When Faye Johnson fell and fractured her femur and part of her hip, her phone wasn't near her in her home. She struggled to use her fingers to reach her husband's cane, and eventually, a neighbor heard her using it to bang on a door.
After that harrowing experience, Johnson, 85, underwent 18 days of rehabilitation at a health-care provider and one more month of rehab at the Someren Glen retirement community in Centennial, where she began living in winter 2016.
“Everybody that took care of me was nice to me,” said Johnson, who lived in Centennial before coming to Someren Glen. When “they see me, they give me a hug, and I can hardly wait to give them a hug. They're the best.”
During her recovery, Johnson walked the 140 steps from the door in her building to her apartment repeatedly. Recently, she's gotten up to around 2,500 steps.
“The harder the work you do, the quicker you can get out (of the rehab process) and enjoy life again,” Johnson said.
Someren Glen is where she started succeeding in her recovery, she said — and her doctor said she recovered two months before she was expected to.
The retirement community at 5000 E. Arapahoe Road offers one- and two-bedroom apartments that include independent living as well as nursing, memory care, home care and assisted-living services. The area that boasts the newly renovated rehab center used to hold 29 assisted-living apartments and a rehab space downstairs, but its therapy gym was less than one-quarter the size of the new one, said Tim Rogers, executive director of Someren Glen. The center offers care for seniors after an illness, surgery or accident.
The building's patient suites weren't all private before, “which was an outdated model,” Rogers said.
The renovation — celebrated at an open house Feb. 1 to herald the grand opening of the redone facility, which Someren Glen calls its Transitional Care Neighborhood — offers a large gym with exercise equipment that can accomodate wheelchair users and people with arthritic hips and knees. Also in the space: a dishwasher, laundry machines and kitchen that patients can use during their stay, which usually lasts 10 to 18 days, Rogers said. The Transitional Care Neighborhood officially opened to accept patients Feb. 5.
“We're gonna be doing outpatient therapy for the (outside community) too,” said Greg Young, director of rehabilitation at Someren Glen. “It's nice to have other seniors there when people go (to rehab) ... they'll feel more comfortable here.”
The facility offers 18 private suites — rooms for patients — for up to 18 people. Patients can access care at Someren Glen through Medicare coverage or other insurance, Rogers said.
Someren Glen receives five-star ratings from audits by the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which looks at quality measures including nursing staffs.
“It's like heaven — it's gorgeous,” Johnson said. If “you had to go and be in rehab, this would be the place I suggest.”
