We've chosen Brookdale Santa Catalina in Tucson for my husband. We're hoping he'll get moved tomorrow. He will be in skilled nursing for a week then long-term care. It's going to take him six months to a year or two for his pressure wounds to heal. I went to see the facility and it's warm. It's in the way the decor is done, not cold and modern. You get this feeling of stability and warmth. I made a list of things that we didn't preview and I was going to see if I could go back over there today and the grounds were going to be one of them. We looked from one window to a small patio, but I think there are a lot more extensive grounds that I didn't get to see. We were kind of under the gun, time-wise, during our visit so we had to make most of the time that we were there. The website seems to say that they do have grounds and gardens and all of that, but we did not get a chance to review those. The room we saw was very nice and it's quite large. They're probably going to get us even a larger one, which is nice. It's a private room with a private bath, which is what we wanted. He's moving from an apartment that had a living room and a little kitchenette and a bedroom but he knows that he's going into smaller quarters. Other than that, the room was fine. The staff who accommodated us was very knowledgeable and very helpful in assessing my husband's situation and what they could do to help. The food menu looked excellent. That's another thing I was thinking I might do today, to ask if I could test the food in the dining room. The dining room was a little sterile but my husband usually eats in his room anyway so it's okay. They have a wonderful, wonderful gym. They have a really good library too, which is good because my husband likes to read quite a bit. They also had a nice outdoor patio close to his room. As far as activities, he's not big on activities, but the floor above his room is assisted living and up there, they have a lot more activity rooms and stuff that he can access through the elevator. I have been in other facilities that are a little bit nicer, newer, more upscale, but they don't have skilled nursing facilities. They just have assisted living, so for a place that has both skilled nursing and assisted living, I think that they're really good. It's in a really beautiful community too. It's a gated community with very, very expensive homes, it's in the middle of that, so you get a fabulous impression. It's also really fun to drive up to it because it's so pretty and perfect.

Brookdale Santa Catalina is the one that I ended up putting my mother in, and it was excellent. The food is great. The people are great, and the facility is like a resort. It was really great. They have a rehab center. They have people that live in that community. They have assisted living. They have everything. My mom (who is a very picky eater) said the food was good, so it must have been wonderful for her. She said her only complaint was they gave her too much. They have breakfast, lunch and dinner. She said it was really good there, and it's a very clean facility. It's really nice. It's a beautiful place and very well-kept. It was really good, and everything that they did was very good.

Brookdale Santa Catalina was very beautiful. If my husband needed long-term care, I would go there. I was very impressed by the facility, the friendliness of the staff, and the cleanliness of the facility. It was excellent. I checked the assisted living, independent living, and the skilled nursing facility, and they gave me a wonderful tour. They had physical therapy. I was impressed that they had an individual menu for every person for every meal. It's dining room style with a waiter that comes around for every meal. The staff was amazing. They were very friendly and very informative. I went to find the place the day before and the person who was on-call on a Sunday came out to see me and gave me a little tour. We had a long talk about the stresses of caregiving and how they understand how stressful it can be. I didn't try the food, but it looked very good on the plate. They had a beautiful dining room and it looked like a restaurant. It's in a beautiful area with a beautiful view.

I liked the tour I took of Santa Catalina Villas because they not only had a good facility with 24-hour nursing -- something that we were looking for at that time -- but they also had dieticians who would take care of my father's dietary needs. They would take care of everything (including diabetes related issues) and they would give you different options, which was nice. They had different rooms for physical therapy; the patient could do it with assistance or they could do it on their own after they were given instructions. It was actually a very nice place. I talked to one guy who was actually staying there while my wife was talking to the social worker for a little while. Maybe I just spoke to a very positive elderly person, but he seemed pretty happy. I got a good feeling from that place. It was either the admissions person or the assistant who took us around. The place was clean. Just from the view you can see that they do take care of the place; it's not so much that it's old. It's not a big place not like those corporate facilities. Most of it was one level and accessible for the most part. They had two different areas: one was the assisted living space and the other was the nursing home.