How One Physician Juggles Full Time Dementia Caregiving and Family (Part 1)
What happens when a trained pediatrician suddenly becomes a full-time dementia caregiver? You might think that a medical background would make things easier.
But for Dr. Beth, it was the start of a deeply emotional, confusing, and surprisingly human journey.
In this episode, we hear her honest story—how her mother-in-law’s sudden decline and unexpected recovery turned their family’s world upside down. If you’ve ever felt like you were thrown into caregiving with no clear plan, this episode will resonate deeply.
From Crisis to Unexpected Recovery
Dr. Beth and her family were preparing for the end. Her mother-in-law had a stroke five years earlier, and when she was recently hospitalized for dehydration, confusion, and difficulty swallowing, the signs seemed to point to the final stage of dementia.
But once her medical issues were addressed—hydration, nutrition, blood sugar, and a feeding tube—her mother-in-law’s condition dramatically improved.
➡️ What looked like late-stage dementia was actually medical mismanagement.
➡️ With the right support, her mother-in-law was eating, walking, and attending hockey games again.
The Real Challenges Begin at Home
Despite the improvement, caregiving at home hasn’t been easy. Dr. Beth and her husband have a busy household, young children, and full-time careers. Adding a loved one with receptive and expressive aphasia and mid-stage dementia created new tensions and unexpected exhaustion.
Key struggles included:
🛏️ Nighttime wandering and sleep disruptions
💬 Communication breakdowns due to aphasia
😔 Family conflict and emotional frustration
Even with her pediatric training, Dr. Beth quickly realized that dementia care requires more than clinical knowledge—it demands emotional patience, relational awareness, and constant adaptability.
What This Episode Teaches Us
*Don’t assume a decline is permanent—check the medical basics first.
*Aphasia and dementia symptoms can overlap—respond with calm, not correction.
*Family dynamics matter. Even five minutes with an unprepared visitor can trigger an emotional spiral.
*You don’t need to fix everything—you need a plan, support, and grace.
When Expertise Isn’t Enough—Faith and Community Step In
This episode reminds us that no matter your background, dementia caregiving will stretch you in ways nothing else can. And that’s okay. You’re not failing—you’re learning.
Dr. Beth’s story is a powerful example of how faith, flexibility, and practical support can turn a chaotic season into one of growth and connection.
🎧 Tune in to Episode 248 to hear her journey, and walk away with renewed hope that even in the hard moments, you are not alone.
Join our monthly free workshop!
“How To Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress In 3 Easy Steps”
Transcript
Introduction to Dementia Caregiving
[0:00] What happens when a pediatrician becomes a dementia caregiver? You’d think the medical background would make it easier, but it doesn’t. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Dr. Beth, a physician whose life flipped upside down when her mother-in-law moved in. What started as a crisis turned into a complicated and deeply human story, one filled with medical twists, nighttime disruptions, family tension, and the hard work of truly learning how to connect when words start to fail. If you are a Christian and you are struggling with God’s sovereignty or God’s providence, reach out to me. I will have a conversation happily with you about God’s providence and God’s sovereignty and help you along in your journey. If you are struggling as a family caregiver and you’re ready for a little bit more support, hop on a Care Companion success call with me. We’ll take 20 minutes where you will be able to talk to me, gain some clarity about your very next step that you need to take in this journey, as well as have a conversation about whether or not it makes sense for both you and for me for us to work together to help you through your dementia caregiving journey.
[1:21] Hey, Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to approach dementia in a different way. Because caregiving isn’t random, it is by God’s design. And when we stop managing symptoms and start focusing on the relationship, we walk in peace and purpose. If you’re looking for simple ways to make your caregiving journey less stressful right now, join me on Saturday, May the 10th at 12 p.m. Eastern for my free monthly workshop, How to Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress in Three Easy Steps. You’ll walk away with tools to create clarity, reduce emotional reactivity, and build a care plan that’s actually sustainable.
Meeting Dr. Beth
[2:13] Go grab your free seat at thinkdifferentdementia.com and I’ll see you there. Now let’s go right into the episode where we talk to Dr. Beth, the pediatrician whose mother-in-law has receptive and expressive aphasia.
[2:31] Well, hello, Miss Beth. Hi. I’m trying to get my stuff to work. Can you see and hear me? I can. I’m so excited to meet you. Yeah, thank you. You too. Well, thank you so much for being willing to be on the podcast, if that’s okay with you. Sure. Okay. And then, you know, I had read your stuff and then I totally forgot what I had read, right? And then I’m like, oh gosh, you just asked a doctor to be on your podcast. Oh, you’re fine. I’m here as a student and seeking advice myself. So I’m in pediatrics. So dementia care is not my specialty.
