Articles & News

Personal Care

Assisted Living with Memory Care: Meeting the Varying Needs of Couples in Retirement

When considering whether to move to a retirement community, many couples find that they need varying levels of care.
Maybe the husband would be fine in independent living but the wife needs assistance with more activities of daily life, a level of care typically found in assisted living with memory care. The situation might cause some worry: will they be separated from one another? After sharing an entire life together, will they now need to live their lives apart?

While it’s true that moving to a retirement community can be a big change, many things about a couple’s day-to-day lifestyle can stay the same. Couples can continue to see each other every day, share meals together, undertake shared activities, and continue to be active parts of one another’s lives, even if they have varying health care needs. That is why it is important to design an individualized support plan that meets each person’s unique needs, whether physical, social, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual. This approach means that residents with spouses who require advanced care can rest assured their partners’ physical and medical needs are being met, freeing them to focus on being couples, not caretakers.

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Building Dementia Activity Boards: Woodworking With a Purpose

The Woodworkers of Pine Run Support their Fellow Residents with the Creation of Dementia Activity Boards

After training in the US Navy Seabees and a successful and fulfilling career in healthcare facilities management, Jerry Schmidt is well-versed in all things mechanical. He’s managed and maintained systems large and small, and he has the mechanical know-how to disassemble, fix, and reassemble just about anything. After experiencing significant cognitive loss due to Lewy Body Dementia, Jerry is now a resident of The Garden, Pine Run’s Secure Memory Care neighborhood, located on the top floor of the Health Center on the Ferry Road Campus.

“The environment feels very familiar to Jerry from his time working in healthcare,” said Mary Beth Baringer, Administrator at The Garden. Jerry is, in many ways, still working. “Since coming to live with us, he has taken apart furniture, doorknobs, picture frames, and other items, because in his mind, he is still at work,” continued Mary Beth.

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Senior Wellness: The Power of Play

Did You Have Fun Today? Did you laugh? Did you try something new or silly just for the fun of it? Pine Run Retirement Community is always focused on the seven dimensions of senior wellness in all that we do: Physical; Emotional; Intellectual; Social; Spiritual; Environmental; and Occupational. One area of wellness that is not talked about enough, especially in senior living, touches all of these. And that is play.

You may think of play as the “work” of children. It’s common knowledge and well-accepted in our society that children learn, grow, and develop social structure through play. As we age, there is less focus on play.

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Placing a Parent in a Memory Care Home: Making Peace with the Decision

One of the hardest decisions an adult child may face is the decision to place a parent in a memory care home – and the decision is made even more difficult when that parent has declared for years, in no uncertain terms, that they never want to go into a “nursing home.”

That was the situation Jennifer Carlin and her three sisters found themselves in as they considered a memory care home for their mother, matriarch Clare Carlin. It was becoming clear she could no longer could live alone in her cottage in Pine Run Retirement Community’s independent living neighborhood, The Village.

“Everything she did was always on her own timeframe,” Jennifer Carlin said recently. “When she made the move to the cottage at Pine Run, it was absolutely the right time to do it, and she was very happy there.”

memory care homeClare Carlin moved into The Village in 2017. Living at Pine Run in her retirement had been her goal since 1976 when she spotted new construction rising from a field on Ferry Road in Doylestown Township. The project that would become Pine Run Retirement Community was located a mere three miles from the Carlins’ farmhouse and 10-acre property on Callowhill Road.

“When Pine Run was being built, she always said that was where she was going to retire,” Jennifer recalled. “She’s a huge fan of Doylestown Hospital, and it was important to her to stay within that community. That was her goal, and so that’s what she did.”

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Important Safety Standards for Pennsylvania Personal Care Facilities

We trust the health, safety, and well-being of the people we love to personal care facilities, so safety standards are of the utmost importance. In Pennsylvania, a personal care facility must be registered and inspected by the state’s Department of Human Services, and all facilities must adhere to safety regulations in order to maintain their license.

