907.html
We know that music helps children. Many teachers use music to improve math skills [elementary age]
What a wonderful kindness you are doing. God Bless you and your musician friends.
All assisted living facilities I have visited are dreadful ... your *ticky-tacky* is a perfect fit.
My oldest aunt passed away earlier this year, she’d been in assisted living for several years. That place was actually pretty nice, more like a hotel than a rest home. Not depressing, not tacky, clean, no odd odors, none of the negatives that people associate with such places. So, they’re not all awful. I’ve been in a few that were, but not hers.
Thanks Daffynition.
In the old boarding Houses the incentive for the widow running the home was to keep her quests happy.
In ‘assisted living’ the incentive is to keep costs down and to hell with the old people. (Incentives from company policy - but of course there are good people attempting to give quality care in spite of ‘elite’ incentives...)
The guy with Alzheimer’s in our band has some interesting stories. He was in tanks in the Korean War. His tank was on a hill named Old Baldy. The Chinese snipers would shoot at anyone who stuck their head out the hatch. He said you could hear the plink of the bullets as they hit the tank. The Chinese snipers stopped shooting when he played his harmonica. He said he could sit up with his head sticking out of the turret and they wouldn’t shoot when he was playing. He still plays that harmonica in our band along with a ukulele.
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