The Savages Review

I recently watched the movie "The Savages" starring Laura Linney, Philip Seymour and Philip Bosco. My wife got it from Netflix. It was originally released in 2007. Because of my work on the website, I was really interested in the movie. The story is about a brother and sister who need to make decisions about what to do with their aging estranged father who was abusive to the children when they were young. Their mother has already passed away and the problems start when their father is evicted from his girlfriends house. The father, Lenny Savage, ho no place to go and no one to help him so the burden fall back on the children. The acting in the movie was excellent, they really made the story real.
Although the movie was originally release to entertain, this is not a very light subject and I would not recommend it for casual viewing. The dominant emotions in the movie are pain, guilt and anguish. Not emotions you want to activate on an everyday basis or a date night. The movie is how ever a great educational film.
If you are in a similar situation, caring for a parent or loved one, this movie will demonstrate that you are not alone. It demonstrates, very well, that everyone who puts part of their family into an institution struggles with the decision and financial impact. At one point Wendy Savage visits an upscale and very expensive facility as an option to the standard facility. These assisted living and nursing home facilities are all across the country and some cost over a hundred thousand dollars/year. In the movie, the father has no retirement funds so the family would have to foot the bill. Jon Savage, the brother, goes on a rant about how this is just to help with the guilt of institutionalizing their father and financial impact would devastate their lives. He also states that sending their facther to the facility is just to help reduce the guilt of sending their father to a public home. Everyone wants the best for their family, even if the family member was less than best. This movie shows the realities to caring for aging parent.
If you are struggling with decisions about an aging parent or loved one, this movie will show you that you are not alone. It is a difficult life and you rarely get any thanks. I would define recommend this film for all those children of "baby boomers" that will be care taking for a family member. Just make sure you have a box of tissue ready before you start the movie.

Cold Laser Therapy For Seniors

Most people would consider my family a tree-hugging granola-eating bunch. We spend about as much time in alternative doctors offices as we do in MD doctors offices. This includes our kids. At one point, I was taking my son three times a week to the MD and always getting the same answer. All I heard was "I wish I had a magic wand" or "There is nothing we can do". Then we started seeing an acupuncturist and herbalist who said "I can fix his problems" AND DID. Since then, my son goes for normal checkups but when he is sick, we go to the doctor with answers, Dr Jake Fratkin. So both my wife and I also see a different acupuncturist who also has access to a cold laser therapy equipment. She even has access to a LaserPrism (Terraquant) Low Level Laser. I have had knee paid for about the last 5 years so I was game to try it. After just one treatment, I had less inflammation and less pain. Now I get the treatment every time I go and it really work. I also really like the Apollo laser but it requires a license to buy it. I am currently saving up my money to buy my own cold laser. Once I do, I plan some experiments on family and friends. I think cold laser treatments could be especially good for seniors. Many seniors have bad joints, inflammation and pain. The cold laser treatment only takes a few minutes and there is no pain. It seems like every assisted living facility should have a cold laser for routine treatments. There are a lot of claims that cold laser can do other amazing things including stimulating hair growth. I don't know about that but I know it works on my crunchy knees.

California Assisted Living Update

I just finished uploading all the assisted living facilities for Arizona and am currently working on North Carolina. Arizona was a big surprise with almost 2000 assisted living facilities. I think that California has almost 6000 facilities but currently I only have around 400. One I get all the California facilities including Los Angeles assisted living facilities entered, I will have over 12,000 facilities in the directory. Not Bad.
Most of the state governments have been good to work with. By the end of August, I must have every assisted living and Alzheimer's facility in Georgia. I am going home to meet with dad's facility manager and nurse so see if they can give him additional assistance. His mental condition seems to be changing rapidly as he reverts into a child. That is why I will need to have a complete list of dementia care facilities ready when the assisted living facility will no longer accept him. We are very thankful that he is happy in his dementia. So many seniors get angry, frustrated and mean. My dad is mostly sweet with an occasional bit of angry confusion. The nurses raided his apartment this week and took his bottle of vodka. The alcohol that destroyed his frontal lobe should be avoided but my dad's doctor (Dr. Tucker) is an idiot. He told my dad that it was OK for him to drink so he won't listen to anyone else. It really stinks when your parent doctor is actually doing damage. Anyways, this should be a big month for my dad and for the site so stay tuned.

Elder Care

I just found a brand new site call 101 Elder Care. This site is relatively new but looks like the kind of pure spam that is created by large marketing companies that don't really care about the user. They already have many links to sites like aplaceformom ( the huge corporate gorilla in this market). These are my competitors. aplaceformom is a paid inclusion "referral network." It is going to be tough to compete against 9.5 million in startup capitol but at least my overhead is low. If you want to help the little guy (family owned and struggling to help seniors), you too should link to assistedseniorliving.net. My site is independent. We don't send seniors to highest paying facility. If you were trying to find the best place for yourself, would you want someone calling themselves a referral network selling you out to who ever pay them for customers. No, you want unbiased TOTAL information about every option available in your area. You want photo, review, maps, costs and other key information to help you make the best decision. That is what you find on assisted senior living. No bull.

So if you want to keep the assisted living market free and impartial, please link to assisted senior living dot net and help keep the market fair.

