Life Care Through the Eyes of a Resident
Suzanne is joined by Judy Mayotte, an 87-year-old resident of Skyline Retirement in downtown Seattle who lives independently. This is a Life Care Community, in which they take care of seniors from independent living through memory care, should they need 24-hour care later in life. You pay an upfront fee, but the quality of care can be much higher.
Judy says, “It’s very, very easy to live here… We’ve got two towers of independent living, and we have our own apartments that have a kitchen, bedroom, living room, and everything. And then there’s another tower called the terraces that is attached to it. In the terraces, there is assisted living, and full care, or skilled nursing. And one of the beautiful things about that is that sometimes one partner, one spouse, will have memory care needs and can move over to memory care, but the other person can remain in independent living and never have to go outside to go visit and be with the person that is in memory care. They can spend the whole day over there together. They can do all sorts of things, but the other person, they’ll keep the independent living and still remain on the same property. Many of us have lost our spouses, or never married. And so you have a lot of single people, you have a lot of couples, and you have several people where one lives in independent living and one lives in memory care. There are many different kinds of arrangements.”
Judy adds, “My deciding factor in moving to Skyline was simply that I liked the atmosphere, the feeling of community here, the layout of the apartments, and the floor-to-ceiling windows that give you light.”
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Originally published February 26, 2024
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