When Retirement Becomes Caregiving: Living With Dementia

When retirement becomes caregiving, life can change in an instant.

In this episode of Sherapy with Sheri & Randy, Sheri sits down with her cousin Debbie at her home, to discuss what it's really like caring for a spouse with dementia. Sheri shares her experience caring for a mother with Alzheimer's, while Debbie offers the unique perspective of caring for her husband.

Together, they discuss the realities of caregiving, wandering, confusion, safety concerns, grief, retirement plans that never happened, and the emotional toll dementia takes on families.

This is an honest conversation about love, loss, resilience, and finding strength when life doesn't go according to plan.

If you're caring for a loved one with dementia—or know someone who is—you are not alone.

If you or someone you love is facing Alzheimer's or dementia, help is available. Contact the Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline at 800-272-3900 for free information, support, and local resources.

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Theme music by: Sheri Todd and MakeBestMusic

Written & hosted by: Sheri Todd

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You know, we're here now with my cousin Debbie. You may remember cousin Debbie from Sherry from the beginning. Cousin Debbie's always been part of it. We've also had Cousin to Cousin podcasts, and she has her own podcast called Dementia as a Rocky Road. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Debbie's married, they're retired, and her husband, unfortunately, has been diagnosed with dementia. Dementia. Which I know something about because my mother also had Alzheimer's.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Can I jump in? Yes. Being that your mother had dementia and I saw what she went through, it helps me with Tony because I remember, oh, Georgine was like that. That happened with Georgine. So whenever he does something, I thought, oh yeah, I remember Georgine pulled me aside and said that.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

What's it like being a caregiver during your retirement?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Well, it's not where I I thought our retirement, we can't do anything. We can't because if we go anywhere. I tried going to Santa Barbara during uh in January. And I figure, okay, that's close enough. If anything happens, we come back. But at night when he wakes up and he's in a strange place, it's very bad. They take me home, I want to go home, and but even here now he's like that. But I remember your mom and we went to a restaurant and she got overwhelmed and she goes, I I want to go home. I want to move. I don't like the people living there. And my son moved in to help me out because uh Tony's graduated to the uh aggression uh agitation state and the doctor said you can't live alone with him anymore because you never know what could happen. So do you feel that that's Tony get aggressive, like throw things or no, he could he he doesn't he hasn't done that yet, but what he'll do is he'll come in and just he ran and it just started jumping up and hitting the cabinets. Just hitting the cabinets and screaming and yelling. Terrorize the whole house. Luckily the grandkids were in school and my son came down, and uh mostly what we've learned is just don't argue with him, don't say what's the matter, just let him go lay down. And then when he comes, we have no idea what's at him off, we have no idea. And they come down like he didn't even know what happened. Nothing happened. But it's very, very, very, very scary.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

I wonder if maybe you know this, maybe you've talked to people about this, but I wonder if it's a different Alzheimer's different in men than it is as women. Because mom didn't get aggressive till the late stages, till the last maybe year of her life. And that, or not even that, maybe six months when she became bedredden. The only time she really got aggressive and tried to bite us and hit us is when we, you know, changed her underwear or die a bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

I think what's happened with Tony is she's more mobile than your mom. Tony, like right now, he wants to go out walking. And he's eighty. How old is he? Eighty-five. How many miles does he walk a day? He walks eight miles a day. Five miles he gets up at five o'clock in the morning, goes, walks two and a half to three miles, and on his phone, it has a step tracker, and he's always in competition with that thing. He said, You're not walking as much as yesterday. So, like right now, we thought he was gonna go lay down. He's up and gone. But the problem I'm having too is that um when he started getting agitation, I called a social worker and he said, you know, we're gonna have a lot of trouble placing him because he's what they call him the loper. He's gonna uh he's gonna leave nobody, nobody's gonna want to take on that responsibility. I don't know if you saw the other day a lady was at home and she was climbing the fence and she got out. That's a big responsibility for them.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I'll tell you, mom was like that too. She would she wouldn't take off anywhere, but she would just go outside and we didn't even know that she had left. Yeah. And so we had to put like child locks and stuff up. She would just open the door to people. She'd knock on the door and she would just let people in. Come on in. And we'd be like, Yeah, oh we just I'd walk out of the kitchen like uh hello. She goes, Oh yeah, your mom let me in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

