Pioneering the granny pod: Fairfax County family adapts to high-tech dwelling that could change elder care She told her family she would rather continue living in the family's dining room than move into the shed-size dwelling that had been lowered by crane into the back yard of their Fairfax County home. You're throwing me out! You're sending me out to a doghouse! Why not put me in a manicomio? Viola, 88 , told them, using the Spanish word for madhouse. Then the air conditioner blew. As temperatures and tempers soared in the main house, Viola's family coaxed her into the cottage to cool off. Viola stayed the night, then another, and another, until summer had turned to fall. As the first private inhabitant of a MedCottage, Viola is a reluctant pioneer in the search for alternatives to nursing homes for aging Americans. Her relatives agonized over the best way to care for Viola only after her ability to care for herself became questionable. Their decision exposed intergenerational friction that worsened after the new dwelling arrived. The MedCottage, designed by a Blacksburg company with help from Virginia Tech, is essentially a portable hospital room. Virginia state law, which recognized the dwellings a few years ago, classifies them as "temporary family health-care structures." But many simply know them as "granny pods," and they have arrived on the market as the nation prepares for a wave of graying baby boomers to retire. Over the past decade, the population of Americans who are 65 or older has grown faster than the total population, the Census Bureau says. In less than 20 years, the number of Americans who are 65 or older will top 72 million, or more than twice the population of older Americans in 2000, and many will need to find living arrangements that balance their need for independence and special care. Viola's family understood this. Her daughter, Socorrito Baez-Page, 56, who goes by Soc, and her son-in-law, David Page, 59 - both of whom are doctors - began planning her care well before Viola's husband died of cancer last February. They explored many options and had firsthand experience with several. Soc and David had taken care of or arranged various types of care, including assisted living and hospice, for other parents. Their decision to buy the first MedCottage in private use, along with Viola's bumpy adjustment to life inside it, offers a look at an unusual solution to an increasingly common situation and the emotional trade-offs that arise from it. Daily routines The soft whoosh of an oxygen machine fills the MedCottage when Viola opens her eyes at the light streaming from the windows above her bed. "Hello," Soc says. Soc has been up for a while. She stands almost at the center of the MedCottage, a self-enclosed space that blends bedroom, kitchenette, foyer and bath the way that a fork and spoon combine to form a spork. Soc has already folded up the rollout bed where she has spent the night at her mother's side, and performed other chores before Viola wakes.