When her father became ill just before Christmas last year, Dr. Socorrito Baez-Page faced an increasingly common conundrum. Her aging parents wanted to stay in their town house, but her mother couldn’t handle the caregiving alone.
So Dr. Baez-Page, a general practitioner in Alexandria, Va., moved her parents into her home, converting the dining room and TV nook on the main floor into a bedroom. But the four steps down to the bathroom in the split-level home have proved hazardous.
Nobody is happy. “My mother is embarrassed to have to use the commode by her bed at night,” said Dr. Baez-Page. And space for everybody is tight.
The solution? Though many families are often forced to consider nursing homes under these circumstances, the Page family found another option. They ordered a MEDCottage — a prefabricated 12-by-24-foot bedroom-bathroom-kitchenette unit that can be set up as a free-standing structure in their backyard. It’s more than a miniature house — it’s decked out with high-tech monitoring and safety features that rival those of many nursing homes.
The floors, for instance: “It’s got special rubber floors, so even if you fall, you’ll be safe,” noted Dr. Baez-Page’s husband, Dr. David Page. Indeed, according to Kenneth Dupin, a minister and the founder of N2Care, the Virginia company that worked with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering to design the MEDCottage, you can drop an egg from 18 inches onto the special flooring without breaking it.
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