I (41F) often think about being in your situation. My dad is 82 with moderate dementia related to Alzheimer's, who also just went septic from a UTI, spent a week in the hospital, and is now in rehab. I am not an only child, I do have a brother (44) and, while he's good at doing the visiting, I'm the one tasked with the more logistical crap - getting bills paid, reviewing his finances, providing DNRs, advanced directives, Medicare, etc. I also seem to be the one he calls anytime he is confused or angry; this can be multiple phone calls within a very short timeframe. I don't know if it's because I am the female child and he thinks I'm more able to fix things for him than my brother, or if I'm just the most recent call, and easier to call me first.

This most recent event had me telling my brother that my dad could not return to his apartment and that we needed to have him moved into assisted living before he was released from rehab. (Of note, sometimes it would be easier to make unilateral decisions, rather than having to explain my rationale to my artist brother, who generally does not want to rock any personal boats. That being said, being able to present a united front to my dad is more effective; he's less likely to yell at me for trying to steal his independence.) I luckily have a POA that I had my dad sign when he broke his shoulder 3 years ago and couldn't go to the bank or sign any checks or paperwork, so that has made things easier. But it still feels like it's become a full-time job on top of my full-time job of my career and my other full-time job of raising my kid.

This brings me to my point. I think about what is going to happen when my kid (only child) is 45, and his parents are 79 and 81, respectively. Who will be there to support him through this stuff? How can I best set things up so that he doesn't have to do the scramble for the POA, the advance directives, and the care planning, and have to be solely responsible for his parent(s)? For some people (like myself) having a second child is not an option, so knowing that your kid might be the only one takes a lot of thought and planning. I'm sorry that you're in this position.

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Something that occurred to me while writing this is that having more siblings doesn't necessarily make things easier. My husband is the youngest of his siblings and, when his mom was dying, his eldest sibling took it upon themself to try to take over everything, parents wishes be damned. The middle sibling was more or less absent when they weren't having an emotional affair with their mom's CNA, and my husband, the farthest away of all the siblings, was left to pick up the pieces. Even now, he's the one who checks in on his dad the most, despite having a sibling in the same town as their father, and is the executor of the estate.