@colleenyoung I cared for my mother who had dementia for about four years in my home and then for another two years in assisted living in memory care facilities. In hindsight, which is always 2020, she would’ve benefited from an appropriate placement sooner. We ended up going through two separate placements, the first in a low level Elder care facility that could not deal adequately with her memory issues and the second was a memory care facility. In hindsight, I would’ve opted for a bigger facility so she could move from lesser care to greater care over the time. In hindsight, I would have placed her in a facility a couple of years before I actually did. Caring for her was difficult. She needed more care than one person could provide and I needed my own time and care to live a happy healthy life. Hindsight is always 2020.

One thing that I did do in the process, in order to be able to occasionally take a trip with my husband, is to take my mom to a senior care facility, willing to accept short-term stays. It often depended upon how many residents they had a given point in time, but there was almost always at least one room available for a short stay. Those respite stays were invaluable. In hindsight I should have done that much more frequently than I did. The toll on the caregiver is far greater than anyone can imagine, even the caregiver in the midst of it. It was only in hindsight as I looked back on a very long 3 to 4 years and caring for my mom how much of a toll it really took on me.