Dementia beginning, what are first steps?

[GaryInCO]

She also may be so distressed that she does not remember a great deal of what she is told at the appointments.

This. I forget the term but it's a real thing. When my wife left me, I had trouble retaining any of the early discussions with the marriage counsellor because I was so distraught.

 

[Badger]

If she's driving around to all these appointments with geriatric psychiatrists and estate attorneys and so on, I'm thinking maybe the most immediate help you can give her is to GO to these places with her so she doesn't get lost or forget where she is going or how to get home.

+1
The first time my father got lost in the neighborhood of our small beach town where he had been living for the past 35 years I knew it was getting to be a concern. Mom had to do all the driving after that and until she started having her own issues.

Cheers!

 

[Koolau]

I second a geriatric psychiatrist, but eventually all they could do for my Mom was to medicate her into "pleasant confusion" - an actual medical term. she had to be in a locked Memory care Unit eventually.

My mom "escaped" from two different locked memory units. She was so smart that even the Alz didn't slow her down much until the end. We made a choice to laugh about her legendary escapes. We laughed until we cried. Lots of crying when a loved one has Alz. You need, as much as possible, to laugh when you can. Its one of the few therapies available to the loved one of the Alz patient. Use it liberally.