Sell The Family Home

This month I will start the process of selling my father's house. He has not lived in it since he moved into assisted living 2 years ago. At first he went home every week so he could check on things and so he could have a comfortable setting. He really struggled with the move to assisted living at first. Eventually he stop going home and stopped paying any bills so the house fell into disrepair and the utilities were turn off. After evaluating his finances, it turns out that taking money (for living expensed) from your 401K requires your to pay taxes but selling your home is a way to get tax free income. The problem is that the house is in such bad condition and I live in another state so fixing it up will be difficult. Removing the clutter is the first activity and then repairing some of the recent water damage while I try to bring the yard back to life. I will try to meet with a real estate broker in Atlanta to get feedback on what really needs to be fixed. Although I have successfully bought and sold several homes for profit, I am too close to this house to make a good decision about what is appealing to potential buyers.

I am also considering window replacement since some 0f the windows are rotten. This and a coat of paint will hopefully help it sell quickly. Since my father has the home paid off, all the income from the sale will go into savings and should keep him living in assisted living for several years with no worries.

California Trends For Seniors

California is the leading edge of the United States. With about 10% of the seniors in the country living in California, it is the state to look for future trends in assisted living and retirement living. California is driving the way for a better environment by forcing or working around our corrupt federal government by forcing better air quality down the throats of the lazy US automaker and hopefully they can do more to make life better in other areas. With the recent decline in the real estate market parts of California are becoming more affordable for seniors and that is a good thing. My hope is that California can address the lack of federal regulation over health care. If there is any thing that scares me, it is the future of health care. With the current trends, it looks some health care companies will only cover healthy people and only cover what they want to pay for. It is getting to be embarrassing to live in a country that does take care of it's seniors. With the 78 million baby boomers getting ready to tax our senior services, we are headed for a melt down.
OK, my rant is over. I feel a little better. So I am proud to release a new set of California assisted living facilities. Although I do not have all the facilities, this is a good update to the resources to California seniors. After researching Alzheimer's recently, I am planning on adding all the California memory care centers too. Alhtough my dad actually has frontal lobe dementia, our dealings with the doctors make is evident that his future is similar to that of an Alzheimer's patient. It is getting to the point where he will agree to do something and then almost immediately forget that he agreed if is not part of his normal operations.
Back to California, this is one of the only state that currently has a city released. Eventually the site plan is to release the top 200 or so cities that have a big senior population to support a separate page.
Thanks to everyone who has help grow assisted senior living and we hope it helps.

Alzheimer's Disease And Baby Boomers

I have recently been studying Alzheimer's Disease as part of the site development. Currently 1 in 10 seniors (over the age of 65) has some level of Alzheimer's. This week I saw a documentary on the subject on PBS that said once we get in the middle of the baby boomers retirement, that Alzheimer's will be an epidemic. With 78 million baby boomers, that will be almost 8 million Alzheimer's patients in the US. Since Alzheimer's slowly takes away memory, ability to recognize family and friends, speech and even the ability to swallow, there will be a huge drain on society and on the country. The special estimated that the cost for caring for these seniors could be as a staging drain on the economy and a huge drain on the sandwich generation. In my case dad has a frontal lobe dementia which is equally bad. He does have some memory lose but he is losing his judgment first. He can't tell right from wrong so he makes a lot of bad decisions. We are still learning about how to treat the illness since we are awaiting news from the doctors.

Arizona Assisted Living

I just started working with the state of Arizona to get all the data for assisted living, nursing home, hospice care and in-home care facilities. Arizona is one the new "hot" states for assisted living. There are already over 1500 assisted living facilities in the state and growing. Arizona offers great weather for seniors, the hot and dry climate is great for those with joint pain. The area also has a reasonable low cost living. Gold is a huge sport in Arizona so those searching for a active retirement, may consider that a plus. Although it is hard to compete with the no income tax in Nevada, it does offer natural beauty and not superficial surroundings. I think that the two state offer a very different style and that Arizona will be more successful in the long run. Arizona also competes with Florida for the Hot/Dry retirement crowd. Once again, I think that Arizona will be the winner. I am will to bet that Florida has a major weather related disaster before 2020 and scares a lot of seniors out of the area. Global warming seems to be making hurricanes more common and sever so Florida is going to get hit eventually.
So, if you are considering retirement planning, our list of Arizona assisted living facilities will be released in August and will include every single licensed option. If you have a specific city your desire, then use our advanced search or you can just browse our state and major city pages to get ideas. If you live in an assisted living facility, please use the advance search to find your facility and then write a review. This information can help thousands of others select the best facility for their families.

Beyond The Veil

Beyond the Veil is a spiritual site for those looking for something more. It is an extensive resource that can help people with a family, internal and growth issues. The title tag for the home page is "Near Death Experience" but it seems to offer so much more. This site has been around for a long time (Over 11 years) and has build a great resource list for those dealing with seniors. Here you can find hope when dealing with death but you can also find resources for helping someone "enjoy every second. Diane also manages another site Transition Guide Training
Both Transition Guide Training and Beyond The Veil are site with no advertising and they are focused on help others with the difficult issues of death. Just make sure you use the .net extension to find the site or you will be taken to a wedding site. If you are dealing with a senior who is in an assisted living facility, hospice or nursing home, you may also need some help yourself and these resources are something you should check out. Namaste.