I believe my husband was showing signs of dementia in 2011. He is a Vietnam Vet and has depression and PTSD. He was diagnosed with lunch cancer in 2012. He had surgery, and while the doctors say they got it all, he developed an infection from the chest tube. It took from July until November of 2012 to have the infection properly diagnosed. By then, it had traveled through his blood stream and into his brain. I had to retire last year in order to stay home to take care of him full time. I have a few people and relatives who will come in and stay with him while I had lunch with a friend or run errands. I've also looked into respite care in a nursing home for short stints. I have fibromyalgia and one of the worst triggers is stress. Yikes. I'm really afraid that I will burn out way before he reaching the point of having to enter a long term care facility. What do I do?
Have a plan but try not to turn it into a What-If list. If it's in your head it's a What-If list. If it's down on paper it's a plan. ;-)
It sounds as if you realize that at some point your husband will have to go into long term care. Have you decided upon a place yet? That's something you can do ahead of time as opposed to being in the middle of a crisis of some sort. Pick a few places, take a few tours, get the information you need and then put it aside for when you'll need it.
Do the same with your finances. Will your husband be going on Medicaid when he's in a nursing home? If so, you can get the application and fill it out and have that ready for when the time comes.
Caregiving and stress go hand in hand. You know that. You can't know what the future holds and if you What-If yourself to death you'll make yourself crazy. You know what your limitations are and I'll bet you know when you're headed straight for them. Sometimes it's difficult to put on the brakes, sometimes we can't avoid pushing ourselves too far but you know when those times are. You have triggers and symptoms and indications that you're pushing it. So give yourself some peace now, put your collected information in a folder and just hang onto it for now. Do as much work ahead of time as you can so that if/when the time comes it won't be such a daunting task.
It's ok, they just write or call sometimes to see if its time= no/yes.
In the future the stress will make you less and less capable mentally to do these things, do them now one nice calm step at a time.... this is what i did and what a difference, because I went downhill fast but everything was in place.