Interview with Chartwell Palermo Village family member, Patty Harris

What Palermo Village does well is the community aspect of it, the smaller retirement village. The staff knows every resident by name. They address every resident by name when they see them. It’s just a familial, very close-knit group

My mom fell a year ago and broke her hip, and she was hospitalized for almost four months. At the time, we felt that she may have needed to go to more of a care facility, which was very difficult during COVID, to relocate her to a nursing home. We gave notice at Palermo, and I started to move her out. The marketing department said to me, how much care does your mom need? I explained what she did and how we managed at the hospital, and they said we can provide that care for her.

So we moved Mom back into Palermo after her hospital stay and, touch wood, it’s been eight months and it’s worked out very well. The staff have picked up the extra care that she needs, and we couldn’t be happier. And Mom couldn’t be happier.

The social life, obviously because of COVID, has taken a bit of a backseat. The staff tried very hard. They bring entertainment in, but with social distancing and with the COVID protocols, it has been very difficult. But they’re starting to open up again. 

They have coffee clubs, they’re having more entertainment come in from outside. Bingo is a big thing with the residents, and they maintained that throughout the pandemic.

The staff has gone above and beyond. They have a very low turnover in staff, and the familiarity is just something I can’t say enough about. They’re so kind to my mom and to every resident. I have nothing that I could say negative at all. They go above and beyond every single day.

The building is five years old, I believe.

There is also a back patio that has lovely patio chairs, umbrella tables. The residents have garden facilities there. They run outdoor physio, I think every day of the week.

In the summer they have a physio session on the patio, and they’ll move it into the gym in the winter. They do have a gym facility. They have a theater facility and they show films every day, I think, maybe afternoon and evening. They have hairdressing facilities.

There is a large tub so that if residents need to have a soak, the nursing staff can help them with that need. There is an on-site nurse practitioner. They bring in chiropody services. I believe there’s a dental hygienist that comes in once a month or every other month, so they’re very well suited. They also have a bus that goes to Walmart and the bank.

My mom’s apartment has a lovely balcony. She looks out onto Dundas Street, Highway 5, and the field.

My mom’s suite is one bedroom. You go in the door, she has a microwave and a refrigerator and a sink. She has her living area. She brought her dining room table from home and she brought her furniture from home, so it’s very familiar for her. She has a separate bedroom now. We do have a hospital bed in there now because of her mobility needs.

She has her furniture from her home, and she has a bathroom that is separate from everything else. She has her own curtains. We hung them when she moved in. She has her own pictures from home. We could have painted it if the paint didn’t agree with her, but we liked the paint on the wall, so I didn’t paint. It’s just very familiar for her from her home. I often hear her tell the staff, I love it here, so I know she’s happy there.

The building's dining facilities include a bistro, and they have a bar facility. If you are having a large group, there is a private dining room.

The dining room is set up every day with tablecloths and linen napkins. It’s really like a fine dining area. They offer two entrees at every meal and an à la carte menu. So if you don’t like what’s being served, you can have hamburgers or you can have chicken wings. I forget what the other things are. They will accommodate almost any wish. If you just want a sandwich and a bowl of soup, they’ll do that. The kitchen staff are very accommodating. #Food

She has the socialization that she didn’t necessarily have at home. Her friends were all getting older as she was, and she wasn’t getting out as often. So she has that socialization that comes at Palermo Village. It’s kind of a hard question because she’s also had a decline in her mobility since she moved there. She’s had a decline in her memory, so she would not have been able to manage in her own home the way she is overall.

The family-type environment that they have built at Palermo Village really stands out. An example would be that we’ll walk by the general manager’s office and he’ll say, good morning, Marie, good morning. He knows every resident’s name. The same as you go down that hall, there’s the marketing department, the kitchen, everybody says, good morning, Marie, good morning. It is very comforting to know that everybody is looking out for all the residents.

I trust them with my mother’s life. Mom is an insulin-dependent diabetic. One day she had a bit of a spell. The maintenance man recognized that she wasn’t quite herself, and he pushed the panic button. That brought the nursing staff.

He could have just as easily thought, "Oh well, she’s having an off day," and moved on, but he stayed with her. Every single person at Palermo works that way. They live that way. They just are kind and considerate and everything that you’d want looking after your mother or father.

I wasn’t Mom’s caregiver before she moved there. She lived in her home, and one of my brothers lived with her. So it has changed our lives considerably because my mom relocated there with us, and she gets the chance to see her great-grandchildren almost every day now. It’s just been very comforting to know that she’s there, and I see the care that she gets. I see her several times a day.

There was relief because she stopped driving. I have not had a worry since she moved in. She’s had a couple of episodes where she made friends with the paramedics in the neighborhood, and absolutely everybody is so caring and competent.

I don’t think you can find a place as caring as Palermo Village. I don’t want to sound like I’m working for Palermo, because I’m not. I just believe that every single person, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Indra who cleans my mom’s apartment, and she sits on the couch and talks to Mom on Monday mornings, or the marketing staff who get to know you before you move in, they make it very personable.

The residents all look out for each other, and there just has not been one episode in three years that I could say was anything less than stellar.

It’s a mile from my home and the fact that Mum was going to relocate somewhere, and she loved it. She walked in the front door, and she said, it feels like home. And so she made the decision.

We liked the size, the familiarity, and the staff. I looked at other facilities in the area, and they were very large. They were like small cities, and Mom was 90 years old, so her short-term memory was not what it had been. I just felt that she might be lost in a larger facility.

She did look closer to home, and we all thought that she would be going to someplace in Strathroy. But we went to visit a facility, and it wasn’t the facility. It was lovely. Everything was fine. She didn’t know anybody there. We had a two-hour tour, and she didn’t know one single person there. So if she was going to make the move, even though she didn’t know anybody at Palermo either, it just made more sense to be closer to me and my family.

We let my mom make the decision. She toured a few facilities. The ones that I felt were too big, I didn’t even take her to because I didn’t think there was any sense. We toured a few facilities, and we did the move.

Once Mom made up her mind that Palermo was where she wanted to go, we moved her furniture down. She stayed in her home. We were fortunate enough to be able to do this.

On Labor Day weekend, we moved the furniture that we were going to move down. We set up her apartment, and when she walked in on Monday, everything was set. The dishes were in the cupboard, and everything was done. I think that made a huge difference. We set it up as we thought she really liked it. To this day, we haven’t moved anything. It was perfect. We didn’t involve Mom in the actual move. For my mom, it worked. I’m not sure that it would work for everybody, but it really worked well for Mom.

When Mom moved in, Mum had told somebody that turquoise was her favorite color, and there was a set of lovely turquoise towels and a note saying, "Welcome, Marie, hope you like your new towels." There was a note on the door welcoming her, and the staff all came by to welcome her at Palermo Village.

I can’t think of anything that we would do differently because it just went so well. The decision was right, the facility was right. There is nothing that I would change, I don’t think. She loves it. I was in the laundry room last week, and she was being taken downstairs by one of the staff, and they got to the elevator, and I heard her say, I just love it here. She didn’t know I was in the laundry room, so it wasn’t for my benefit or anything.

My mum grew up in Burlington, so last week we were out for a drive, and the home that my grandfather built in Burlington was being renovated, a little work-type cottage on Caroline Street, and they let us come in and see the house that my mom had grown up in. That was something that we would never have had if she’d gone somewhere else. They let us in the backyard, and that was special for Mum. Every day we walk along the lake and do things that she never would have been able to do if she’d gone somewhere else. So we’re thankful for that.