[3:07] Although some of the things are, yes, I was going to say some of these are very, the techniques I’m using are very similar. Yeah, for sure. Well, I am, like I said, I’m super, super excited that you’re here. So I’m going to start with asking you, what would make this a profitable use of your time today? Yeah, I mean, I, of course, I have so many things that I probably could ask you about. But I think I don’t know how I forget how much background I shared. But my mother in law has come to live with us. She has dementia, probably vascular dementia. She had a stroke about five years ago, and she’s probably in the moderate stage. She needs a lot of assistance with kind of prompting to get. Get dressed and get through her daily routine. She has pretty significant aphasia that began after her stroke. So she’s had quite a bit of difficulty communicating with us and us with her. So, you know, I found a lot of your techniques very helpful in kind of working
Challenges of Communication
[4:00] with her and trying to find out what her needs are. But I was hoping to see if you had any advice specifically for patients who are really very unable to communicate using words to find out what we might be able to do to help satisfy her needs. One of the problems we’re having right now is sleep is a big problem. She’s very active.
[4:20] She’s very strong. So she can get up and she likes to wander and she always seems to have something that she’s focused on doing. Sometimes it’s just getting up and getting dressed and she thinks she’s getting ready for the day and it’s three in the morning. And other times they seem to be more paranoias about maybe people being outside or something. So I think I’ve tried some of the things that you’ve suggested with looking at her room and trying to minimize shadows and things like that. But sometimes in the middle of the night, trying to find out what exactly she wants or needs can be difficult to get her back to bed. Absolutely. And nobody wants to be up in the middle of the night. Yes. Especially not a pediatrician, right? Yeah. And we have children and my husband. So my husband and I are kind of splitting those duties. He does do much more than me oftentimes at nighttime, but it’d be nice for all of us to try to get sleep because she definitely does a lot better as well when she’s had a whole night’s sleep. So let’s say it’s six months from now and things are easier. What does that look like in particular for you? Just getting the sleep solved or something else? Well, I think we are in a transition. So she came to live with us after hospitalization about three months ago, and it was very sudden and very abrupt. My father-in-law was caring for her for five years on his own and didn’t have any help in the home. So he became very burned out. And so we recognized that. And after she went into the hospital and we got things kind of tuned up, she came to live with us after that. So again, we live very busy lives. We’re a pretty young family. And so.
[5:48] I think we’ve really, we actually thought we were providing end of life care when she came home. She was doing so poorly and she’s on hospice now. So we thought this would be, we thought we were spending our last few weeks or months with her.
Navigating Care Transitions
[5:59] And she’s really turned around physically and medically. She’s, you know, up and moving and walking around and wants to go places and I think has quite a bit left. And so now we’re sort of in this transition of we are looking at memory care places for her to live. we found an excellent one locally that I think would do a good job, but there definitely would be a waiting list for that. And so I think for now, six months from now, realistically, she’ll be on a waiting list. And so if we could help with her sleep, if I can help teach everyone in the family ways that they can communicate with her to understand her needs without that frustration with being able to manage the frustration, because, you know, like I’ve learned from you, she mirrors our emotions so much. So I think as a pediatrician, I feel very confident in my interactions with her, but like she and my father-in-law, he can be over for five minutes and it’s an explosion. So I’m trying not to step on toes and be too preachy, trying to navigate how to educate other people in the situation because there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I hear you. Yeah, those are very good. I got to write things down because I’m old. Ha ha.
[7:01] Not really. Okay. So knowing how to communicate and looking at some of the responsive behavior. Yeah, I don’t know why that happened. Okay, so I’m going to ask some questions about your mom and law because that’ll give me the context. So you said she had the stroke about five years ago. She’s currently on hospice or they’ve taken her off of hospice? She’s still currently on hospice. I think a frank assessment of her now would be that she probably has longer than six months left. And so it would probably be reasonable to take her off hospice. I do have some conflicting feelings about that because it is our goal to not put her back in the hospital and to try to manage things at home medically. She did terribly in the hospital. She was miserable. I have to say the hospice services have been great to have the nurse come out. We haven’t had to take her to the appointments where she might get agitated.
[7:52] So the one medical thing, when she was in the hospital, she went in for dehydration and she was unable to swallow. And that’s where I thought she was kind of progressing into the end stages. She was holding food and fluid in her mouth. She didn’t seem to know how to swallow it. Well, we found out that her sodium levels were extremely high and she was very dehydrated and she had a UTI. And her blood sugars, she’s a type 2 diabetic, so her blood sugars were sky high. And she hadn’t really been able to get her medications in appropriately. And once we corrected all of those medical issues, we did end up putting a feeding tube in, which I know is controversial in patients who have dementia. And she has done phenomenally with it. We don’t use it for food or formula anymore. She eats everything by mouth. We’re using it to give her some medicine, blood thinner, because she is on a blood thinner. And her heart medication basically helps her to feel comfortable, have more energy. And then we use it for some fluid as well if she’s not drinking very well. And again, with all of those interventions, she’s just been, I mean, it’s been miraculous.
Medical Complications and Misunderstandings
[8:51] Yes, absolutely. She’s back where she was five years ago at the beginning of this journey. And so I was completely wrong thinking that she was, this was progression of her dementia. This was, you know, medical complications.