You know, it's like mom, she goes, All right, well, Tony let somebody in yesterday, uh uh pest control. All of a sudden there's this lady at the door. Oh, come on in, yeah. You know, ask my mom, my wife. Oh, I just say right away, we don't want any.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

You know, and get out.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

But I so with Tony being mobile like that, I think he realizes he can't do anything. And I think that that's what gets the agitation going.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

So obviously this isn't the retirement that you guys thought you would have. No. So what adjustments have had uh had you?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

I just I can't go visit my son. I can't I never have a son in West Virginia. I can't go visit my kids up in Washington. It's hard, yeah, you can't do anything. Because just to try and get through the airport, the security sends them it could send anybody.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah but him.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Oh, yeah. And then he has a pacemaker, so he has to go through a special line. And you know, like your mom, she had a pacemaker, not that she flew, but uh yeah, it was just at his stage, from what I read, it's uh because he knows what's happening and he knows the limitation, and he just knows there's nothing he can do about it. The frustration, yeah. Very frustrating. And now what I was telling cousin Sherry is there's something called uh visual clutter uh that I've had to get rid of a lot of stuff. And so in the bathroom I have only his in the shower a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. So he knows the difference. That's it. And then um in the kitchen I have to have everything out so he doesn't have to go look into drawers.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

But that is so good to do that because mom grabbed dish soap once. Oh yeah, and thought it was orange juice and drank it.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Oh yeah, you yeah. I have to put he went looking for dog food again in a small drawer. Oh, what's in here? So I figure, okay, whatever I know he needs or what we're gonna use, I put it out. And every night I go and change the wash rag and the sponge and make sure I clean ones up. And um, it's a lot, a lot, a lot of work keeping him um from hurting himself or getting in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Well, that's the thing that I've also learned is that you have to set up your house what's simple, what's easy.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Because if you make it complicated, your life is hell.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Oh, you change anything, it's over.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, you yeah, you have to keep things the same. You can't move things around. But you know, like I took up all the rugs, and if anything I could do would keep my mom from not falling or whatever, things that keep her out of the kitchen. We had like little locks in there because she'd go in the kitchen and start doing dishes in dirty, filthy water.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, Tony will use the same spot. He'll wash the dog something, and I can see he's done that, and he goes, I just go and bring another sponge and put it out. But I it's you've got to watch them 24 hours a day. Now he's called me, he's left three times this last week, got lost on his walk. And the doctor had told him, Tony, you're gonna get lost, but he's that dementia patient, he doesn't remember. So I told him I was just so frustrated, I said, Tony, I'm just gonna hide your shoes. And then my sister who was here, she said, he'll just grab conan's, he'll go. There's no way to-foot. Yeah, he's very, very healthy man, other than that, very strong-willed. You can't stop him. So he has a iPhone, I have a What do you do though?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

I mean, I know for me, I'd be a nervous wreck.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

I am a nervous wreck 24 hours a day. I followed him to find my friend. I've called uh his friend, he just happened, he was an engineer for the city of La Forest. So I I called the police, I told them, I talked to the mayor that you know, Tony's doing this, and he said, always make sure when he leaves that you know what he has on. So I always make sure he's got something flat on. He stands out. And uh yesterday when he left, he didn't have a hat on, he didn't have any ID. Does Tony realize that he has? Tony realized some days. Sometimes he says, I don't have it. The doctors, they didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Well he said that today.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, the doctor, you know, he's that we told you. I said, Tony, you went in, they did 12 blood tests, and the strangest blood tests they did, which I found, was syphilis. I said, syphilis, he's 84 years old. And they said, you would be surprised. They have uh diagnosing dementia is a matter of ruling other things out. And so they said syphilis has a lot of signs the same as Alzheimer's. Yeah. So they have to do that. They did all that, they did a brain scan, they did twice the verbal, you know, the test. He didn't do good. I mean, his blood test all came back good. And you know another thing? I don't know about your mom, but he asked about his mom all the time.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

