The Retreat at Desert Cove

We placed my mother a couple of months ago at The Retreat at Desert Cove, which is just a great facility. It’s a 5,000 sq. ft. home with seven residences. My mother has a master suite. The food is incredible and very fresh. The lady who owns it cooks healthy and nutritious food. She makes everyone feel very special and is just incredible. My mom is the only one there who has Alzheimer’s, and the rest of them are older people with different problems, yet she makes my mother still feel special. My mother is doing better than when she was living with me. They’re perfect. There are people waiting to get in because it’s just that good of a place. It’s like a big, family home. I would never put my mother in a large facility after I had her in there. She’s very comfortable, and it’s like being home. There’s nothing bad I can say about it; it’s amazing.

The Retreat at Desert Cove was a home that was really wonderful. There was a beautiful courtyard outside garden, and my mother enjoyed sitting there every day. And what was really nice was that they let the residents to plant flowers and herbs, and they cook from that garden. My mother was on a puree diet, and it was the best puree diet she had because they made everything the same except they blended it for her. And then, she moved to mechanical diet, so then they would dice everything so tiny so she was able to actually enjoy eating that. They really catered to her. It was so phenomenal, and the care was impeccable. A lot of their employees were Filipinos, so they got the real one-on-one care. They just had a great mix of help, and they all just blended really well together. It was technically clean, and they did wonderful arts and crafts. They got a little room that they did their arts and crafts and exercise. They had a living room, a dining room, and a huge kitchen where they could sit around, visit, and talk while they were each cooking, but then they'd sit in the dining room to eat. My mother was there for a month, and then she passed. But within 2 ½ weeks, she was telling everybody that all those people were her friends because they were basically the same age, so they just bonded and took care of each other. It was really a beautiful experience. Parking was really great. I have ten brothers and sisters, and we never had problems with parking along with their own help. It looked like a residential house and nobody would ever know it was a care home. It was just really nice. The rooms were U-shaped, they had this section like when families come visit and they have children, they had the most wonderful recliner chairs and a flat screen TV and games and Wii games and all kinds of stuff and puzzles for the kids to play or families to entertain each other while they were visiting their loved ones. What my mother and all of us loved about it was it was light and airy, but it wasn't overly decorated. It was very understated, plain and simple, but classy. I can't say enough about it.