As the sole caregiver for a father with dementia I can tell you it's a nightmare.

If you have children please, please plan for late life care. And if you're going to be caring for either of your parents start planning and build a support network. By the time I knew I needed help I was drowning. Learn how to ask for help. I thought I was a relatively progressive 50 year old man, but it turns out help is a 4-letter word.

My sympathies.

As hard as it is, supporting family members also need to learn to prioritize taking care of themselves and avoiding a spiral towards burnout. With dementia, there is often a time when the patient needs a more controlled environment with 24x7 supervision. Dementia sleep schedules and behaviors fall apart and are not really compatible with a family caregiver's own health needs.

Depending on the dementia case, risky behaviors may emerge at night, and having observant caregivers awake 24x7 may be very important. The financial picture for this is quite difficult in the US. Normally this requires a care facility at some point, as it is impossibly expensive to bring sufficient dementia care via visiting professionals.

To safely handle dementia with "sundowning" and wandering behaviors, you usually need a facility that has about a dozen residents or more. Then, budgets allow for multiple onsite staff and overnight wakeful staff. This can bring more distinct staff roles too, e.g. cooking and housekeeping versus care.

Even this may be overwhelmingly costly, to the point where the dementia ends up depleting the estate and then shifting to some kind of government support. For family or trustees managing this process, it is full of difficult decisions regarding budget and care tradeoffs. For example, do you splurge on "nicer" facilities or other caregiver factors early on, or try to reserve more funds for the inevitable crises? Dementia can be a drawn-out process, where care needs expand to a crescendo before collapsing back to hospice care, which may be more like other terminal illnesses.

You have my condolences. I helped my wife care for her late father with Lewy body dementia. I think many people recognize they may need to care for the people that raised them at some point, but the realities of the costs--both financially and emotionally--are rarely discussed. @lemonberry feel free to reach out if you need a friendly ear, my email is in my profile.

On a personal note to anyone in this situation: Do not go it alone. Being a caregiver is hard, but being a caregiver for someone with serious memory issues is brutal and requires 24/7 monitoring. Your loved one will not always cooperate. They may change into someone who does not resemble the person you knew. Many states require such persons to be homed somewhere with a 24/7 nursing staff. Plan accordingly.

One major reason I'm working extra years despite being FI is so I have money to provide for memory care for my parents if they end up needing that. They have downright nothing to their name and memory care can easily run into half a million dollars total.

Don't neglect yourself. Wishing you the best. https://www.caregiveraction.org/

My wife and I don’t have children, but my exit strategy is assisted suicide. I have no intention of living past my brain.

Your advice about planning ahead is gold.... by the time the crisis point comes, you're usually too exhausted to build that support system from scratch