If you’re managing a parent’s dementia from a distance or juggling it with a job and kids — this is for you.
Nearly a decade as an FNP doing health assessments means I’ve sat across from a lot of exhausted adult children trying to hold everything together.
The ones who struggle most aren’t the ones who love their parent least — they’re the ones with no system. Every appointment starts from scratch. Nobody can find the medication list. Siblings have different versions of events. The ER asks for medical history at 2am and nobody knows the answers.
The single most protective thing you can do right now — before the next crisis — is get organized. I mean specifically:
**•** One place where all medications live with dosage and start dates
**•** A running log of behavioral changes with approximate dates
**•** Emergency contacts, insurance info, and advance directives in one place
**•** A calendar of appointments with notes from each visit
It sounds simple. Almost no family has it when they need it most.
If you’re in that season right now — managing a parent’s decline while working and raising kids — you are doing one of the hardest things a human being can do. Please don’t do it alone and don’t do it without a system.
Happy to answer questions from a clinical perspective.