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PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
I was the caregiver for my father and my maternal aunt consecutively, when both were in their mid-90s. Each had their circumstance of health, mental declination, financial means, family/friend support, and expectation of care. These differences led to different lessons and made me more aware that the path in dementia is multivariate and imperfect. Although this is about parents, the lessons learned by my aunt could be informative given my role. I also was the primary caregiver for my mother during esophageal cancer treatment for six months at MD Anderson in Texas. I’ll provide some lessons I learned from each below.
My father had attended college and law school at Indiana University, was a successful businessman, and owned/ managed his lumber yards and various real estate holdings for 60-plus years. The last lumber yard closed due to
arson just a few years before his diagnosis (multisymptom atrophy displayed as dementia and Parkinson’s effect). My mother died six years earlier from esophageal cancer. We were incredibly fortunate that he had considerable funds to support his homes in Illinois and Florida. We also knew that he was physically slowing down, particularly after a heart stint surgery at 94 years old, but he was still flying to Florida and playing golf. His physical health was declining, and we had even hired in-home care for him. He had begun to see a woman we knew in town, and she had offered to travel with him down to the Florida home for a few months, which we supported. We fully believed Jane had his best interests at heart.
The issue arose when I received an anonymous phone call from someone in my small hometown. Jane was looking to take his money. She described it as follows, “Jane is looking for an old man with one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave. And, she is already taking funds and stealing things from the house.” She described a few pieces of my parent’s jewelry. I flew home, and my three siblings (who lived there, too) and I began to investigate and ask questions. We quickly realized a few things that weren’t necessarily obvious on the phone. Dad was generally confused and described items in the house as worth much more than they were. He explained that Jane was trying to convince him to buy her run-down restaurant, and he was thinking about doing it. She also had his credit cards, cash, and checkbook – and we learned she was taking him down to the local bank to cash checks for five and six thousand dollars. Dad, who typically paid cash for everything, had a large credit card bill
from the trip to Florida. We quickly had Dad’s mental acuity tested again by his gerontologist, then filed for guardianship and met with the judge who entered it. Part of the petition described Jane’s activities, and the judge offered his phone number if we needed additional help. Four of Dad’s six adult children, including me, were now fully responsible
for his care. We met with Jane at my sister’s car dealership along with a police detective and told her that we had obtained guardianship, the gig was up, and that she was to hand over the keys, credit cards, and checking book – and never contact him again or we’d file charges. This seemingly sweet older woman we had known for decades turned into a monster.
We fired the local licensed assisted living company that was sending a new person every day, and as it turns out, some were a bit unsavory and had been working with Jane to steal items from the house. We asked around our small town and found women via contacts at our local churches who had taken care of other elderly people we knew – and we did our background checks by calling all of those folks’ families. We landed on having three women rotate through the week on two-day shifts. They were not formally trained or certified but were caring women who fed him, talked, sang, and communicated with us daily.
Sadly, I had to tell Dad what had occurred – that we had obtained guardianship and that he would never see Jane again because she was stealing his money. It was, by far, one of the most challenging conversations I’ve ever had. Dad’s response was, “What time is the Cardinals’ baseball game on?” The next day, he asked me to set an appointment with his (and our) long-time family and business attorney “to get rid of this guardianship thing – I want you to tell him why I don’t need it.” I explained again that I was the one who filed
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