Pelham Parkway Nursing Home

Kay

My husband was a resident of Pelham Parkway Nursing Home. It was a little bit disappointing after we stayed at another facility. It was a different atmosphere because everybody that was there was basically there for long term until they passed away, so to speak. When I signed him up for a room and everything, I was thinking he was going to be in a room in a part that has like three or four different wings on it. I had never been to the part where they put him out, which is like the oldest part of the building. I was very disappointed, it was just like a regular old hospital room and had two beds, but he never had a roommate. He was in there by himself, that sort of bothered me a little bit. They put him in an area where they would anybody that had been diagnosed with dementia. So, he was separated from the other parts of the nursing home. I spoke with the administrator of the building, and I asked if he is going to be in this room the whole time. He said, there's a possibility, because they have a waiting list of people wanting to get into the other part. He said, "I can put you on that list if you want me to." I said, "I'd like to have a nicer room, where he'd be around people." It was a dumpy looking place, like it wasn't freshly painted. It had old furniture, and the bathroom didn't have a shower or tub. I have no idea where they take their showers, I think they just gave him bed bath. He'd only been there for about four or five days when he had to go back to the hospital, and they had to put in another feeding tube because he did something to the first tube they put in. So that made him miss about three or four days when he hadn't even been there a week, to go back to the hospital and have that same surgery redone again. Because of the feeding tube, he didn't eat regular; he got the nutrition through the feeding tube. The staff, I had some favorites. There was a lady there named Kathleen, we got to be really good friends. She liked my husband a lot and I say for the most part, the staff that worked with him liked him a lot. He's very quiet, he didn't have any problems or anything like that, comparatively speaking, because there were some screamers in that hallway. I felt like sometimes he didn't get as much attention as he should have been getting, especially after they put him under the last two and a half to three weeks. He was under hospice care. I just didn't feel like the regular staff there were paying as much attention to him as they should have been considering he was under hospice care. I know they weren't hospice, but I just don't think that they were paying attention because it was too easy to just pull the door, too, and you know everybody was in there. The staff, it depends on what time of day you went there and who's on the shift. There were several times where I had people that came up there to sit with me and see my husband. I had to ask for another chair to be put in the room where I had company because there was only one chair to sit in when I first got there. It took us a while to get somebody bringing in a chair, but they finally brought one in. The other thing was when hospice got involved, they ordered him some special stuff he needed. One of them was this thing to take the extra congestion mucus stuff, suck it out of his throat and everything. The box came but it sat on the table by the TV for about four or five days, and I keep on asking what's the box for, and they'd say, "Oh, nothing important." So, when I finally talked to the hospice lady, I told her because she had gone over some stuff that she was going to ask for them to be using on him. I told her there was a box there, and I said, "I don't know what it is, but they're not opening it up. And every time I ask that, they just brush it off. If it's something that can help him feel better, I sure would like to see it being used." So, she went over there and opened it up, and sure enough, it was that suction machine that sucked up the congested stuff that was so thick in his throat he couldn't get it out. To me, that was a critical thing. For the way the room looked, it cost $185 a day. So that was not cheap, and the room didn't look like $185 a day room. There were some very nice people there who I know really cared about him. But they weren't there 24-7 and they were off some days. Comparatively speaking, I didn't stay there after dark if I could help it because I didn't like being out late, coming home by myself. The daytime staff probably took better care of him than the nighttime staff did.

Ira

My father has moved into Pelham Parkway Nursing Home and so far, he's eating good. They're really friendly and things are kept neat and clean. They play bingo and they get three meals a day. The staff is really helpful and nice.