Assisted Residential Retirement

We knew something about 214 Martin long before we needed to find an assisted living arrangement for Mom. We did compare it to the only other facility in Uvalde and as far as we were concerned 214 Martin won hands down. They have a maximum occupancy of 16 residents. The facility was the city hospital before the current one was built and has been extensively remodeled. The staff is friendly and caring while providing care levels that could only be exceeded in a full blown nursing home. She has all of her own furniture and bedding but they do all of the house keeping and laundry. They provide all meals which according to Mom are superior to hospital and rehab food. They provided a small fridge and microwave if she wants to do something herself. She takes delivery of fresh fruit and a weekly basis and uses that to "enhance" oatmeal in the morning in the manner that she did when she lived at home. They can provide Skype video with Mom with an hours notice. Immediately after she moved in they implemented a very tight quarantine so the only way to communicate with Mom is via her cell phone (daily, she calls me any time she wishes) or video (prearranged). Activities are limited as they maintain an isolation policy but they do have community BINGO where each resident can sit outside the door to their suite while staff calls out the numbers. All residents can roam outside their suites but close social interaction is discouraged until the COVID 19 crisis is under control. This is mandated by the State of Texas.

Most positive impression of the two my brother and I visited Friday. They are located less than a mile from Mom's house. The facilities are nearly identical to the other option in Uvalde although the building is much older. (It used to be the local hospital but it appears to be thoroughly remodeled. It is a much smaller capacity than the other but they do have two openings. We met their administrator, [name removed], and had very positive feelings about them. Their only concern about Mom could be around her ability to transfer from her be to wheelchair in an emergency. She has not yet demonstrated that yet in the rehab that she is in now, but I am not sure that her therapists have focused on that yet. She has taken the initiative to transfer between wheelchair and toilet so she does not ask to be taken to the toilet if she is in her wheelchair. She cannot yet lift her left leg onto the bed once she seats herself there. They also have a flat rate without a schedule of fees for additional services. They have two current openings out of fourteen rooms.

Romberg House would have been our third choice. The reason being was when we toured they had just gotten a new director. Also the location was far from us and she would have had to get used to a whole new area and we were not familiar with it.