She would talk about mom. Um she but you know what was weird is like she would always stare into the corner of the room, and she would always talk to somebody in the corner of the room. And I would always say, Who are you talking to? And it was a man, so I'm not really sure who she was talking to. I'm hoping it wasn't the devil. No, but I'm hoping it was your brother. Yeah, it was like a brother, or you know, it could have been grandpa. I I I don't know. It could have been my dad. One of her husbands, who knows? Oh yeah, hopefully it was my dad.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I'm learning a lot. There's a lot of support groups online uh for dementia, and then there's you know, they break up in different ones for if you have uh there's what a hundred different forms of Alzheimer's? Yeah. Al Dementia Alzheimer's, I get them confused. Dementia. Dementia, yeah. So there's all kinds of different ones, but didn't Tony's Tony's sister had the worst one, Louis Bonnie. Louis Bonnie. That was bad. Delusion and bad. But Tony's and maybe Georgine's was the mild one. But you know, another thing, Sherry, I was gonna ask you about this, is Tony has a pacemaker, and people are saying that that they should just turn the pacemaker off. Because the body at the towards the end, because the body's trying to die, it knows it's dying, it knows what to do, but then the pacemaker's kicking in and keeping their keeping them going.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I don't know if that's true or not, because I think when your body starts to shut down, like when your kidneys and you know, your breathing, you know, when all that starts to shut down, I mean, mom had a pacemaker and I know it's a big debate going on right now. Yeah, because I remember like a couple days before she actually passed, the hospice nurse, you know, was listening for breath sounds and crackles and whatever they listen for. And she said her body's starting to shut down.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

And but the pacemaker didn't kick in. No. So another thing is that Tony's pacemaker is on a recall. Tony's, they have a monitor, and if Tony gets a notice, uh, when it moders it monitors them whenever they're within two feet of the uh monitor. And so if he gets, if it gets a code, he's gonna have to be at the hospital within a couple days. So um this new medicine that they have to slow down or help with the uh for Tony to sleep at night, because nights are the worst, as you might remember. But Tony can't start any new medicine because he's gonna be uh might have to go to the hospital and they don't want him on any kind of medicine. But they said this new medicine for older gentlemen has a very high heart attack rate.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

So I thought, so what do you do? What do you do?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

It's amazing. Just let them go virtually. Yeah, for mom, they just had at the time there's only two kind of pills that they have for people with Alzheimer's. And of course it doesn't cure it, but it's it would slow the progression. Yeah. And mom couldn't take either one because she had really bad side effects.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah. But now they have so many different so many, but the doctor said one is uh, you can see the commercial, might have bleeding of the brain. The doctor said there's one has bleeding of the brain, the other one has this, and he said, Well, I just want to keep Tony comfortable. We go in every four months. And Tony said, they haven't done nothing for me.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Those side effects are worse sometimes worse than what you have.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, yeah. So just why slow it down? I mean, what good is it gonna do? I don't know. But it's um, yeah, this isn't what I thought I'd be doing. I thought I would be going to see, you know, go here, go there, go to my beloved Hawaii and stay for six months out of the year. I even was picking out a dentist over there for my semi-annual church.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

I don't remember you talking about that.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

But you're gonna stay here and I was gonna stay there for six months out of the year and come back. But then that, even though he has sh insurance coverage there, the move will be too much for him. We can't we can't go out cheating anymore because he'll want to sign the check. And I'm not gonna say you can't sign the check.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Has the re has has his Alzheimer's has it put a financial strain on you?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

So everything's covered with your guys' insurance.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah. We have we have the purse, his government, and you know, we have uh Kaiser Permanente, the senior at bandage.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

So what are you doing for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Can't do anything. I haven't go get my hair done. Yeah. Because if I go up there and he knows where I am, all of a sudden he's coming with a dog. Oh they say, is that your dog out there? But the thing is, you don't know how long it's gonna last. That's the thing. Mom had it for about 10 years. That's what they say. The doctor said something else might take Tony out, but he can't see it because Tony's in such good condition.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

I'm surprised he remembered me because I thought, no, he's not gonna remember. It's been so long since I've been here. There's no over a year.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

I had my big birthday party a year ago.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

And I thought there's no way he's gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

But I can see you because of the YouTube videos. Oh, the videos?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, when the YouTube channel goes by and say, Oh, oh, there she is, there she is. But here's another thing. Here's the out there, if you want to put a comment for Sherry, if you guys know anything. When we go someplace now. You can read the comments too, by the way. I can read the comments too.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

When we go You can even leave a comment.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I can leave a comment.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

