i am new here · Dementia Caregiver Collective

i am new here

i have been so afraid to write my story here and it's really no different than anyone elses. i just can't bear to look at ther directions, suggestions, the reality of the situation. my brilliant, NYU tenured - literally professor of the year - sister has all the markers. i have to bone up here, but i'm devastated. she is 80 and i'm 65. she is in new york and i am in los angeles. there is so much to write and i'm just afraid. just afraid. i am a psychotherapist and i am afraid. i have such tone deaf friends with their well meaning but stupid suggestions. of course i wish she would "go out more" "see her friends more" travel more" but she does not want to leave her block. thanks god that she is letting me (mostly my husband) hire an attorney to protect her big asset (her condo) and what little she has in the bank - they do not pay professors what they should and NYU should be sued because they do not give pensions to their professors! my sister is okay now financially but i am worried about where her extra money goes (i am also talking to her accountant on monday with her permission - she thinks is just for the purposes of the trust i'm making for her, but i really need to know what the heck she has). i wanted my retirement to look like something very different than what i am projecting in to the future. i feel all my hard ass working days were going to be rewarded, but i am just broken over all this. she says she'll go to the doctor (a psychiatric gerentologist) because of her anxiety and memory issues (all recent memory stuff), her repeated questions, her computer not working and not going to the person who can fix it, the clutter (well she has always been the absent minded professor cliche), the inability to remember that we went shopping this summer...she is there and i am here and she is very very very proud and i don't know how to fix it. i just want to fix her and i can't. where do i begin here?

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i am new here