Life In the Slow Lane

Learn From End-of-Life Lessons

An Allentown woman talks about how she dealt with her husband’s last days.

  End-of-life issues are too complex to be well-served by a bumper sticker mentality. One side can proclaim “Death with Dignity” and the other “All Life is Sacred,” but when it comes right down to it, the long, painful trudge toward death during a lengthy illness is often messy and complicated. No one brought that home better after last week’s column than Marjorie Horton of Allentown. I had written about the deaths of Charles Snelling and his wife, Adrienne, and Horton responded eloquently about her own experience with her husband, Jack. Jack had been diagnosed with dementia in 2003 and for the next eight years, she took care of him at home – with the help of aides -- only putting him in a nursing home in the last three months of his life…

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New Nursing Home Approved by City Planners

Bethlehem Moravians will build a new "memory care" unit for Alzheimer's patients.

  The city Planning Commission on Thursday unanimously approved plans by the Bethlehem Moravians to build a new nursing home that will specialize in caring for patients with Alzheimer’s Disease. The 86-bed “memory care” facility will be built on the east side of Stefko Boulevard near Broad Street on a 2.75-acre piece of land that includes the property where the once-popular Minsi Trail Inn restaurant used to operate. The four-story building will also include space for two private doctor’s offices. The new nursing home will be an expansion of sorts for Moravian Village – a retirement community just west of Stefko Boulevard along Wood Street, which has 248 independent living units and 118 nursing units. The hope is to begin construction of …

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