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Cry me a river! I never expected to reveal this on FR..BUT!....

I'm a full time caregiver to an Alzheimer infected Mom.

I singlehandedly take care of her. I have no government help, monitarily or otherwise. I gave up my life in '96 when her disease almost destroyed her. She's 81 now. I never married.

I don't have $3 to $7 thousand a month for nursing homes or nursing care. I pay for everything out of my personal life savings which is almost at an end. Nurses cost $18 to $22 an hour. Her requirements are luckily minimal but her disease is in the final stages.

For me to walk out my front door costs me an avg of $20 bucks an hour for nurses. I have no family help. I shop once a week and pay all my bills online.

Medicare has no provisions for alzheimers. Medicaid does, but requires signing over her estate to the government if her retirement income does not cover the expenses, so inotherwords useless.

I'm pretty fed up with hearing all these sob stories from ex Senators or Hollywood big wigs or even our cherished President Reagan's family that have "other people" care for their familie's alzheimers patient and look for sympathy.

Try doing this sometime in your life and get back to me with the tears.

Lastly, my passion for my Harley is still strong and sneaking out at 1am (hoping she doesn't wake) for an hour and a half ride is my only escape.

Looking forward there is only a funeral and my own old age.

My heart goes out to you all. My father died of Alzheimers at age 69. Someone once corrected me rather patronizingly and said that no one dies of Alzheimers, so I said, okay, he died of pneumonia (which he wouldn't have gotten had he not had Alzheimers), if that makes you happy. It's a horrid disease. Fortunately, as a veteran with a service-connected partial disability (injured aboard ship in blackout conditions in WWII), we were able to find a fairly decent nursing home for the last six months of his life whose costs the VA covered, more or less.

Regardless of my opinion of Proxmire's politics, I do sympathize with his family.