You can answer the people.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

There you go. There's somebody I want to answer, all right, over that 63 uh chef. When we go someplace now, he doesn't remember. And so I'll say if we were there, again, I'm an idiot. Here's the picture. Oh my god. Then he realizes, oh, I do have dementia. And then I was thinking, do I just not show him the pictures anymore? I say, Yeah, you're right, we do need to go there. I don't know, what do you think? Um I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah, because we got it's just then you gotta deal with him crying and being upset. It's just better to just Because he went to the It's better just to get into their world and then just go with it.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

He sprained his knee and we took him to the doctor, the doctor got him in, and it was sprained, gave him, you know, whatever. It it uh I took a picture of him, they gave him a brace, and the next day he's just doing all this stuff. I said, Tony, I'm forgetting. Uh Tony, that's not what the doctor said you could do yet. What doctor? And then again, I sent I showed him a picture and that was it. I showed When mom got her pacemaker put in. Oh my god. It was horrible. So I'm not I think I'm not gonna show him pictures anymore.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Yeah, when mom got her pacemaker put in, I remember sh later she, you know, you get the anesthesia, it's the same-day surgery. Right. She took a nap and she got up, and I remember walking into her room and she was ripping the band-aid off. Tony will do that now. And she had no idea why that band-aid was there, that she had a pacemaker, and I just like panicked. I'm like, oh my god, what are you doing? So I had to take her to urgent care, you know, so they just put it back on. It was really no big deal. But I panicked, and mom was just like, What's this?

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah. Um he's getting to the point, Sherry, when he doesn't know who he who you are anymore. More often than not, right now he thinks I'm his mom. He said, Oh, we're so close, you carried me for nine months, and then I get mad thinking, Do I look a hundred years old? Because your mom would be a hundred. But how can they look at you and not know who you are? And the other day, it was on Mother's Day, I went to take flowers to my mom's grave. He went with me with my sister and I were in the front. And Tony didn't see me driving, so he he said, I know what you did. You stayed home and just had somebody else take me away. And I said, Tony, I was driving. What are you talking? Then you can't argue with them. There's nothing you can say.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

There's no way I got to remember, like I said earlier, you just gotta live in their world. You have to agree with them. Mom every night would tell me, Are you taking me home tomorrow? And I'd say, Yes, I am.

unknown 16:30

Tony.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

When the morning comes, she was fine.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Where am I? He'll come down for me and takes a nap, but he doesn't take a nap anymore. Where are we? Where am I? You still where he's he's he's from Pier, Persia, Iran. He's well, when are we gonna go back? Or was are we in there? So what I learned, I did read online, is bring him outside into the open air and have him drink. A little bit of hydration, and uh it it should come back. But in that time I thought, I'm gonna sit here and put a camera and videotape it one day. Just yeah, he just wants to go home. I said, We're home.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

So when you've talked to the doctors about all this, what what's their their thoughts, what's their suggestions to do to make things easier for you?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

They call the talk to the Alzheimer's Society. Alzheimer Alzheimer's Orange County, they have a good but you know what I called. What are they gonna say to me? So you say you go online, there's a lot of there's a lot of groups online, but the the Alzheimer's Society, they'll call me and say, is anything I can do for you? I said, What can you do for me? She said, Well Debbie, sometimes people just will answer the phone, they cry, and then they hang up.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

You should do it. Get it out.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah, get it out.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

I mean then when I when mom was in the last stages. What did you do? Well when mom was in the last stages, I did nothing. I was like you. I I did nothing because the thought, for instance, they said to me, the hospice said, listen, if you want to get away for a weekend, we will take her, because they had like a little hospital kind of thing that that you could bring hospice patients there.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

And they would watch them for like if you had to go on vacation or whatever, like a kennel, take my mom there. And they said, you know, you can go away for a few days and then, you know, and then we'll bring her back.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

The thought of leaving my mom somewhere like that was just like I could I would never, I couldn't do it. But people do.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And the thought of her waking up or surrounded by people that she wasn't familiar with, not that she didn't know me anymore, she was familiar with me.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

I the thought of that just it broke my heart. I I couldn't, I could not do that to my mom. No.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

