Spam
Jul 2026
I am so grateful to Nick & all of the Cottagewood staff who did their best to help not only my mom transition from independent living to memory care but also myself from just a daughter to a guardian/conserver. I tried writing this out before but I wanted to wait until my mom was no longer a resident to fully evaluate the whole experience. She hasn't passed, I just moved her to a facility that better suited where she is in her stage of Alzheimer's. But to backtrack, CW was one of the only 2 facilities who got back to me when I was frantically looking for placement for my mom who had been hospitalized & deemed unsafe to return home. Unlike the other facility who charged a $200 nurse assessment fee, CW made the same drive/assessment for free (she was in St James at the time). I was fortunately able to tour both places & the reasons I ultimately chose CW was because they had a room facing the woods (my mom's house is surrounded by woods), an accessible garden/outdoor area (she used to love to garden), single story (I personally hate MC facilities that keep their residents in a locked wing with no outside areas to access freely), & allowed pets. I also really appreciated how kind Nick & Laura were as I felt like a chicken with my head cut off when everything went down. My mom's move was not smooth. She reacted as any person would to being forced to move out of her childhood home & as the disease progressed I have watched her start to regress. CW gave my mom the thing she needed most which was stability, time, & her companion cat. As the disease progressed however I started to acknowledge that she needed more socialization opportunities & better food (by the time we moved CW was taken over by a new company & catering had just been approved in the budget beginning of July 2026 so the latter issue may not be one now). Some things to consider when looking for a place for your loved one: ask about staff to resident ratios; nurse assessment fees - some places charge anywhere from $200-1500 to do so; what ammenities are available to residents (CW has a salon on-site which is a nice perk & the washers/dryers are right behind the bathrooms so residents have warm towels after showers); ask about ave price increases from previous yrs (the rates seem to be between 3-10%); if there's any finacial costs to be put on a waitlist if you have the luxury of time to shop around (not to hold a room, just to be waitlisted); staff retention efforts (Nick has done a good job of this imo, he does staff spotlights, hosts staff appreciation parties, gives bonuses of food & whatnot when able, I will also say he is very attentive to staff performance & has done well to ensure the people caring for your loved ones are there for the right reasons); ask about elderly waiver requirements (some facilities require X amount of time with private pay before they accept EW, & even then sometimes it is more dependent on if they have any EW spaces to begin with, others just don't accept them at all). I'm trying to think of anything else I may be missing - I know it's a lot of info to consider, I had to learn on my own so even if you don't choose CW I hope this review helps you anyway. My mom is fully mobile on her own & verbal, so I want to emphasize she didn't mind the shared bathrooms & shower area. I also really liked that it was a small facility so my mom wasn't just another face in th crowd. The main reasons I moved were because the other place had more residents (about 3x the size of CW I believe), a larger facility footprint & outdoor area (she likes to wander, I wanted to give her a place that didn't feel so fishbowl-like) & a commercial kitchen (again, the food issue was addressed). I told Nick if my mom was more progressed like the current residents-very subject to change/come in waves-then CW would've been where I would've kept her without an issue. But she was still at a stage where I had to give a bigger facility a chance to see if it could benefit where she is now. If CW does become your loved one's next home then rest assured they're in safe hands