When choosing a personal care facility for a loved one, it is imperative to understand how the home aligns with state standards for safety and wellness as well as any other standards of care the facility has in place to ensure your loved one enjoys a high quality of life.

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Spring is in the Air and Our “New Normal” Takes Shape!

This Spring is a season of new beginnings, a season of hope, and a season of joy. With the COVID pandemic continuing to wane, life begins anew. We’re enjoying longer hours of daylight and the warmer temperatures. We’re meeting friends again, enjoying restaurants, our families, planning vacations, and adjusting to our “new normal.” Pine Run Villagers and Associates are excited by the possibilities! Villagers are hard at work once again booking trips to places as varied as the Barnes Museum and the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem. Movie night is back, Village Voices are singing, lifelong learning classes are underway, artists are gathering in the Craft Barn, dining options are expanding, Villagers are back to volunteering in the Health Center, Doylestown Hospital, and many other area nonprofits, and fitness programs are more popular than ever. For some of you it may be time to think about a move. We’ve received a lot of questions over the past several months about life at Pine Run during COVID. What happened? How did you keep your Villagers and residents safe but also keep their spirits up? Would I have benefitted by bring a part of this community during our darkest of lockdown days? And what is next?

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When is the Right Time to Make a Move into Personal Care?

Words of Wisdom from a Pine Run Lakeview Resident

Villager Ed Corini holds a photo of his wife at Pine Run Lakeview a personal care home
Villager Edmond Corini holds a picture of his wife at Pine Run Lakeview.

When Edmond Corini first entered Pine Run Lakeview, several years ago, it was to visit his wife Mary, who had moved to the personal care home in Bucks County PA,  when she needed support and assistance with her daily tasks and activities. Over the months that Mary lived at Lakeview, Ed got to know the home and its staff members well and saw first-hand the attentive, compassionate care they delivered to every resident.

After Mary passed away in September 2017, Ed continued living in the cottage they had shared in The Village, Pine Run Retirement Community’s independent living neighborhood in Doylestown Township. They had moved to Pine Run in 2008, after Ed retired from life as a “corporate gypsy,” moving up and down the East Coast.

He enjoyed the company of his neighbors and the activities at The Hub, Pine Run’s sparkling new community center. But by 2021, Ed had suffered a stroke, and although he recovered fairly well, he did lose peripheral vision in one eye – and that changed everything.

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Personal Care Homes

Considering Personal Care Homes The kitchen table conversations of more and more American families are turning to the topic of personal care  homes for a reason. More than 34 million Americans provide care for an adult age 50 or older each year, and those numbers are forecast to grow as both the population of Pennsylvania and of the entire United States continues to age. Most caregivers provide care in the home, but there often comes a time when living at home is no longer safe or feasible for an older adult.

Maybe mom needs constant reminders to take her medication. Maybe dad has lost a significant amount of weight because he forgets to eat or is not eating well-balanced meals. Maybe they have fallen and injured themselves, or no longer comb their hair. These can all be warning signs that a loved one needs more care and support to accomplish the tasks of daily living that were once routine and accomplished easily.

When that time comes, families and caregivers often begin investigating senior living options near them, including personal care homes and assisted living facilities.

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Personal Care Homes vs. Assisted Living – What’s the Difference?

Personal Care Home ResidentsThere are events in family life that trigger the inquiry into personal care homes and assisted living communities.

It’s the middle-of-the-night phone call we all dread; your loved one needs help. Perhaps they’ve injured themselves getting out of bed, or they wake up confused and scared, not knowing where they are or if they took the right medication at the right time. The days that follow are a whirlwind of doctors’ appointments, follow-ups, and endless notes about treatments and prescriptions scribbled in the margins of notebooks and scrap pieces of paper. All of this while still managing the needs of your family.

Realizing that it may be time to find some help, you begin exploring options, only to discover a new uncertainty; what exactly does my loved one need? An assisted living facility? A personal care home? What’s the difference? When should we make the move?

Together, let’s demystify this often-confusing part of senior living.

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