The Laurels at Carolina Place

This facility has a great sales pitch, but their follow through is nothing to write home about. My mother, who was at the beginning stage of dementia, went to live there after having had a stroke. They placed her at a dining table for her meals with 2 women who had had debilitating strokes and could not talk. This was extremely upsetting for my mother. On the 3rd evening there, she started complaining of pain in her leg. I told her to tell the nurse when she came around with her medicine. The next evening, I went to see her after work. She was still complaining of pain in the same leg. I asked if she had told the nurse and she said the nurse had just given her Tylenol. The staff had been bringing my mother's meals to her room for 2 days, because she said her leg hurt too much to go to the dining room. I felt her leg and it was cool to the touch. I called our doctor's office. They told me to bring her to the ER. Turned out, she had a blood clot in her thigh and one in her aorta. If I had not visited her that night, she could have lost her leg, according to the doctors. The night my mother was released from the hospital, I went to the Laurels at about 10pm to pick up her medicines. We had decided we were not going to bring her back there to live, so we brought her home. I went in and out of the facility about 5-7 times carrying armloads of my mothers things out to my car. No one stopped me to ask who I was or what I was doing until about the 5th trip. I could have been robbing somebody blind there. The front door was not locked and there was no staff whatsoever in the lobby area. Also, during my walks in and out, I heard a man yelling "Help!" over and over from his room, where the door was ajar. There was no aide in the hallway for over 10 minutes of this. I finally poked my head in his door and asked him if I could help him with something. He was 1/2 raised up in bed and shocked to see me. He asked who I was. I told him my mother lived there and I had heard him calling for help. He said he was ok, that he just gets nervous. I held his hand and chatted with him for a few minutes until I was sure he was ok. He was quiet the rest of the time I was making trips in and out with my mother's things. Seems he just needed a little TLC, which was lacking from the staff at The Laurels. This is not a place I would recommend anyone leave their loved one.