Hi, Fellow Caregivers. At 86, I no longer have the oomph to go to a local caregiver group our community provides. I would like to thank all of you for the support this forum gives. It is a big part of my fight against depression, and I no longer feel isolated. Often as I read the post, I realize that although each situation is unique, most of us are dealing with multiple problems in a quirk of fate that seems to think that dementia is not enough of a challenge. -- Our particular set of circumstances is my husband, at age 94, is probably stronger than men 20 years younger, while I have become a human pretzel with artificial knees and two back surgeries. Our joke is that now we are 85% of a whole person. However, along with dementia, he has diminished hearing and sight, an irreversible colostomy, and a slow-growing cancerous tumor that is resting on his bladder. We have run the course of treatments. We have lived with 'when and if' so long that he has been in hospice and we made funeral arrangements, then he was released back to regular medical care. I understand burnout from radiation, chemo, a 5-week hospital stay after surgery, a month in a nursing home, attending to an open abdominal wound at home on my own, falls out of bed, and enough repetitive conversations to fill a comedy-drama series. Personally, there are times I do not get where the patience has come from to persevere. -- After so many hours of feeling sorry for myself, I am now in an almost surreal acceptance phase. I now set aside part of each day for myself. I enjoy writing and drawing (both things I can do at home). I use online shopping services to cut down on trips to the store since I tire out easily. We pay people to do the things we once did ourselves to stay in our home, which is a priority. I use technology to keep my husband involved (YouTube, Spotify, etc.). A song, a dance routine, remembering the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, a peek into a super Nova, are all reminders, if only for a moment, that we are more than a dementia patient and his caregiver. I'm not sure this post will be helpful to anyone except me, but I hope it is. GloRo