Parent with alzheimers (maybe), advice needed

That is a complicated relationship, and I am not sure I know what advice to give, but I am listening. If you feel some responsibility here, I am wondering if you can offer to drive her to any doctor’s appointments without telling her you are aware of her situation.

I don't have any advice but wanted to give you a big (((HUG))). My dad had early onset Alheimers and it was a tough road for all of us. We were able to keep him at home, but within 2 years he needed 24/7 care. My whole family and his siblings all took shifts and let me tell you, it's really hard to watch things progress.

in addition to getting legal papers in order.. I would suggest talking to county senior services.. see what they might provide or give referrals.. you could also contact motor vehicle dept if you think she should not drive.

if you don't want to be involved in daily care or whatever or supporting financially.. you could keep your distance and stay out of it. as children we are not required to be involved.. though I know that sounds cold. 

Been there, done that. Thankfully I had a great relationship with my mom and it was only some of my siblings that caused all the trouble. I will second having your mom set up POA giving you and/or your sister some control now while she’s still with it enough to make those decisions. Once she is further diminished that won’t be an option and you will have a much harder time helping her handle her finances or make other important decisions regarding her health, etc. Having an idea of what resources she has and how she eventually wants her estate split up is probably a good idea too, since that is another thing that she won’t be able to change later on.

Since you aren’t particularly close, it might be a more difficult conversation to start RE: going with her to medical appointments, etc. but that will be the best way to help her going forward. I took my mom to the majority of her appointments and it was a good thing I did, because even if the doctor wrote down his instructions that didn’t mean she would necessarily remember what he said or even know what he meant and having an extra pair of ears there was a big benefit. Plus since I was there, I could ask questions for clarification if anything was confusing because otherwise she would just smile and nod as if she knew what he was saying even if she didn’t have the first clue.

If you can get her to add you as a signer to her primary bank account that is also helpful. When my mom passed, both my sister and I were joint owners on her account and that allowed us to take over that account without the funds being frozen by probate, so we were take care of paying certain bills that needed to be paid right away. Once a person passes away, POA no longer applies and you no longer have the ability to make any decisions for that person anymore. It all rolls over to whom ever she has listed as her personal representative (executor) for her will and even they will have limitations. But if you are a joint owner on an account, it goes straight to you.

You are right that most of the nicer nursing homes/assisted living places will all be private pay, meaning that once your mom runs out of money she would have to be moved to a facility that does accept Medicare. The tricky part with that is usually with the places that do take Medicare, you have to be private pay for a certain amount of time first before that will kick in. I think when we were looking for a place, it was something like three years she had to be private pay first, and then if her money ran out there still had to be an opening for her there too. In our experience, most places will only have a set number of beds that they allocate to Medicare residents so if those beds are all full, you basically had to figure something else out until one opened up.

I would check to see if your state or county has an agency on aging. That could be a good resource for you and your sisters going forward for helping your mom navigate all of this stuff. It’s definitely a lot to deal with. Good luck to you all.

1. This younger half sister saw a script for donepezil.  Was it simply a script or actual a filled bottle of this medication? How would this person find this information? Was it in open view or did she have to snoop to find this?  Was this half sister told anything or is she kinda filling in blanks with information that may be a bit iffy?

2. Where do you have to go from here?  Really ~ where?  Your mom hasn't told anyone officially and maybe she wants to keep it this way! 

3. Again, you are not close with your mom.  Why do you feel that you must automatically run in and solve this issue?

If this was me (being the mom) and I hadn't officially told anyone, I would be pissed beyond belief is my children decided stuff for me before I even told them anything, especially if I wasn't very close to them.  Why do you need to get the info out of her?  Why do you think that any of this is going to be your problem/issue?  I truly don't know your family background/history except what you have mentioned in this post.

I would leave this entire issue alone, until your mom decided to tell you on her own time, in her own way any information about herself.  

It is in situations like this that gossip and rumours start, not saying that this will happen, but this kind of feeding frendzy for wanting more information, *I shouldn't be telling you this...* and more is how a lot of misunderstanding start and take on a life of their own.

This isn't an attack on you but you asked what to do.  I would MYOB until given information directly from your mom.

I think that the problem in this instance is that the OP’s mom has been (apparently) diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and that makes a huge difference.

It is commonly believed that people with Alzheimer’s Disease have trouble remembering things, but really the problem is that they are increasingly unable to form new memories.  When something happens during their day, their brain cannot create a memory about it (that’s why, early on, they can remember things that happened years ago because that memory was already formed).

So because it is getting more and more impossible for her to create new memories, she may not know/remember that she has even been diagnosed.

Waiting for a person who has Alzheimer’s Disease to do something that requires them remembering something recent is not going to work out well.  As each day passes, some more brain cells are being destroyed and their ability to remember something that has recently happened decreases.

Her mom may very well not be able to tell anyone about the diagnosis because she may not remember it herself.

Having been down this road myself I can say that since the mom is no longer married, as the next of kin it’s going to end up in the kids’ lap one way or another regardless of whether they are close or not. Someone will need to be able to act on her behalf sooner or later when she is no longer able to advocate for herself, and the sooner the family is aware and on board the better. Some people can go for a number of years with relatively slow progression if they get treatment right away and other people might decline quite quickly no matter what, you just never know. In any case she WILL progress and things can get really bad in the meantime if no one is advocating for her and paying attention. There are legal things the mom needs to do NOW while she still can. This boils down to a safety issue since the mom may forget to take meds reliably on schedule, may forget where she’s going while driving and get lost, or do things like leave the stove on risking a fire or a faucet running and flood the house, or forget to pay bills and end up in financial trouble.

In my family, my mom lived with her twin sister in their later years and her symptoms were masked for quite a while because they would compensate for each other. I don’t think she even realized it herself how forgetful she was getting. It wasn’t until my aunt passed away that my siblings and I recognized there was a problem so I wouldn’t recommend MYOB at all. We were lucky our mom got treatment right away when she did because we were able to slow down the progression of the disease with medication. We had a few good years with her before she really started needing a lot of help. My mom would have kept on driving if we wouldn’t have been with her at the doctor who recommended that she have a driving assessment done (which we did twice, the first time she was okay to drive only during the day and only close familiar locations, the second time a year later her license was revoked because she wasn’t safe at all on the road). She was forgetting to take her meds, she didn’t want to shower, wash her hair or brush her teeth. 

Early diagnosis and treatment is crucial regardless of whether the mom wants to (or even can) admit she has a problem or not.

We had a home health care attendant ( not a nurse as my mother was still mobile and stuff ) she came and took my mother to do things like shopping, nails clipped, go on walks without getting lost etc. sometimes they just did puzzles together.
we installed private cameras to see her if she fell or whatever since only one of us was close. I was the one assigned with checking in on her on cameras. Also I was assigned her banking because she double paid some stuff and didn’t pay other stuff so we had my mom make me a joint person in her account so I could pay all her bills. Those were things I could do from 2 hours away.

We had to get a locked medicine dispenser and fill it once a week because my mother had the unlocked pill boxes and would take her meds multiple times a day. Like she would take her meds when she got up and then after breakfast see the pill box and take the next days meds because she forgot taking them