Does anyone ever use the chat rooms? I've never used one before but when I sign on, there's nobody elst there. Slogging through the fora (forums) for something of interest is pretty daunting.

Hetty

I have also checked them out and found no one there.

I have found comfortably numb a temporary condition. I cycle through that and panic and back again. It would be nice to have the more immediate response available in a chat room. But I guess it can't work unless you have a critical mass of users.

I'm the spouse of an early onset MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) husband. I'm finding it very hard to know when intervention is necessary. My husband has not worked for almost a year and a half and because he is in denial, he is bringing in NO money but continues to run up debt.

I'm a bit frantic about the financial future for both of us. I'm going to see a lawyer next week. Even if he says I can restrick my husband's ability to get credit, I'm worried about what that will do to his already fragile ego.

I'd love to hear your story.

Hetty

Hetty

Hello Hetty, Welcome to our on-line community! I'm sorry to report that I'm not an active user of the chat rooms but there are other Peer Volunteers that are. I will report your question and try to get you a reply shortly.

In the meantime, this site is a nice place to speak your mind and find support! Please come back and visit us soon!

Hetty, I'd suggest two things that will help you get more input.

(1) Start a new thread on the Caregiver forum. Go to the Caregiver forum (that's where you posted on the Who Are You? thread), then use the "Start a new discussion or poll" button in the purple bar at the top of any page in that forum, select "Discussion", and introduce yourself, ask for help, vent, whatever you need.

The people on this forum are wonderful, but there aren't a lot of them and there isn't nearly as much activity here as there is on the Caregiver forum.

(2) I would suggest that you also look at The Alzheimer Spouse:

http://www.thealzheimerspouse.com/

It's a web site specifically for those of us whose spouses have AD. The link to the discussion forum (message board) is near the top of the green menu on the left. Caring for an ADLO is difficult for anyone, but particularly hard when it's your husband. We can talk about things on Spouse that just can't be discussed here... the unique emotional (and financial and legal) concerns of a spouse caregiver.

I think you'll find a lot more help on your financial and legal situation there. We have quite a few May/December couples, and several with MCI spouses, and plenty who have faced the spouse driving up debt issue.

We spouses sometimes get a little lost among all the caregivers for parents and grandparents here on the Alzheimer's Association boards, although there are a lot of us. Many of us post to both sites, since both are very helpful, but also very different.

Wow!! there are 2 people in the chat rooms right now. Unfortunately they are in 2 different chat rooms.

I can't enter during the day because my employer blocks chat rooms.

Also, thanks, JAB, for the reference.

Blessings,
Hetty

Hetty, the usual busy time in the chat rooms is in the evening. During the day it is rare for anyone to be there -- we're all working or caring for our LOs.

As far as slogging through the forums -- you can use the Find feature for answers to specific issues. You can enter "antibiotics" or "delusions" or "incontinence" or whatever your issue is, and it will bring up all the posts on those topics. Be aware that it will bring up threads from quite a while back, and so if you post a reply or followup question there, you may not get a response from any of the people who were in the original discussion. So it's best to start a new discussion to get the questions answered you still have after your research.

And welcome to the forum!

When you use the "find" feature, select "advanced search" from the drop down menu. There's a button you can use in the advanced search that lets you sort by date, with the most recent posts listed first. And you can look for multiple words, specific phrases, authors, a range of dates when the posts were entered, etc, using the advanced search, which narrows down the hits to those in which you're most interested.

Hetty,

What kind of diagnostics has your husband been through? Is he not working because of his MCI? Does he have access to unemployment?
Does he drive? How is his driving?

Sometimes driving can be a good start. If he has problems driving, you can see if he can be tested for driving skills. Maybe you can arrange for someone to observe his driving and report him to a local police department. They may be able to request that he be tested. I know California has strict guidelines for people with MCI.

These are all questions to ask the attorney. You might be able to file a legal notice of non-responsibility for the debts he incurs.

You could also look into getting an application started for Social Security Disability. If you started an application now, if and when he is approved, he will get back pay to when he stopped working. If his SS Disability payment is larger than his Social Security Retirement payments, the higher payment will continue after retirement age.

Since he is over 50, they do not consider him retrainable so as long as he is not able to work in his past occupation, he could qualify.

You can also set up your credit so he can not get more credit easily. If you have credit cards with high balances, and some with low balances but high limits, ask for the high limits to be reduced. Credit card companies are tightening their credit standards. If they see a high utilization ratio (total of all balances divided by total available credit), they will start shutting his borrowing down, especially if they know he is not working. Ask them if they can send out a review credit application. Then they will find out that he is not working.

I called Bank of America to complain about a high interest rate and they took an updated application to see if they could lower the interest rate. They compared my credit utilization and debt to income ratio. Then they reduced my credit limits to $150 over my current balances.

I had never missed a payment and had a good FICO score. You might be able to set up this kind of a scenario.

We went through this with my dad. Fortunately, he was already retired and never spent more than his allowance. But we had to carefully reign him in. When his car broke down and he could not figure out how to fix it, we just let is sit and he stopped driving. If he wanted to go somewhere, my mom or other family would take him. He always had his car keys and talked about going somewhere when his car got fixed but never did.

Don't hesitate to post questions. There are plenty of us lurking around and available to respond.