Bird Management Personal Care Facility

Cathy

My brother is in Bird Management Personal Care Facility. Desiree is the person who takes care of the place. It's an old nursing home that they're fixing up. The staff is very good there. Most of them speak Spanish, though, and very little English. The place is well-kept and clean. When he went there, he was in the aggravated stage of dementia, but for some reason, we listened to Desiree and he's doing good. He was all shaggy-looking and wouldn't take a shower. He didn't take a shower for like two years. Now, they require that he take a shower twice a week and they cut his hair and they shave him. They have hot meals three times a day. They're just very nice. He had isolated himself before he went there, and now he talks to all the residents. They only lock the doors when one resident is trying to get out. My brother has a private room. There's a bathroom, a bed, a dresser, a recliner, and a refrigerator. They have 24-hour care and Desiree lives right next door, and there's a walkway between her house and the residential facility. The only thing I don't like is she doesn't accept Medicare. It's private pay and he makes enough money to pay for it, but it doesn't leave him much. They have a lady from the church that comes out a couple times a month and plays the piano and the residents sing to it and they enjoy it. It's loud enough that he can hear it in his room and sing along. They have walkways and an outside smoking area that's enclosed so nobody can get out. They have a big place where you can have company and they have a couch and chairs and stuff in that common area. They have a big dining room where they bring the food out to you. They have a garden area. I would recommend anybody to go there because when they took him, he was a mess and they cleaned him up and got him socializing with people. He doesn't have the violent fits that he used to. There's still more fixing up that they need to do in their facility. Some of the rooms are two-bedroom. There are two long halls and at the end of the second hall is where the dining area is. He pays $2400 a month, and that's the cheapest one. Most of them are $2500 or up. Value for money is very good. There was one time that he ran out of insulin, Desiree went and got it for him and paid for it out of his rent and then we paid her back for the insulin. A couple of times Desiree has taken him out to eat or Dairy Queen, and they have somebody once or twice a month, a volunteer, come in and take them out to eat.