Dementia includes Alzheimer's and damage to brain cells and connections. The basics are similar to normal aging plans but accelerated past normal frailty and custodial care to include loss of the executive functions for memory, complex choices, and handling money. That loss increases the demands on everyone around them.

If you wait to plan for dementia until you detect the signs, you’ve already complicated it. To avoid that make sure your documentation is in place. The most critical are:

a) Living Will — so you know what they wanted before they got confused.

b) Durable Medical Power of Attorney — so you can act on all things medical when they can’t do it.

c) Durable Financial Power of Attorney — so you can act on all things financial when they can’t do it.

When you see the symptoms, you’ll face a range of complex medical and care issues. Depending on the dementia, you may have to move quickly just to figure out the next steps:

1. What kind of dementia is it, what is the progression, how fast it happens.

2. Are there treatments to reverse, stop, or slow progression.

3. Safety isn’t just balance or tripping, its perception, judgement, and wandering off too.

4. What are their likely emotional responses to what’s happening to them and can you handle them.

5. Will there be physical deterioration and how fast.

6. Making sense of medical options, choices, side effects, expected effects, and costs.

7. Finding paid and unpaid support for safe and social activities and for primary caregiver(s) relief.

Most important, can you provide 24x7x365 protection and care for the patient? It’s feasible for dementia patients to stay at home, but it takes help. If that can’t happen, a plan should include the facility of choice. Making that choice is not something to do in haste.