[9:02] Yeah, for sure. So that was a very interesting spin on your story, really, because you’re right. A lot of people, it can be controversial, but it sounds like it was an appropriate decision because this was a medical reason. Why was she not swallowing? was, did she have another stroke? Did they decide whether she had another stroke? They did a CT scan and it didn’t show any acute changes. That’s what I had thought. I thought maybe she had another stroke acutely. She was so dehydrated, she literally wasn’t producing any saliva. So I think she physically couldn’t get the food down. And she was so disoriented and confused because her sodium levels were so high. And we had seen, they don’t live here. My father in law and her don’t live here permanently. They live in Minnesota. And so they only come down for a few months a year, typically. And we had seen at the beginning of when they came down around Christmas time, we saw she was quite different this time, but still had that desire to participate. She was going to my son’s hockey game. She was interacting with us. And so we thought, she still has this very good quality of life. She just can’t mechanically get the food down. And I had thought, she’s had this dysphagia since her first stroke. So maybe she’s just that piece of her physical, her body has kind of progressed faster than other dementia patients. But it’s been very remarkable to see that just sort of she needed to be nursed back to health and hydrated and have normal blood sugar levels. And I mean, again, I took I took her out for tacos this afternoon. What about the aphasia? Is it both receptive and expressive?
[10:29] Yes, but it’s so hard to tell oftentimes. She has not had a speech assessment or any sort of formal assessment in quite a long time. Her stroke happened right around the time of COVID. And so I think that my father-in-law has said that that was a limiting factor for him. A lot of things were canceled. And so they sort of hunkered down for a year and then just never got hooked back into things. But from what I can tell, if you give her a simple kind of instruction in the way that she needs it, very close to her, kind of in front of her, she will oftentimes completely understand what you’re saying and she can carry out the task. Other times, if it’s more complex or she’s in a mood or hadn’t had a good night of sleep or something like that beforehand, it takes more time. I think the biggest struggle for her is that she knows what she wants to say a lot of times, but the words come out the wrong word. So for example, she calls my son, my husband’s name, because that’s the name that’s in her long term memory. And we all know who she’s talking about, but the word comes out wrong. So and that happens with other things too, if she says she wants something or but for example, in the hospital, they were trying to give her a shower, and she was very uncomfortable.
[11:32] And I had tried to help and I said, would you do you want it hotter? Do you want the is the water too hot? And she just kept repeating the word hot. And so then I couldn’t tell, does she think it’s too hot or does she want it hotter? And so you’re kind of like turning the knob and now she’s escalating. And so it’s so difficult to find out what the actual problem is. Before her dementia started to progress after the stroke. So for me to try to help figure out how much of this is dementia-related word finding or aphasia from a stroke. When she had her stroke several years ago, after the stroke, was her speech better? No, it’s probably been about the same. It may have been slightly better,
The Complexity of Aphasia
[12:09] but since the stroke, it was a very abrupt change. So it’s probably aphasia-related to the stroke that has been superimposed with now some of the changes due to the dementia. Yes, that sounds very reasonable. That sounds like what’s happened. Okay. So, you know, related going back to, you know, the word finding related to your calling your son your husband’s name, that could be either one, right? But the way we would handle it is pretty much the same. Like, we just go with the flow.
[12:38] How old is your son? He’s 13. So he’s old enough to win. He’s great with her. He’s amazing with her. And that has been my experience with, you know, younger people who are exposed to these kinds of situations. They really adapt pretty well. And, you know, so just I would just encourage him that it’s not that she doesn’t know who he is, but she just can’t get that word out. But she knows how he makes her feel. And so if they have a close relationship, I know it’s always hard for people. But I think it’s I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t know him. I think it’s just that she can’t find that word. So because she’s on hospice, but you’re pretty confident she’s like in that middle bucket, she’s dressing herself, she just needs queuing and prompting and things like that, right? For the most part, yes. For the most part. Okay. All right.
[13:27] People who are really benefiting from the community are the people who joined earlier on before they need it and and that have been active and are participating in the community because then they already know what questions to ask and they have a place to come and they’re not constantly wondering what do i need to do how do i need to do it so people listening are interested in tapping into or learning about the community,
Building Community Support
[13:52] I’d invite you to just go to the website, thinkdifferentdementia.com. There’s a link for you to schedule a 20-minute call. There’s no pressure. I’ll serve you regardless of whether you join the community or not. But it is a way for you to take this relationship a little deeper, a little bit more hands-on support, because really the research also shows its longitudinal support over time. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I would highly recommend Lizette. She’s awesome. I see. I appreciate that endorsement. Thank you everybody for listening today. And as I try to remember my, I try to remember, I don’t always remember. May the Lord bless you and keep you and come back and listen some more. I’m hoping to do more of these coaching style episodes. So come back in and check us out. And thank you for being here today.
