If you have been diagnosed with dementia, you have probably noticed something. Search any part of this and what comes back is addressed to somebody else — your husband, your daughter, the person who drove you to the appointment. She. Him. The person in the chair. You end up reading about yourself in the third person.
First Person is a separate space on this site for people who have the diagnosis. Not for the people caring for them. It is written to you, in plain language and large type, and the research is done for you rather than about you.
- The Ten — one-page answers to the ten questions people ask first. What did they just tell me. What happens next, and when. Should I still be driving. Who do I tell, and how.
- The Things I Want You To Know — somewhere to put down what matters, while it is still easy to say.
- A room of your own — for people who have the diagnosis, not their families.
The Decisions That Are Still Yours is a four-page checklist of the paperwork that actually has a deadline — the five documents, the ten-minute form a power of attorney does not cover, and space to write down what you have decided. Large type, made to be written on and taken to appointments.
Free, no email address, nothing to sign up for.
Being straight with you about one thing: the room is new, and right now it is small.
If you come in at this point you are one of the first, and that is not a consolation prize. What the first people say is what decides the tone, which questions get asked out loud, and what this turns into. I would rather tell you that than pretend you are walking into a crowd.
Tell me what is missing, what reads wrong, and what made you close the tab. That is the job of the people who arrive first, and it is worth more to me than a full room would be.
It is free, and it stays free. Not a trial and not a discount. There is no payment, no application, and nothing to prove — nobody is going to ask you for evidence of your diagnosis.
It is paid for by the caregivers who subscribe to the other side of this site. That was the only arrangement that let it cost you nothing.
Your family cannot read it. The space is separate from the caregiver community and hidden from it. People who are married to their own caregiver told us they would not post otherwise, and they were right to say so.
The door is open.
One click, an email address, and you are in. If today is not the day, it will still be here.
Open your roomThis page is the thing to forward. Send the page, not the button — if you open that link yourself you will be signed into a space meant for the person you care for, and they will know you can read it. That is exactly the thing it is built to prevent.
If what you need is the caregiver side — the stage guides, the meditations, the community of people doing what you are doing — that is here.