I couldn't. So when I called the social worker. I had you to talk to. Yeah. When I called the social worker, he said, the first thing I want to ask you is, I don't want to be rude, what's your payment? He said, There's $10,000 and $15,000 a month places we can tour. And one person was saying to me, Well, Tony worked really hard, he deserves a $15,000. And somebody else said, Well, the 10, you don't have that $50,000, the other five is a lot. But you gotta kind of wonder what's the difference between the five. Well, Tony's, like I said, he's Persian. And his sister, when she had Lewy body dementia, there's not too many Persians out there. Didn't she get kicked out of everything? Yeah, she got kicked out. She got kicked out. So they wanted to say, well, there's a lot of Persians in Los Angeles, Iranian, Persian, so Iranian, so rough, hard, but Persian. There's a lot of Persian people in Los Angeles. Look, maybe we can send her to Los Angeles and maybe they have a Persian homes there. But we found out that Persian people do not put their relatives in a home at all. They keep them. They do not put them in an institution.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

And it's different for everybody. I mean it's your family dynamics and everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

I mean, it's like some people, it it's but so where am I going to get $15,000 a month? So that he said that you would call your your if you have a stock market, you call wherever you have the money and ask for a balance sheet so they can see that yes, you have the money coming in. And they'll take you in, yeah. Yeah, and then Medicare will pay for maybe something, but fifteen thousand dollars a month is a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

And some insurance pay for it too.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah. That's a lot of money. That goes fast. And you don't know how much longer he has. But he said what some people do, they'll put the person in the uh uh facility until they're either mute or bad or they're not auto out of ambulatory. So they can't cause you trouble at home. They can't leave or they can't talk, and then bring them home and then put them in hospice. But I was telling cousin Sherry too. Sherry was ra uh raising take care of her mom. So Sherry knew that when her mom died, Sherry still had a couple of years left on her, maybe 10. But some of her best income making years were taken. You you didn't work, you stayed home for how long you stay home and take care of her? I stopped working, I think it was 2015. Yeah, so you your income years, so you could be putting Social Security and everything into, you you didn't get that. Now I'm on the other hand with Tony, the stress is probably gonna kill me. They say uh 20 or 30 percent of the caregivers die before the patient now, because the stress is so bad. But luckily in my situation, I have the financial resources and I have my son living here. It helps. It helps knowing someone's here. It really and truly does.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

It does help, and I was lucky too because I was in my mom's home and the house that she was living in at the time, it you know, she she it was paid off. Um, so she had no rent or anything. Yeah, um, it was in a trust fund, so everything was taken care of for mom. Yeah, so that portion for mom was okay for me, so I was living there, but yeah, you're saying I I did have to stop work because you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

And these are the years you would have been making money putting into Social Security for your retirement. Now you're retired and you're getting less. And now I live with my brother. Well, that's okay. You you you would never live alone. You loved your brother. But I want to tell you one thing I heard about Tony, keep talking about his mom. They said at the There's something called the thin veil between us and heaven. And they just kind of feel closer and closer. I don't know if it's true or not, but they feel just closer to their mom because you know they marinated in her and they were close, closer to the mom. He never asked about his dad. So I don't know if that's true or not, but man, he never asked about his mom before. And now I would see mom sometimes, you know, towards the end, um, in bed at night, she would reach up to the sky. My stepmom Jan did that too. Donna said, so look at that man over there. It was always a man.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

It's like she was reaching for somebody always. Wow. And it's it it was it was interesting just watching some of the things that my and she would talk all night long. Was it gibberish? It was just one you know, sometimes I could understand what she was taking, saying. I mean, one time she was talking like she was talking to someone on a phone. Like, okay, all right, I get it. What you know, whatever she was saying. It's not like she was talking to someone on a phone kind of conversation. Um, sometimes she'd be really mad, yelling at somebody. It would just be full-on conversations, and I'd be like, Mom, go to sleep. Because at that time I had moved into the room with her. And just like, mom, please go to sleep. That's right, y'all tell me I have to get some sleep.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It wake me up at 3:30.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Like, well, that's when hospice gave her, gave us a um, I want to say it's like uh Xanax, a sleepy, I don't know what it was, but to give her like a half, only a half of one at night so that it would calm her down and change.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah, that's what the doctor was saying. But then when he looked and he said, Oh, it's pacemaker, I said nope.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Fourth of July came, they said give her a whole one. Remember the fourth of July. Fourth of July would scare to well in our area it was like our war zone. Oh yeah, it was scary. It's like that here, Jill. It was bad.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Even though they're illegal, but they're that doesn't stop anybody. Illegal but legal. Yeah. Well, you could go buy them in the city over. They get them from Mexico.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Oh, Mexico, yeah, of course. They were just and people, I mean, yeah, it was horrible. It it did sound like a war zone. And it's would scare my mom. We'd have to every Thanksgiving or every Fourth of July, we'd have to find a city that somebody was living in, a family member, and go stay there so she would not hear the fireworks, because it literally threw her in a panic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Sherry, did you ever think of getting tested to see if you're if you have it?

