One question that I keep thinking about is how we missed the signals.  Why did we not see this coming?  Or better yet, why did we choose not to see?  This is not just an academic question.  If we got this right, at the beginning we could have saved ourselves so much grief.  I wonder how our experience with elder care would have been different if we sought more information right in the beginning.

I interviewed a psychologist who did neurological evaluations of elderly people at UCLA and for the Veterans Administration in Los Angles.  I asked him what the signs to look for are.  His response was that you have to live with the person to notice the subtle changes that are occurring.  In our case that was impossible because my father-in-law and his second wife had lived miles away for years.

If there were any signs of impending change we would have not been aware.  And if his second wife made any observations we would have discounted it because we did not trust her.  We never thought about home care for him because if it proved to be necessary she could do it because she was ten years younger.

To complicate matters even more my father-in-law seemed to be fully capable of managing his own life.  He could shower and dress himself.  He prepared his own food.  He went for walks.  He could drive.  When he watched TV he would mute the sound and read the scroll on CNN.

We visited every six weeks or so and to have a heart to heart talk about a subject we did not want to think about was not going to happen.

But elder care does not give any one that luxury.  Being prepared could have made all the difference in how we provided home care for him.