What if I can't provide the long-term care my parents need?
If you're a care giver and you've been caring for your elderly parent, parents at home or in their own home and you're starting to burn out, you're in good company. That's a very common situation and probably more common when there's dementia involved, because that's exceedingly stressful. I would say, if you wind up having some kind of break down or if you get to the point where you're so irritable that you just snap or do unkind things to your parents, that is no longer being helpful to them, and so sometimes the sad reality is that we cannot care for our parents in a home setting. Before you get to the point of just having a break down or having some bad outcome happen, start thinking about long-term care. There are other options. There's also, day care, and adult day care. There are a whole lot of other resources that are available. But just don't let it get to the point where you're really at the end of your rope. It's a very difficult task to care for parents at home.