SPEAKER_02 24:22

I've never I no, I don't want to get.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

It's a lot of money. Uh Tony's uh nephew went and got went the test. It was eighteen hundred dollars, that's a lot of money. And uh, but he's he uh he's not gonna be a he doesn't he's not gonna get it, but he said that doesn't mean your your grandkids or your kids aren't gonna get it. You they need to be tested.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

I mean sometimes I would think it would for peace of mind, because sometimes I do worry because sometimes I'll forget like a word. Oh, yeah, but it always comes back to me later. Yeah. But it's so frustrating at the moment. It's like, I mean, I did that to my doctor. I'm like, they said I can't remember they said, and I was like giving her clues, and she's like, we was like playing some kind of game. And I'm thinking she's gonna test me right then and there.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Well, your mom didn't get diagnosed until she was in her eighties, right? She yeah, it was in her eighties. And like Tony's in his eighties and his sister was in his eighties. I have no I have no plan to move live past eighty and when did you first start noticing? Tony, now looking back, um, I would say at COVID, during COVID. Oh, during COVID. Like Tony said. Because when you're all together and yeah, yeah, I just noticed the COVID, yeah. What did you notice? What did I notice? Um, just losing his temper, just I don't know, just general little things. Now that I look back on at the time, I had no idea. So, Debbie, I want to thank you. Oh, thank you for coming all the way out to give you your experience about what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

With retirement and uh being a caregiver, basically, and retirement for your husband.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Well, at least thank you, Sherry, that I can always call you. That means a lot. Other people say, Oh, Debbie, I feel so bad for you. How's Tony doing? Oh, they don't mean it. They I mean they don't know any better. Well, here's what I've learned to say. He's progressing as as uh as a dementia patient would.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Tony. Hi, Tony. When I get to see you, not your pictures.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Thank you. I'm glad you're such a fan.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

I see you and you're uh on TV all the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah, we go by, we have your subscription, right? She we go by, oh there she is. You follow us? That's great.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Keep her here.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

I'll keep her. She has I'll stay here, Tony. Tony, I'll be moving in soon. Tony, get a big drink of water.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yes, I'm going.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Okay. We found out that hydration, even a little teeny bit of hydration, can really make them come of confusion really hard. So the main thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Do you think Tony just remembered it?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

He didn't remember you're here before. That's what I thought. The main thing, I just want to say one more thing is um keep the house clean, clut clutter-free. Yeah. Oh, that is so important. Because if they start looking for stuff, then they get confused, and then it's just bad. It's just bad. So that's my biggest thing I've learned. Yeah, it it helps.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

Don't you keep things organized, keep things organized, plan ahead, all that stuff will make life so much easier for you. It's so much easier. Yeah. So again, thank you again, Debbie. We got interrupted by Tony, but that's okay. That's okay. So again, I want to thank you for tuning in. And um, everybody who's following us, please subscribe so you can become part of this community. And we're trying to build a really good community. And if you got any comments that you have, if you're going through the same kind of stuff Debbie's going through, or you're a caregiver, or was a caregiver for somebody with dementia. That's my brother.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah, your brother.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Yeah, he's in the videos with us.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Go shake his hand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

I thought I would treat him differently if he was your best man.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

No, he's my best brother. He's my best brother. That's funny. A lot of people do think we're married. You bigger like an old married couple. We do, we do. Is Tony coming? Is he coming back? Again, thank you. It just shows, Sherry. It just shows. It was it brings back mom because every five minutes mom kept coming in the room. But he has no idea that you that you were here. And different same question every time. Every time. Same question. So again, thank you. Don't forget to subscribe if you're watching us on YouTube or follow us if you're listening to us on your favorite podcast app. So thank you, and always remember to embrace your voice. See you next week.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Hey, thanks for hanging out with us for a bit. If this felt like your kind of conversation, go ahead and subscribe and follow. We'd love to have you back.