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Dementia Care is a Roulette Wheel of Crappy Choices for Most of Us

7 min readApr 8, 2025

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aging hand dangling over a blue wall against a clear blue sky
Photo by michael schaffler on Unsplash

Dementia is slowly destroying my mom’s ability, but not her desire to care for herself.

Is she safe at home? Not really, but the alternatives feel worse. Do we her kids protect her body at the cost of what’s left of her mind? How much do her wishes — muddled as they are these days — matter? What can we afford in time and money without imperiling our own health and wellbeing?

The specifics of my mom’s situation are unique, but our dilemma isn’t. All around the globe, caring adult children are lying awake at night wrestling with what to do about Mom or Dad.

Someone in the world develops dementia every 3 seconds. There are over 55 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2020. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. — Alzheimer’s Disease International

Should she stay, or should she go now?

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Middle-Pause
Middle-Pause

Published in Middle-Pause

We are the voices of women who encourage, inspire, and empower each other to live lives of meaning and purpose. We are women in the middle.

Mary DeVries
Mary DeVries

Written by Mary DeVries

I delight, despair and write about a life lived around the world. Fueled by Yorkshire Gold tea.

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