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My mother-in-law lives with us and has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. We've been dealing with it for about a year but things are progressively getting worse. What are options for care? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by saegiru to c/asklemmy

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She gets social security, and we don't have a lot of money ourselves and are no longer able to be with her 24/7. We are in Maryland, and are scared of what we can do. Will her medicare do anything? Is it too late for something like long term care insurance? We have no idea where to start.

Thanks for any insight.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a really tough situation and you have my sympathy. You should look into caregiver support programs such as CAPABLE. There are several such programs which aim to connect caregivers with community resources such as adult day care programs, and to teach them new skills to better cope with the behavioral changes that happen with dementia. Is she Medicaid-eligible? Sometimes there are state waiver programs that can leverage Medicaid (in addition to Medicare) to pay for these programs. I think Maryland has such a waiver but I'm not 100% sure. Let me know if you have questions.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I forgot to mention - CAPABLE is just one example and IIRC it's more focused on the person with dementia than on caregiver support, so I believe it's more applicable for people with mild impairment. If your MIL is more than mildly impaired, I would look for programs geared toward a caregiver-patient dyad. These are specifically designed to improve caregivers' ability to effectively manage the disease and therefore alleviate some of the burden of caregiving (reducing stress and depression).