Rusk. Sorry to hear ALZ is a horrible disease. I advise families on long term care options, in home care, Assisted living, memory care etc.. If you are interested in talking let me know.
As you said, it can get pretty complicated and many/most aren't well prepared. My wife has essentially been an unpaid elder care consultant for 20+ years, lol. She ended up being the primary person who helped get her grandmother, who developed Alzheimer's in her late 80s, out of her house, where she was honestly an accident waiting to happen, and into a decent nursing home down in Haddonfield - this was in the early 90s.
Since then, she has been the primary support person (with power of attorney) for her mother, who died about 3 years ago, after long illnesses (emphysema and being bipolar being the worst) and for her father, who is now 95 and suffers from dementia (nowhere near as bad as her Nana's Alzheimer's was, but it's definitely an issue now; he's pretty healthy otherwise) and is in the assisted living wing of the retirement community in Stonebridge at Montgomery.
My parents are in their early 80s and still pretty independent, but who knows for how long. My dad retired to Vero Beach, FL and my sister just moved there a year ago, as she always wanted to go back to FL (was in NC for 20 years, but in FL for 20 before that), so she'll be his primary support down there. And my mom is close to pulling the trigger to move from NC to Vero, also, into a retirement community (parents are divorced, but get along well).
I keep telling my wife she should look for a job in the field and get paid for it. How do you like it? Not too far away from having to plan for ourselves, I guess (early 50s)...
