Assisted Living Directory Blog

For many of us, Thanksgiving is a time of happiness and joy – a time where families get together, and we celebrate abundance, health and all of the things that we are thankful for.

However, for some, Thanksgiving is a time to face a family member who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.  Imagine not having seen a loved one for over a year – perhaps a grandmother, or even mom or dad, and realizing that the memories are slipping, if not gone.

Or, try to imagine seeing your loved one at Thanksgiving, only to become aware for the first time that things are just not quite right.   You might notice that the house is in disarray, or clothes are disheveled, or there is an overwhelming sense of confusion in your loved one’s home.

These are scenarios that have happened at every Thanksgiving, and will most certainly happen for some people this year as well.

For those who are going to visit an elderly loved one this year – a loved one not having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s – take a moment to look for some of the signs of Alzheimer’s – forgetfulness, mismatched clothing, or just about anything else out of the ordinary.   We suggest this for the sole reason that early detection can make such a huge difference in the treatment of Alzheimer’s.

Keep in mind too that memory loss is not always Alzheimer’s disease – it could also be issues related to stress or vitamin deficiency.

For those visiting someone who is already diagnosed, we only suggest that you not forget to talk to them, and to show them the love you have always had for them.

To everyone – we wish you the very happiest Thanksgiving.

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) before today.   I would like to think that I have included care and facilities on this site for all types of dementia, but I have failed to mention this type anywhere on the site.

It has an interesting and unique name, which is why I am surprised I had never heard about it.

I came across a great site today that is dedicated to Lewy Body Dementia.   Basically, this disease is described as “a progressive brain disease and the second leading cause of degenerative dementia in the elderly. The clinical name, “dementia with Lewy bodies” (DLB), accounts for up to 20% of all dementia cases, or 800,000 patients in the US. Over 50% of Parkinson’s disease patients develop “Parkinson’s disease dementia” (PDD), which accounts for at least 750,000 patients. (PDD is also a Lewy body dementia.)”

I don’t know yet if there are any assisted living facilities that care specifically for LBD, but I’ll try to find out and list them in the appropriate places on my site.

For those suffereing from Lewy Body Dementia, or for the loved ones of those struggling with this disease,  I apologize for not representing you on the site.   I’ll get to work on it.

Here is an interesting video clip that talks a little bit about the difficulties in diagnosing this disease.

We have spent several years compiling information for our site.   There are, by some estimates, close to 50,000 assisted living facilities in the United States, so getting them all in one place is a daunting task.  I don’t know if I will ever reach that goal with this site, but I will sure try.

We do have enough content on the site now that will allow me to start breaking out city pages from our state pages for facilities.   I have resisted doing this aggressively until I was comfortable that there was enough on the site to warrant it, and now I believe that on many pages I can do so.

It will be a slow process – I’d rather focus on quality and accuracy.  However, I think this will be useful to our visitors to see all of the facilities, as well as other useful information about particular cities on our site.

I have been managing the content on this site for about 5 years now, and I thought that I had covered most of the major cities in the US.  Of course, since there are over 40,000 assisted living facilities in the US, naturally I probably won’t have them all on this site.   Additionally, every day there seems to be a new facility being built somewhere in the US – or even several at a time.

I realized today that I had neglected to include assisted living for Auburn, Alabama on the site.   This is a pretty big town of close to 60,000 people (depending on who you get your information from).

One of the reasons may be that, relatively speaking, Auburn has a pretty small senior population – something like 6-7% of the total population for Auburn.  This, compared to the national average of 12.4% is pretty low.  Still, there are thousands of residents over the age of 65 in Auburn, so I think this was a worthwhile market to add to the site.

One reason this percentage may be a bit low is because Auburn is a college town.  I have noticed in my efforts to add cities and markets that any time there is a large college population in a town, the senior population is much lower in terms of percentage.