u/LawOfLargeBumblers

As I mentioned in some of my previous posts, I’m 51 and the only child of an 83-year-old mother with moderate Alzheimer’s. She still lives alone, with a huge amount of help from caregivers and from me, in the same city where I live—but far away from any other family or close friends.

Her decline has been relatively slow, but steady. Her short-term memory is visibly deteriorating month after month, and so is her ability to deal with time, appointments and schedules. She is often very sad because she realizes that her memory is slipping away.

I am essentially her only point of reference. I organize pretty much everything in her life, and I am available 24/7.

The last few months have been particularly tough. A UTI combined with another infection eventually brought her to the hospital for two weeks. Before that, for several weeks, she was constantly agitated and seemed to be in some kind of pain. She would call me at 6 AM or late at night, often confused and distressed. The whole situation pushed my anxiety—and the blood pressure problems that came with it—close to a breaking point.

In order to be there for her as much as possible, I skipped every family trip we had planned in 2026. I have three children, aged 9, 12 and 16, and although I know they have had a great time traveling with my wife, being the one who stayed home every time has been difficult, sad, and very lonely.

And now for the news: I have booked two weeks of respite care for my mother in the memory-care unit of a very nice facility. I will use one of those two weeks to finally go on vacation with my wife and kids. We are going to the sea.

I know rationally that I need this. I know that my mental health needs it. And yet I feel guilty.

I know she may have a hard time adapting to the new environment, and may not even fully understand why she has been brought there. I also know that going back to her apartment afterwards may be confusing and difficult for her.

What makes all of this particularly striking to me is how much things have changed in just one year. Last summer, I was able to go away for a week while she stayed at home, with a moderate amount of help from caregivers. It wasn’t ideal, but it was manageable. This year, the same arrangement feels absolutely impossible to me—almost like setting things up for a disaster to happen.

For a while I considered simply increasing the amount of home care during the week I will be away. But the schedule would be brutal, with several different caregivers alternating throughout the day, and I am pretty convinced that I would end up spending half of my vacation on the phone, managing problems and reassuring her—creating a huge amount of anxiety for both of us.

So respite care it will be.

I know, intellectually, that this is probably the safest and most reasonable solution. Emotionally, though, it feels much harder.

Has anyone here been through something similar? (I know you did, I just need to read it one more time :)) How did your parent cope with respite care—and how did you cope with the guilt?

My mother is 83, and I'm 51.

Last October she was diagnosed with an Alzheimer-like dementia after performing poorly on a cognitive assessment (MMS/MMSE), with MRI scans ruling out other obvious physical causes for her cognitive decline.

For several months, life went on more or less as before. She lives alone, and I help with groceries, medication management, cleaning, paperwork, and anything else she needs. Caregivers come to her apartment for two hours every weekday to take walks with her and keep her company. She was still able to take care of her hygiene, prepare her meals, and live with a fair amount of independence.

Then, about a month ago, everything changed.

A combination of a sneaky, almost asymptomatic urinary tract infection and polymyalgia rheumatica (initially suspected to be rheumatoid arthritis) left her barely able to get out of bed in the mornings. Suddenly I started receiving phone calls at 6 a.m. because she couldn't stand up. I could see her losing the energy and ability to wash, get dressed, and even prepare food with the care she had always taken. Her short-term memory also deteriorated noticeably.

I almost completely stopped sleeping.

Every day became a cycle of anxiety, waiting for the next phone call and wondering what emergency would come next. I even had to travel abroad for work for 48 hours. My wife was there and fully able to help if anything happened, but my anxiety was so overwhelming that I felt on the verge of passing out the entire trip.

Eventually she was admitted to the hospital because her blood tests showed severe inflammation.
Once there, several members of the staff told me that, in her current condition, they didn't believe she could safely live alone anymore, even with daily assistance. She became disoriented, agitated, and unable to follow simple instructions. To be fair, she now lives in a country where her native language isn't widely spoken, but during previous hospital stays this had never caused major problems. At one point they even had to move her into a room by herself after she tried to make another patient leave during the night.

Fortunately, much of this seems to have been triggered by the infection. She is still in the hospital, but she is improving, and there's a real possibility that she'll recover close to her previous baseline and may still be able to live as she did for a while longer.
But this experience has made one thing painfully clear: I have to act.

I can't keep living through crisis after crisis, hoping that the next emergency won't be worse than the last. As a caregiver, I discovered that I have limits too. I have high blood pressure and a few other health issues, and another month like this would not be sustainable for either of us.

I'm now looking for a residence somewhere between assisted living and memory care, ideally close to my home. I think that, even if she regains much of her previous independence, moving there sooner rather than later is probably the right decision. Fortunately, she doesn't seem opposed to the idea—she has often told me that she hates living alone.

I don't really have a question.

I just wanted to share this because, in situations like ours, things can change unbelievably fast. One month can separate a manageable routine from a life that feels completely out of control.

Take care of yourselves, too, fellow caregivers. We spend so much energy looking after the people we love that it's easy to forget how fragile we are ourselves.

Retours d’expérience sur les maisons de retraite au Luxembourg ?