Ecumen Awarded Grant To Expand Its Awakenings Dementia Care Program To Assisted Living Communities
Ecumen has been awarded a $265,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) to fund expansion of its nationally recognized Ecumen Awakenings™ dementia care program into its assisted living communities.
Thrifty White Pharmacy: Ecumen’s Innovative Partner in Making Seniors’ Lives Better
Unless you live in a rural area of the Midwest, you may not have heard much about Thrifty White Pharmacy. But the big players in the drug store industry are keenly aware of Thrifty White as one of the leading innovators in the business. Thrifty White is turning heads with its bold steps to fundamentally change the role of the pharmacy in health care.
Pelican Valley Health Center Plans To Add Memory Care Services
The Pelican Valley Health Center, managed by Ecumen, is expanding its services to include a memory care community that will offer specialized care for residents with memory impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
The center’s Board of Directors has authorized bids to remodel the Riverfront Manor assisted living building and convert the top floor into 10 memory care apartments. Barbara Garrity, executive director of the center, said she expects the work to be done in four to six months.
The new memory care community will offer private apartments in specially-designed surroundings to keep residents safe and secure and under skilled 24-hour supervision. Additionally, residents in memory care will have daily activities to help retain cognitive and physical abilities, as well as special attention to complications typically associated with dementia.
The ground floor of Riverfront Manor will continue to be assisted living apartments, and the top floor will become the secure memory care unit. The remodeling also will open up more ground-floor space for community activities.
In addition to assisted living, Pelican Valley Health Center also offers long-term skilled nursing care, short-term rehabilitation and respite care.
Baby Boomers and Home Sharing
Home sharing becoming more popular for boomers and seniors, particularly women.
Sewing Group at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes Threads the Needle for Charity
The talented and prolific women’s sewing group at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes Studios of Art in Chisago City, Minn., enthusiastically works together to produce handmade quilts, blankets and even dolls — all for charity.
Ecumen Century Club: Happy 100th Birthday to Ruth Benson
Ecumen honors Ruth Benson, a resident at Heritage Living Center in Park Rapids, Minn., who turned 100 on July 26, 2014.
Last Week's Top 5 Blog Posts- July 28
A Superior Way of Life, Retirement Wisdom, Matt McNeill, Senior Athlete Photos, and Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid...
In case you missed out on the latest news, here are the blog posts our online visitors found most interesting last week:
Duluthian Magazine Features "A Superior Way of Life" at Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth
Ecumen's Matt McNeill Named Fellow In National Aging-Services Leadership Program
Dig These Senior Athlete Photos by Angela Jimenez
The Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid- By Jim Klobuchar
To read more Changing Aging blog posts or to learn more about Ecumen, please visit ecumen.org!
The Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid - By Jim Klobuchar
The miracles of the modern hearing aid are well documented. It has restored and expanded the gifts of normal conversation. Millions of us have been spared the awkward gymnastics of cupping our ears to learn the cost of a hamburger. We can ask directions to the restroom without walking around with a note pad.
The hearing aid’s virtues go far beyond those humble gifts of daily living. We can watch television without turning up the sound to levels that provoke lawsuits from the neighbors. We can listen to relatives on the phone without risking the embarrassment of hanging up while they’re still talking.
All of this liberation does come at a price. When you finally abandon your pride and admit that you need mechanical help you either have to dig into savings or stop playing bingo games. The latest listings put a pair of quality hearing aids in the $6,000 range.
You can travel around the world for less. Most dealers cushion the shock with a clause that guarantees a replacement in the event of loss—one time only.
My first set fell victim to an overzealous cleanup crew in the motel where I spent the night out of town. I applied for replacements, received them and thereafter took care keeping the hearing aids within predictable range each morning. Apart from fumbling with the battery changes, my hearing aids caused me no problems for the last nearly two years—until a few days ago in the middle of a massive mid-summer rainstorm.
For the last few months, my wife and I have been storing most of our portable belongings in preparation for a change in living quarters. This involves solemn and occasionally frosty arguments about what furniture needs to be sacrificed, whose Egyptian rug is headed for the Salvation Army, how many volumes of Agatha Christie are enough and what is the next destination my wife’s grandfather clock.
We were maintaining our schedules reasonably well heading into the climatic afternoon when we sorted and packed 12 boxes of books in our garage and loaded them into the car. In an intermittent rainstorm we drove four miles to the storage, stacked the boxes carefully to preserve space and, satisfied, we exchanged high fives and drove home.
There I discovered that the hearing aid on my right ear was gone.
We exchanged theories with reasonable calm. “It could have fallen when we were loading,” my wife theorized. “More likely,” I said, “it slipped off while I was changing clothes.”
I ransacked the closet, scoured every inch of the garage floor, checked out the car seats and burrowed into the odds-and-ends receptacle between the front seats, and prowled the grass lawn bordering the driveway.
“You might have dropped it loading the boxes in the storage,” my wife said. I said that was unlikely because I remembered looking over the storage bin floor for anything we might have dropped. There was nothing on the floor. But we drove back to the storage. “It could be outside in the storage driveway,” my wife said. I chivalrously smiled at my wife’s well-meaning suggestion.
I sloshed through the grass, heavy with rainwater, and in my deepening gloom emptied a trash can I was working on before we drove to the storage. My wife thought the storage bin itself was a more likely culprit.
At this stage and facing a cool $3,000 to $6,000 in replacement costs on the hearing aid, I drove back to the storage. While my wife scanned the driveway outside, I roamed the storage bin, examining every inch of the surface. The missing hearing aid wasn’t back home, and it couldn’t have slipped into the boxes. I was preparing to make one more sweep through the storage floor when my wife called sweetly from the storage driveway. I walked over and found her pointing to the entrance of the storage bins.
The hearing aid was lying there unscathed.
More or less exactly as she’d predicted…
I drove home silently.
“I thought,” my wife said, “it was a great team effort.”
Duluthian Magazine Features “A Superior Way of Life” at Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth
“Who wouldn’t want this lifestyle?” a resident asks in a recent article in Duluthian Magazine article profiling Ecumen Lakeshore on Lake Superior in Duluth. When Ecumen opened the campus in 2005, one of its goals was to counter the prevailing stereotypes of senior living. Take a look at the Duluthian article for some residents’ perspectives on what it’s like to live by the lake and watch the ships come in.
Dig These Senior Athlete Photos By Angela Jimenez
Photographer Angela Jimenez takes Inspiring photos of senior athletes from around the world.