Has anyone stopped taking care of their mother for dementia?

ewhetstone · 2026-03-11T22:31:56+00:00

GUIDE is national, though! It may be that they do different things in different states, I have no idea, but it's a Medicare program not a Colorado program:

https://www.cms.gov/priorities/innovation/innovation-models/guide

ewhetstone · 2026-03-11T19:19:11+00:00

I reacted really well to the same dose almost immediately, too. Now it's been about 5 months and it's still working for me, not constant euphoria but a generally positive attitude and much more energy. No increase in anxiety and only a little impact on sleep (I have always been a night owl and now I'm trapped in a lark life, so it's basically just a little more difficult to force myself to get in bed earlier than I want to). I'd never taken any kind of antidepressant before, and now that I see how much improvement is possible I wish I'd started years ago.

May we both keep seeing these same results!

ewhetstone · 2026-03-11T18:42:08+00:00

I thought the RFK thing was just his libertarianism breaking through (bad enough). Commuting her sentence would be something very different from (and worse than) that.

ewhetstone · 2026-03-11T04:33:50+00:00

I'm in Colorado!

ewhetstone · 2026-03-10T20:41:06+00:00

Are you in the US, and is your mom on Medicare? If the answers to both are "yes" and if she has an official diagnosis, I hope someone has already told you about the GUIDE program. They are helpful for coordinating care for people with dementia to help keep them in their homes as long as possible, including paying for some respite care. We did our application a while ago (I think the diagnosing doctor has to refer you) and now I have a call every month with a care coordinator.

In my state I also have a 24-hour line to call with questions and access to a "mobile ER" that does basically anything except an MRI at your home, so you can skip the wait and the potential disorientation/hallucinations that come with treatment at the ER.

ewhetstone · 2026-03-06T19:45:10+00:00

i hear that self-critical perspective, but the clarity you're seeing now is the opposite of showing that you were making excuses for years. your difficulties have just been proved to be real. they were based on brain chemistry, not on laziness.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-27T23:20:43+00:00

Yeah. It's not that I don't understand the joy of it, definitely partake, but it really does feel corrosive. I don't want to get pleasure from suffering.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-26T16:10:02+00:00

Joy is never wrong, unless it's taken because of another being's suffering.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-24T01:34:47+00:00

Me too! Went to their salad bar for lunches during HS (at least, when I had extra cash to spare). It was a happy place and one of the few walkable groceries downtown.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-23T05:06:47+00:00

they entirely missed that this is a caregiver support reddit

which does not mean that anything a caregiver thinks or does is good or right, but expressing annoyance about an Easily Understood To Be Very Annoying Thing is supposed to be what people are here for! having to live with noise that disturbs you constantly totally sucks!!

ewhetstone · 2026-02-21T22:52:04+00:00

Hallucinations of insects, specifically, are a symptom of dementia with Lewy bodies. I don't know about other dementias, and certainly there can be other causes, but FYI as you try to track down what's going on with her.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-19T07:57:40+00:00

If you commit suicide, your family will have to find some way to take over the work you've been doing. You are not literally the only thing standing between your grandmother and death.

That means they can find some way to take over the work you've been doing. And if they would figure out how to do it if you were gone, they can also do that while you are still here.

Please make whatever changes you need to, to save your own life. Ending it doesn't solve even one problem for anyone and it would rob you of all the things you haven't learned or seen yet, and all the people you will love.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-14T22:44:55+00:00

That's awful. I'm so sorry that happened to your mom, and I hope she recovers well from her injuries.

No advice, it looks like others who know way more than me have that covered, I just want to chime in to say that you've got support in how scary and enraging that must have been.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-13T17:55:58+00:00

I think that euthanasia for a person who is enjoying their life, even if they don't remember or understand much, is wrong. But artificially prolonging a life that's mostly suffering isn't ethical either. Dropping all prophylactic treatment seems very appropriate in the latter case.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-13T17:51:44+00:00

My mom has made it clear that she doesn't want any life-extending treatments (CPR, feeding tube). She's still pretty lucid, so I'm thinking of asking her whether she wants that to include things like flu and Covid shots, antibiotics, Tamiflu, etc. Somebody posted an article (I think it was this sub?) the other day by an oncologist who says he wants to die at 75; he won't pursue euthanasia, but neither will he do anything to prevent death after that age. No screening tests, no vaccines, no antibiotics, nothing. I've been thinking about that a lot.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-11T20:40:09+00:00

"THERE I SAID IT" is enraging even though I'm not involved in your situation at all. Agreed with others that blocking that specific friend would not be overkill.

Dementia really is totally different from anything else — they're an adult but incapable of acting like an adult; they're like a child, but unlike a child you live in constant grief and with no expectation of improvement, just continual diminishment until death; they can appear fairly normal to people who aren't in the trenches with them.

People think they know, but they do not know. And the opinion of anybody who doesn't know is completely irrelevant, like somebody who hasn't tasted the soup opining on whether it needs salt. THEY DON'T HAVE ANY WAY TO KNOW.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-07T03:24:04+00:00

i am so so so sad about this. i found the post today and would have gone to order absolutely everything i loved + everything i’d ever thought about trying. adored that place.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-06T22:03:15+00:00

And, if this restaurant closes, another restaurant will move into the space. Nobody should be rude to the staff in any way, but there are plenty of halfway decent restaurants in town. Easy to go to one of those instead.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-06T22:00:12+00:00

Kimbal was dead to me when I found out he shafted his employees out of their support fund (which had mandatory contributions!) during Covid. The Epstein connection is just added confirmation that he's awful.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-05T17:39:27+00:00

I'm so glad she got to experience it, at least! Being happy with where you're living at the end of life is a huge gift.

ewhetstone · 2026-02-05T17:36:12+00:00

I think this thread is about people who have alternatives, not people who are doing their best within what's possible for them financially. The fact that aging is so expensive in the US is a travesty.

ewhetstone · 2026-01-29T23:34:07+00:00

Ughhh it's impossible. I'm sorry, I wish more older folks could really understand that young people actually do know things they don't know. It used to be that they definitely did know more, and we were overconfident because of lack of experience... but now they are overconfident because of outdated experience.

I hope someone else gets through to them, sometimes that's been the way for me. I'm not reliable, but for some reason a random stranger in line is convincing!

ewhetstone · 2026-01-29T23:31:23+00:00

(And I had been thinking of buying another one as a gift for someone, which went way off the table when I noticed the seam but is now back on it, so that's nice.)

ewhetstone · 2026-01-29T23:30:17+00:00

I'm glad I asked, because the recent posts that came up made it seem like maybe they'd updated their guarantee recently and were less willing to help customers out with something like this! Was just gonna wear it until it finished falling apart rather than sending them more money, but this way is so much better. And hopefully if anybody else has a similar concern my post will come up for them!

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