I appreciate the concern VB, and assure you that I have it covered - legally, financially, and "letters of instructions" and day to day information to my youngest son and a very close friend. I am very much aware of the situation and have done all that can be done at this early stage.
My Wife is usually in a "normal" frame of mind and is aware of all this. Please understand, this is the very early stages and it may not even develop further. The only reason we are seriously concerned is that her Mother had vascular dementia and had a series of strokes that ended up killing her. My Wife's father was an uncaring jerk who refused to get his wife the preventative medical care she needed. It wasn't til my Wife and I jumped in that she began getting the proper care. My Wife has been and is much more fortunate in the regard. Physically, we are both in very good health, and see a plethora of Doctors regularly to keep it that way.
Mobilman44 - with no "E"
I'm so sorry about your wife’s mom.
It is horrible to observe a family member abuse or neglect another family member. It’s the complete opposite of how it’s supposed to be.
I’m not telling you what to do, but if you read any scientific research on the Vegan Diet, more studies are showing that a no meat diet like that, or at least a no Red Meat diet,
can actually help clear out the arteries of plaque. Takes a long time, years, but the latest study of Vegan Diets and Alzheimers are showing that going Vegan helps with delaying Alzheimer's and similar studies of pointed out the same with cardiovascular health. (I posted that on the Health thread a while back - CNN’s Dr. Gupta featured the latest research on the CNN website.)
To put it in simple terms, basically meats and animal products allow the plaque to build up in the arteries. If you get rid of all the meats and dairy products, (and some say get rid of all oils too, but there’s a big debate about that since some oils, like olive oil and fish oil have so many benefits), then it lets your arteries clear up over time - not months, but years.
Having learned this, I gave up red meat in 2012 because I saw what my mother went through with heart disease and I sure do not want any of that.
I have backslid. Once every 6 months or so I will have something with cheese, like a pizza. And similarly, I do eat chicken about 2-3 times a week. But no bacon, no ham, no steaks, and nothing but plant milks. I will also have non-fat yogurt because it’s so good for the digestive tract.
The reason I get so apoplectic about planning for illness and death and not keeping secrets in families is because the stuff I went through in my birth family made me see just how horrible things can be when families
1. Keep secrets that should not be secrets
2. Fail to bother to get medical and psychiatric care (even when it’s free, which makes me crazy!)
3. And then keep more secrets and hold onto more delusions because they are so far gone in the habit of denial that they have lost touch with all reality and sanity.
Therefore, with my own family, I do not keep secrets with my kids. Not about money or my health or even my friends. When people start saying here they are “keeping secrets from their family” every red flag and alarm goes off in my brain and all I can do is shout, “DANGER, Will Robinson!"
But I still think your optimism is misplaced. I think you should simply assume the worst with her and GET AHEAD of the problem.
It's like living in an earthquake or high fire danger area. Everyone tells residents, repeatedly, to be prepared for disaster.
Have your go-bag. But you and your wife are staying the in denial tropes: “It's not that bad yet.” That’s denial.
Much more realistic is to think through every worst-case-scenario (which is why I asked you “What is your plan for telling the kids?”), and make your legal, medical, and mental GO BAGS now for those circumstances.
I will not weigh-in on this topic anymore. If it all becomes a s**t-show, I have warned you it can be. That’s all I can do is warn.
That's what matters... she sounds perfectly capable at this point of making those decisions on her own. To have ignored her wishes and tell people would have felt like a betrayal to her.
