Caretaking from a Distance

Amy Bean joins Barbara to tell us about her dad, an accomplished and successful businessman who’d planned for exciting travels during his retirement. Unfortunately those plans changed with his diagnosis of vascular dementia. She reveals the stress and struggles of those early stages, and talks about the fear she often saw and heard in him. Since cars were a big deal to him, Amy tells us how they handled taking his driving privilege and mobility away, and about the guilt and issues around orchestrating care while living far away. Amy shares how they were able to put together a team of caregivers so he could stay in the house he built, in the town he grew up in, for which she feels very fortunate.